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The online network X has provoked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.