The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Pictures of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
