The Grok AI Changes Images of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes
The online network X has provoked major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.