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The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.

Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.