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The social media platform X has caused significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.