Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Undress Them
The online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.