Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
