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The online platform X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.