Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Pictures of Females to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
