Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has caused major outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
