The Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"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 Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.