The Grok AI Alters Pictures of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
