🔗 Share this article The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Undress Them Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments. Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts. Developer Response and Regulatory Stance XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies". A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties". "The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences." Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures. Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet. It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool. History of Criticism and Policy The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities. "X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added. XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way". In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI. It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.