Farage and Musk defending Grok on free speech won't wash with the public |
Not for the first time, British politicians are playing catch-up with Elon Musk. He may be the world’s richest man, but he still sees himself as an adolescent disruptor.
X users found last month that they could ask AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images – for example by putting a fully dressed woman in a bikini – and post them online. The episode has highlighted how underprepared the UK is to deal with the regulatory and ethical questions posed by AI and social media, and thrown up questions about whether the Online Safety Act, years in the planning and implementation, already needs updating.
Grok, in contrast to other prominent chatbots, does not place substantial restrictions on users or prohibit them from producing sexualised content involving real individuals, even though other generative AI technologies, such as those from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, are actively working to minimise the generation of such intrusive content. The Internet Watch Foundation charity said it found “sexualised and topless imagery of girls” on a dark web forum in which users claimed they used Grok to create the imagery.
But because Musk has positioned Grok as a more entertaining and informal chatbot, emphasising X’s commitment to freedom of expression, he is seeking to make the argument that anyone opposing the nudification of women and children is somehow a danger to liberty. He is wilfully mixing up freedom of expression and nefarious – and possibly criminal – activity online.
Musk’s stance poses another headache for ministers, already at odds with Donald Trump’s administration over its colonial designs on Greenland. Despite resigning from his position within the US administration last year following a disagreement, Musk continues to be a prominent figure within the Maga movement. In Maga-world, it is axiomatic that European attempts to regulate social media companies are an attack on US free speech. True to form, the world’s richest man accused the British Government on Saturday of being “fascist” and of looking for “any excuse for........