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The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.

Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".

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

It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.