Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
