The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.