Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Pictures of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
