Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them
The online network X has caused major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
