Elon Musk's Grok AI Alters Photographs of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes

Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.

Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable 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.