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The online network X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

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

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.