Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
