Elon Musk's Grok AI Changes Photographs of Women to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.

Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

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

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.