The Grok AI Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Strip Them

The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures 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 forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.