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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.

Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".

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

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

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

It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

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