Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Virtually Strip Them
The social media network X has sparked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
