Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Images of Females to Virtually Strip Them
Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
