Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Photographs of Females to Digitally Strip Them

Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.

Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.