Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Pictures of Women to Virtually Strip Them

The online platform X has provoked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.

Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.