Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
