Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Females to Virtually Undress Them
The social media network X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.