The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Pictures of Women to Digitally Strip Them
The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
