The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Images of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.

Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.