The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Females to Digitally Undress Them
Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
