Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Females to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
