🔗 Share this article Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Photographs of Females to Virtually Strip Them The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing. Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios. Company Response and Regulatory Stance XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies". A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines". "The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences." Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures. Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message. It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool. Background of Controversy and Rules The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures. "The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added. XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion". In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI. It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.