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The social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.

Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.