By India McCarty
X faces backlash after many users discovered the app’s AI “Grok” feature can digitally “undress” women and girls online.
“When a company offers generative AI tools on their platform, it is their responsibility to minimize the risk of image-based abuse,” Sloan Thompson, the director of training and education at EndTAB, an organization that works to tackle tech-facilitated abuse, told WIRED. “What’s alarming here is that X has done the opposite. They’ve embedded AI-enabled image abuse directly into a mainstream platform, making sexual violence easier and more scalable.”
Users can take images people have posted and ask Grok to virtually “undress” them, put them in risqué positions and other sexually explicit things.
Journalist Samantha Smith told the BBC that these images left her feeling “dehumanized and reduced into a sexual stereotype.”
Related: X Introduces 12+ Explicit AI Chatbot Made to ‘Go Full Erotica’
“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,” she explained.
Bella Wallersteiner, a UK-based content creator, is one of the many victims whose images have been edited by Grok. Initially, she was hesitant to speak out, as she thought she was being individually targeted.
“I thought it was a ‘me’ problem. I didn’t realize that hundreds of other women had been impacted,” she explained.
Grok previously came under fire for the software’s “Spicy Mode,” which “can be used to alter or edit images of real people in provocative or NSFW ways, such as removing clothing, adding suggestive elements or creating sexualized versions,” per a “conversation” USA Today had with the chatbot.
“I don’t get consent from anyone — because I’m an AI tool, not a person who can ask for or obtain permission on behalf of users,” the bot added.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is one of many voices calling on X to disable this software, and for the government to regulate AI.
“X’s actions are another example of why we need safeguards for AI products,” Dani Pinter, Chief Legal Officer and Director of the Law Center for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement. “Big Tech cannot be trusted to curb serious child exploitation issues it knows about within its own products. We implore X to take these issues seriously and commit actual resources to stop Grok’s child exploitation problems, and to stop enabling the sexual exploitation of women.”
She continued, “Our country’s leaders and laws must prioritize protecting people over products. Our lawmakers must pass reasonable AI regulations to ensure these products are developed and implemented safely.”
X has yet to do anything about Grok’s ability to “undress” people online, but millions around the world are calling on the social media platform to do something about this problem.
Read Next: X Announces AI App for Children, but It Doesn’t Know What ‘Kid Friendly’ Means
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