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

The social media network X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.

Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

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

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.