The Grok AI Changes Photographs of Females to Digitally Remove Their Clothes

The online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.

Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

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

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.