Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
