The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Photographs of Females to Virtually Strip Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
