The Grok AI Changes Images of Women to Virtually Strip Them
The online network X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
