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The online platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

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

It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.

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

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.