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The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.

Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.