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The online platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.

Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.