Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Females to Virtually Undress Them
Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
