Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Photographs of Females to Virtually Strip Them
The social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
