The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Strip Them
The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
