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The online network X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.

Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.