Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Women to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
