Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
