Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes
Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.