The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Females to Digitally Undress Them
The online network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
