Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Females to Virtually Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.