Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Strip Them
The social media platform X has caused major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
