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The social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.

Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.

It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.

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

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.