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The social media platform X has provoked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their garments.

Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.