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Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.