Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.