The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
