The Grok AI Changes Pictures of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
