Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The online network X has provoked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
