Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Pictures of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
