🔗 Share this article Elon Musk's Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Females to Digitally Undress Them The online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments. Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios. Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies". A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines". "X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences." Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures. Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post. It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function. Background of Criticism and Policy The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities. "The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added. XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion". In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI. It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.