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The social media network X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.

Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

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

It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.