The Grok AI Changes Images of Females to Digitally Strip Them
The social media network X has provoked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
