The Grok AI Alters Pictures of Women to Virtually Strip Them
The online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
