Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Images of Women to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
