Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Pictures of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.