The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Images of Females to Digitally Undress Them

Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.