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The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".

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

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.