The Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
