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The social media network X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.

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