The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Females to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
