Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Images of Women to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
