Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Women to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
