Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
