Belated assurances from X that it will geoblock its chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people are too little too late, according to Social Democrats media spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney.<\/p>\n
Deputy Gibney said:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen edit functions were added to Grok, with the express purpose of nudifying images, Elon Musk thought it was a big joke and said any criticism of the feature was an attack on free speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the edit tool worked as intended \u2013 and hundreds of thousands of sexualised images of women and children were created and shared online \u2013 international criticism grew.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, X ignored the criticism while Musk ridiculed it. Last week, X announced these edit features were being limited to those who subscribe to Grok while today we are told the feature will be geo-blocked in areas were the creation of these images is illegal.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelated assurances from X that it will geoblock its chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people are too little too late \u2013 especially given the ease with which geoblocking can be circumnavigated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis may come as news to X but it should also be noted that the creation of child sexual abuse material is illegal everywhere while no major company should be developing software which will inevitably predominantly be used to target and harass women.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs X scrambles and changes position, the response of our own government to this scandal has been weak and chaotic. The Communications Minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan doesn\u2019t seem to understand that, by facilitating the creation of these vile images, X is in breach of our existing laws while it has been left to a junior minister for AI, Niamh Smyth, to try to cajole the government into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn contrast, the government in the UK had threatened to block X while Indonesia and Malaysia have already blocked X for facilitating the creation and dissemination of these disgusting images. Previously, Brazil blocked X for facilitating the spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is time the government stopped treated X and XAI with kid gloves and acted with urgency to protect the people its technology is designed to harm \u2013 mainly, women and children. If the government can\u2019t even do this, when the breaches of the law are so clear and the harm so serious, what confidence can we have in its ability to regulate the tech sector generally and deal with the wider and more complex area of online abuse generally?<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamentally, we have to ask why this technology exists in the first place and if we are going to tolerate it? Its primary purpose is the creation of non-consensual sexualised images of either women or children. Are we, as a society going to sit back and normalise that abuse?\u201d<\/p>\n
January 15th, 2025<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belated assurances from X that it will geoblock its chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people are too little too late, according to Social Democrats media spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney. Deputy Gibney said: \u201cWhen edit functions were added to Grok, with the express purpose of nudifying images, Elon Musk thought it was a big joke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[799,592,7,497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grok","category-online-safety","category-press-release","category-sinead-gibney"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n