The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Images of Women to Digitally Strip Them

Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.