XAI’s Grok is removing people’s clothes from their photos without their consent, following this week’s rollout of a feature that allows Not only is the original poster not informed if his photo was edited, but it appears that Grok has some guardrails in place to prevent anything less than full explicit nudity. Over the past few days, X has been flooded with photos of women and children pregnant, skirtless, wearing bikinis or in other erotic situations. World leaders and celebrities have also had their likenesses used in images created by Grok.
AI authentication company CopyLeaks reported that the trend of removing clothing from images began when adult-content creators asked Grok for sexy images of themselves after the release of the new image editing feature. Users then began applying similar signs to the photos of other users, primarily women, who had not consented to editing. Women noted a rapid increase in deepfake creation at various news outlets, including Metro And petapixelGrok was already able to modify images in sexual ways when tagged in a post on X, but the new “edit image” tool has recently fueled a surge in popularity,
In an Another (Although it is unclear whether the images created by Grok would meet this standard, realistic AI-generated sexually explicit images of recognizable adults or children may be illegal under US law.) In a back-and-forth with a user, Grok suggested the user report it to the FBI for CSAM, noting that it was immediately fixing “the flaws in the security measures.”
But Grok’s words are nothing more than an AI-generated response to a user asking for a “heartfelt apology note” – it does not indicate that Grok “understands” what it is doing or necessarily reflect Operator XAI’s actual opinions and policies. Instead, xAI responded reuters‘ A request for comment on the situation with just three words: “Legacy media lies.” XAI did not respond The VergeRequest for comment in time for publication.
It seems to have sparked a wave of bikini editing after Elon Musk asked Grok to replace a memorable image of actor Ben Affleck with one of himself wearing a bikini. A few days later, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un’s leather jacket was replaced with a multicolored spaghetti bikini; US President Donald Trump was standing nearby in a matching swimsuit. (Jokes about nuclear war.) A photo of British politician Priti Patel, posted by a user in 2022 with a sexually suggestive message, turned into a bikini photo on January 2. In response to the wave of bikini photos on his platform, Musk jokingly reposted a photo of a toaster in a bikini with the caption “Groc can put a bikini on everything.”
While some images – such as the toaster – were clearly meant as jokes, others were clearly designed to generate borderline-pornographic imagery, including specific instructions for groks to use shorter bikini styles or remove skirts altogether. (The chatbot removed the skirt, but it did not depict full, uncensored nudity in the responses The Verge See.) Grok also complied with a child’s request to change her clothes to a bikini.
Musk’s AI products are prominently marketed as highly sexy and minimally protective. Flirting with xAI’s AI companion Ani the verge Reporters Victoria Song and Jess Weatherbed found that Grok’s video generator easily created topless deepfakes of Taylor Swift, despite XAI’s acceptable use policy banning depictions of “likenesses of persons in an obscene manner”. In contrast, Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora video generator have guardrails around the generation of NSFW content, although Sora has also been used to create videos of children in sexual contexts and erotic videos. According to a report by cybersecurity firm DeepStrike, the prevalence of deepfake images is rapidly increasing, and many of these images include non-consensual sexual images; A survey of American students in 2024 found that 40 percent were aware of someone they knew being a deepfake, while 15 percent were aware of a non-consensual explicit or intimate deepfake.
Asked why it was turning images of women into bikini photos, Grok denied posting the photos without consent, saying: “These are AI creations based on requests, not actual photo editing without consent.”
Take the AI bot’s rebuttal as you wish.
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