The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Females to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The social media network X has caused major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.