The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
