The Grok AI Alters Images of Females to Virtually Undress Them

The online platform X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.

Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.