The Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
