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The online platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.