The Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.