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Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.