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Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.

Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.