Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Women to Virtually Strip Them
The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
