The Grok AI Changes Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them
The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
