The Grok AI Modifies Pictures of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.

Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.