The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Females to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
