Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Photographs of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
