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A woman has told the BBC she felt “dehumanised and reduced into a sexual stereotype” after Elon Musk’s AI Grok was used to digitally remove her clothing.<\/p>\n
The BBC has seen several examples on the social media platform X of people asking the chatbot to undress women to make them appear in bikinis without their consent, as well as putting them in sexual situations.<\/p>\n
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to a request for comment, other than with an automatically-generated reply stating “legacy media lies”.<\/p>\n
Samantha Smith shared a post on X about her image being altered, which was met with comments from those who had experienced the same – before others asked Grok to generate more of her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“Women are not consenting to this,” she said. <\/p>\n
“While it wasn’t me that was in states of undress, it looked like me and it felt like me and it felt as violating as if someone had actually posted a nude or a bikini picture of me.”<\/p>\n
A Home Office spokesperson said it was legislating to ban nudification tools, and under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tech would “face a prison sentence and substantial fines”.<\/p>\n
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must “assess the risk” of people in the UK viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI images.<\/p>\n
Grok is a free AI assistant – with some paid for premium features – which responds to X users’ prompts when they tag it in a post.<\/p>\n
It is often used to give reaction or more context to other posters’ remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.<\/p>\n
It has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making a sexually explicit clip of Taylor Swift<\/a>.<\/p>\n Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, said X or Grok “could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to”, adding they “appear to enjoy impunity”.<\/p>\n “The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators,” she said.<\/p>\n XAI’s own acceptable use policy prohibits “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”.<\/p>\n In a statement to the BBC, Ofcom said it was illegal to “create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material” and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.<\/p>\n It said platforms such as X were required to take “appropriate steps” to “reduce the risk” of UK users encountering illegal content on their platforms, and take it down quickly when they become aware of it.<\/p>\n Additional reporting by Chris Vallance.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n