The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
The social media network X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.