Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Images of Females to Virtually Undress Them
The social media network X has provoked significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
