Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Females to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
