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The online network X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.