Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
