Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Images of Women to Digitally Remove Their Clothes

The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.