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The online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.