Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Photographs of Women to Virtually Undress Them

The online platform X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

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

It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.