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The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.

It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.