The Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
