Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.