The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Women to Virtually Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
