The Grok AI Changes Pictures of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
