The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Undress Them
The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
