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<\/p>\nBut while it scores no points for nuance, there is something Grok Imagine is very good at: convincingly depicting real and recognisable women.<\/p>\n
If, for example, you ask for Taylor Swift (which evidently many have), the system will do a convincing job because there are many images of the celebrity in its training data. For the same reason, Grok Imagine is good at evoking just about any woman well-known enough to have lots of images online, and notably poor at making images of men do anything sexy.<\/p>\n
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Multiple outlets have reported that Grok Imagine will quickly generate nude videos of celebrities including Taylor Swift.Credit: AP<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear what guardrails Spicy Mode has since xAI has not published them in detail. Some users have complained that they can\u2019t get spicy results from photos they\u2019ve uploaded to Grok, or that videos appear with blurring or censor bars. Yet others have shown videos of recognisable people fully nude. The Verge reported that, during its testing, the tool returned topless and nude videos of celebrities without the user even needing to specify that they should take their clothes off.<\/p>\n
Until recently, Musk\u2019s nude hyperreality is something that might have provoked a real outcry. But we\u2019ve become so used to this behaviour from Musk and X (a platform many people who might have been bothered by this have already left), and so used to concerning AI applications, that it barely registers. I imagine some nations\u2019 regulators may be looking at whether it breaks any rules, but that historically hasn\u2019t bothered billionaires, and in America most companies seem to be falling in line with the conservative government\u2019s priorities. For example, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any real danger that Visa or Mastercard would consider refusing to process xAI subscriptions.<\/p>\n
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Some users have uploaded Spicy Mode AI-generated videos to X for public viewing.Credit: <\/p>\n
To be clear, the problem I\u2019m highlighting isn\u2019t that there\u2019s porn on the internet. That\u2019s been the case for a long time and plenty of avenues are normal, healthy and ethical. The fact that Musk is selling nudes also isn\u2019t the issue, although I\u2019m sure the millions of creators on OnlyFans who\u2019ve had their videos studied to create Grok Imagine would rather the cash go to them rather than a multibillionaire.<\/p>\n
The risk here is an uncritical adoption of a technology that could soon begin to erode the importance of consent. A major platform is selling the ability to choose any prominent woman, or create one to your own specifications, and have them take their clothes off to become one-dimensional sexual objects in a single click. The platform might not be able to consistently fulfil that promise yet as it\u2019s very janky, but occasional results are already spot-on, and it will only improve.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that the consumption of this content could impact a person\u2019s concept of healthy boundaries and their respect for the personhood of others. It could distort their attitudes about how women do or should behave, which can be dangerous when applied to real life, especially in a situation where we can\u2019t depend on government sex education to remain robust around the world. These kinds of consequences are why every other major AI company (for now) has guardrails on the kind of content it will generate.<\/p>\n
While Musk obviously isn\u2019t coding these features or training the AI himself, he\u2019s clearly behind the direction of the product, and the fact that he doesn\u2019t understand any of this or apply it to \u201cSpicy Mode\u201d and its generative output should surprise nobody.<\/p>\n
This is the same man who, when Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for US president, somehow took it as an act of playing hard to get directed at him personally, and publicly \u201coffered\u201d to impregnate the singer.<\/a> More recently, he made a bizarre claim<\/a> that women are trained by the media to hate white people, and followed it up by boosting an incredibly hateful reply<\/a> saying women automatically reinforce the dominant culture because they\u2019re \u201cbuilt to be traded\u201d among tribes.<\/p>\n The idea that the head of a major company could say things like this in public with little scrutiny and no repercussions should be shocking, let alone if he\u2019s one of the most prominent businesspeople on the planet. Businesses have been boycotted for less. But that\u2019s the reality we\u2019re in now.<\/p>\n And so we should likely expect that the world\u2019s richest man\u2019s $45-a-month non-consensual deepfake porn generator will continue to operate. Even while the conservative governments of the world continue to dismantle the majority of sex-related rights and education we\u2019ve built over the past century.<\/p>\n Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n