The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Changes Pictures of Women to Virtually Strip Them

The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.