Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Females to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.