Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Pictures of Females to Digitally Strip Them
Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
