The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
