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The social media platform X has provoked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.

Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.