The Grok AI Changes Pictures of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
