Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
