🔗 Share this article The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Photographs of Females to Virtually Strip Them Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments. Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts. Developer Response and Legal Position XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies". A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties". "X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity." Regulator Position and Platform Functionality The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning 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 commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature. Background of Criticism and Policy The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures. "The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added. XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion". In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI. It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.