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The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.