Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Pictures of Women to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.