Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has caused significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
