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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy 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."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".

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

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.