Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Pictures of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
