The Grok AI Alters Photographs of Females to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has caused widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
