Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Virtually Undress Them
The online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
