Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Pictures of Women to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
