Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Photographs of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

The online platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.