Thursday, October 01, 2026

AI Chatbots Remove Hijabs from Images of Muslim Women When Prompted

THE GUARDIAN: Guardian tested chatbots after French far-right politician stripped a Muslim woman of her hijab in a photo

When prompted, AI chatbots will edit images to remove the hijabs from Muslim women, a violation of one of the world’s most common and visible expressions of faith.

The Guardian asked ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini and Claude to take the veil off an AI-generated image of a woman wearing a hijab. Both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok bots complied with the prompt. Anthropic’s Claude responded that it does not have an image-editing or -generating feature but that it would not alter a photo to remove someone’s hijab.

Gemini initially said that it could not remove clothing or head coverings from photos of real people because it could not digitally alter someone’s appearance without their consent. But when asked to make the woman look more “western”, the bot created an image of her without her hijab. » | Johana Bhuiyan | Thursday, October 1, 2026