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The social media network X has caused widespread anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

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

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.

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

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.