Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Pictures of Females to Digitally Undress Them
The online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
