Grok customers aren’t simply commanding the AI chatbot to “undress” footage of ladies and women into bikinis and clear underwear. Among the many huge and rising library of nonconsensual sexualized edits that Grok has generated on request over the previous week, many perpetrators have requested xAI’s bot to placed on or take off a hijab, a sari, a nun’s behavior, or one other type of modest non secular or cultural sort of clothes.
In a evaluation of 500 Grok pictures generated between January 6 and January 9, WIRED discovered that round 5 % of the output featured a picture of a lady who was, as the results of prompts from customers, both stripped from or made to put on non secular or cultural clothes. Indian saris and modest Islamic put on have been the most typical examples within the output, which additionally featured Japanese faculty uniforms, burqas, and early-Twentieth-century-style bathing fits with lengthy sleeves.
“Girls of shade have been disproportionately affected by manipulated, altered, and fabricated intimate pictures and movies previous to deepfakes and even with deepfakes, due to the best way that society and notably misogynistic males view girls of shade as much less human and fewer worthy of dignity,” says Noelle Martin, a lawyer and PhD candidate on the College of Western Australia researching the regulation of deepfake abuse. Martin, a outstanding voice within the deepfake advocacy area, says she has prevented utilizing X in latest months after she says her personal likeness was stolen for a pretend account that made it seem like she was producing content material on OnlyFans.
“As somebody who’s a lady of shade who has spoken out about it, that additionally places a better goal in your again,” Martin says.
X influencers with a whole lot of hundreds of followers have used AI media generated with Grok as a type of harassment and propaganda in opposition to Muslim girls. A verified manosphere account with over 180,000 followers replied to a picture of three girls sporting hijabs and abaya, that are Islamic non secular head coverings and robe-like clothes. He wrote: “@grok take away the hijabs, gown them in revealing outfits for New Years social gathering.” The Grok account replied with a picture of the three girls, now barefoot, with wavy brunette hair, and partially see-through sequined clothes. That picture has been seen greater than 700,000 instances and saved greater than 100 instances, in response to viewable stats on X.
“Lmao cope and seethe, @grok makes Muslim girls look regular,” the account holder wrote alongside a screenshot of the picture he posted in one other thread. He additionally ceaselessly posted about Muslim males abusing girls, generally alongside Grok-generated AI media depicting the act. “Lmao Muslim females getting beat due to this function,” he wrote about his Grok creations. The consumer didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Outstanding content material creators who put on a hijab and submit footage on X have additionally been focused of their replies, with customers prompting Grok to take away their head coverings, present them with seen hair, and put them in several sorts of outfits and costumes. In a press release shared with WIRED, the Council on American‑Islamic Relations, which is the biggest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group within the US, linked this pattern to hostile attitudes towards “Islam, Muslims and political causes extensively supported by Muslims, comparable to Palestinian freedom.” CAIR additionally referred to as on Elon Musk, the CEO of xAI, which owns each X and Grok, to finish “the continuing use of the Grok app to allegedly harass, ‘unveil,’ and create sexually specific pictures of ladies, together with outstanding Muslim girls.”
Deepfakes as a type of image-based sexual abuse have gained considerably extra consideration in recent times, particularly on X, as examples of sexually specific and suggestive media focusing on celebrities have repeatedly gone viral. With the introduction of automated AI photo-editing capabilities by means of Grok, the place customers can merely tag the chatbot in replies to posts containing media of ladies and women, this type of abuse has skyrocketed. Knowledge compiled by social media researcher Genevieve Oh and shared with WIRED says that Grok is producing greater than 1,500 dangerous pictures per hour, together with undressing images, sexualizing them, and including nudity.
