<\/p>\n Stuff I Loved In 2025<\/p>\n TV, film, podcasts, books, albums, gigs.<\/p>\n A few cool things to start the year, or at the very least to wrap up 2025. Firstly, I got this really lovely email from Webworm reader Hilary:<\/p>\n “Been reading Webworm for a few years now. Just a quick note that I thought you’d appreciate \u2013 last month my partner Joseph asked me to marry him while I was wearing my Webworm t-shirt! <\/p>\n I’ve decided the ‘greater horrors’ part applies to the rest of the world, not our relationship (which is wonderful). This was at Nugget Point in the Catlins, not too far from where we live in Dunedin, and which was where we went on our first trip together.”<\/p>\n She included a photo of not only the excellent engagement, but the excellent tee, which you too can own<\/a> when you become romantically entangled!<\/p>\n Secondly, The New York Times named Flightless Bird as one of “Nine Podcasts That Made Us Stop And Really Listen in 2025.” <\/p>\n They highlighted an episode called “Spaceman Barry” \u2013 which as you’ll know is actually a Webworm podcast episode<\/a> (on a whim, I’d decided to rebroadcast it on Flightless Bird a few months after). This is probably a good time to mention that if you’re a full paying Webworm member, and you want to join the Flightless Bird Patreon, let me know via email, and I can sort you out. I look after paying Webworm members. Don’t pay twice. Unless you have the excess money, then you can I guess. <\/p>\n It’s time to make like that Webworm engagement shirt and tune in to some Greater Horrors \u2013 those horrors being a man worth over $670 billion dollars and his demented, mindless AI sidekick Grok.<\/p>\n Both are generating some pretty disgusting things on the internet, and it’s become very clear the media still has no idea how to report on it. Which is really worrying.<\/p>\n Here’s Dylan Reeve, who I’m very lucky to have on the Webworm team.<\/p>\n David.<\/p>\n Of Course Grok Is A Massive Pervert<\/p>\n by Dylan Reeve<\/p>\n Just a few days into the New Year and the AI hellscape has developed in yet another terrible way as Elon Musk\u2019s AI bot, Grok, has started spitting out sexualised images of unconsenting people, including children.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you only took in the headlines, you\u2019d assume the company had reacted with an appropriate level of horror, and taken steps to curb the abuse of its product.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reuters reported that the bot had seen the error of its ways, and you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this was a corporate statement from Musk\u2019s xAI:<\/p>\n “There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing,” Grok said in a post on X. “xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely.”<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t. This was just Grok’s response to a user asking \u201cis this true\u201d in response to another X user summarising the abuse that was taking place.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was bordering on journalistic malpractice for Reuters to report this as if it were some sort of informed comment from a real human, or even corporate PR department.<\/p>\n It was glorified auto-complete responding to a prompt.\u00a0<\/p>\n The same thing happened elsewhere as some media outlets<\/a> reported that the anthropomorphised probability engine \u201capologised\u201d for generating these images, again quoting a post from the bot where it appeared to issue an apology and even seemed to admit to potentially breaking US law.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that post too was just the result of a user\u2019s prompt.\u00a0<\/p>\n To illustrate how completely pointless and disconnected this so-called apology was, another user yes-and\u2019ed the prompt, asking for quite a different tone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Arguably what separates Grok from some other popular LLM chat bots is the willingness of Elon\u2019s creation to avoid the AI equivalent of \u201cwokeness\u201d \u2014 it is proudly not politically correct.<\/p>\n The version of the bot that\u2019s deployed as a user on X, especially, is willing to cross lines and engage with users in a way that risks crossing the sorts of trust and safety boundaries that other AI companies are trying hard to build.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recent improvements in Grok\u2019s image-generation capabilities have encouraged users to turn the bot into their own personal porn generation tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n Any user on X can tag @grok in a reply to some other user\u2019s image post and ask the bot to generate a new version of the image with changes. The changes most users are asking for are the removal of clothing, reposing into sexualised positions and other sorts of degrading treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grok followed through on all those requests. Webworm has chosen not to show them, because Webworm is not disgusting.<\/p>\n Looking at the public \u201creplies\u201d feed of @grok on X, it seems like this type of request now accounts for a substantial proportion of the public engagement with the AI bot. And users are quickly finding ways to push the boundaries of what few limits Musk\u2019s xAI impose on the service, requesting things like \u201csaran wrap bikini\u201d and \u201cdental floss underwear\u201d, as well as requesting that people be shown \u201ccovered in donut glaze\u201d in order to generate a specific sexualised look.\u00a0<\/p>\n While some users are joining the trend with their own photos, the vast majority are doing so without consent by simply replying to any image that\u2019s been shared by anyone else, even photos that were first posted many years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s All Just A Joke<\/p>\n For any normal company, or chief executive, this would be a PR nightmare \u2014 publicly creating non-consensual sexually explicit content from user images is objectively a trust and safety worst-case scenario.\u00a0<\/p>\n So called \u201cdeepfake\u201d porn was one of the first stories to breakthrough to mainstream media coverage with regard to the image generation capabilities of modern AI. It is a specific use case that legitimate AI companies are constantly trying to restrict.\u00a0<\/p>\n But so far xAI as a company is silent, auto-replying \u201cLegacy Media Lies\u201d to press inquiries. However the emperor of X, Elon Musk, has been offering hints at his feelings on the matter.<\/p>\n To him, it\u2019s all a joke.\u00a0<\/p>\n And, what we can see publicly is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. X users can also engage privately with Grok with a dedicated tab in the app, and a recently launched feature adds an \u201cedit image\u201d button to every photo posted on X.<\/p>\n This copyright-flouting feature automatically takes the user into a private session with Grok where they can make all the same sorts of requests that people are making publicly, with the same results.\u00a0<\/p>\n It seems unlikely that US authorities will take any action, and it\u2019s hard to imagine that anyone within Musk\u2019s organisation has the sway necessary to take reasonable action about this issue, but it\u2019s not being totally ignored.\u00a0<\/p>\n French prosecutors have told Politico<\/a> they are looking into the \u201cmanifestly illegal content\u201d being generated by the bot.\u00a0<\/p>\n But overall this is yet another example of the deliberately harmful direction in which Musk has been driving the once loved social media platform, and the disdain he holds for his users and the public at large.\u00a0<\/p>\n X\u2019s algorithm has been tilted to favour white supremacy and the far right<\/a>, while his own posts (which are often forcibly injected into users\u2019 feeds) are rife with hateful conspiracy theories and anti-social incitement.\u00a0<\/p>\n As if it wasn\u2019t clear before, it has been graphically illustrated in recent days: X is not a platform that should be used by businesses, governments, politicians \u2013 or really anyone who isn\u2019t ideologically aligned with the likes of Elon Musk, Andrew Tate and the literal Nazis that are regularly elevated on the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n -Dylan Reeve.<\/p>\n Dylan works widely in the film, television and media industries, and is an InternetNZ board member. He writes for Webworm in his personal capacity, expressing his own opinions.<\/p>\n David here again. <\/p>\n Just quickly, I really hope people \u2013 including the journalists at Reuters \u2013 get better at reporting on AI. As Webworm has addressed before, AI is arguably less conscious than a fruit fly<\/a>, and yet we keep writing about it like it’s intelligent.<\/p>\n We need to stop doing that.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/nahtan.webp.webp\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Hilary](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/webworm-engagement.jpg\")
A Webworm (sort of!) engagement<\/p>\n![\""The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-03-at-4.06.22---PM.png\")
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What is actually taking place?<\/p>\n
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![\"Musk](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/musk.jpeg\")
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“Edit image” – now seen in the bottom right<\/p>\n
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