The Grok AI Changes Pictures of Females to Virtually Remove Their Clothes

Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.

Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.