The United Kingdom will make the creation of “non-consensual intimate images” illegal this week, responding directly to sexualized and violent imagery being generated by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok. U.K. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall called the images, which depict real women and girls, “weapons of abuse.” On Monday, the government’s media regulator also launched an investigation into social media platform X, where many of these images are being created and shared.
Musk has made a colossal error by allowing the chatbot to create and circulate these explicit images. Unlike so many areas of artificial intelligence development and information sharing, the lines here are not blurry. Using photos of real women to generate derogatory imagery is harassment. Using photos of real girls to create sexualized imagery is child exploitation.
Musk previously responded to these criticisms by limiting image editing to paid Grok subscribers. This is not good enough. Other AI generators, like ChatGPT, have made efforts to stop users from generating non-consensual images and prohibited any content creation that could jeopardize the legal protections of minors.
Musk’s poor business choice threatens the whole industry. Governments across the West, including the United States, are looking for reasons to whip out the red tape and crack down on AI developers. Musk has just given them a compelling reason to say that politicians need to intervene in what can and cannot be produced by AI generators.
Don’t expect clever regulation from government. The U.K. will make these images a “priority offence” under the 2023 Online Safety Act. That censorious piece of legislation gives the government disproportionate power to target content it deems misleading or dangerous, in the name of protecting children but really limiting access for adults. Musk often rails against free speech crackdowns in the U.K., and he often has a point. It seems unlikely that a government that is jailing people for their tweets and considering a significant rollback in jury trials is also the most equipped to develop the thoughtful and entrepreneurial framework that’s needed for AI technology to advance.
Yet Musk has ceded the high ground to the censors by refusing to take necessary action to protect the basic dignities women and children deserve. Every AI company is going to pay the price for his inaction.
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