The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Pictures of Women to Virtually Undress Them
The online network X has sparked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.