Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Pictures of Females to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
