The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Women to Virtually Undress Them

Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.

Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.