The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Pictures of Women to Digitally Undress Them

Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

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

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.