Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
