UK threatens to ban X over Grok AI sexualised images - But Elon Musk calls censorship | Stuff.co.nz

[0:00]The UK is threatening to ban X after its AI tool Grock was used to make sexualized images of women without their consent and even children. In response, X-owner Elon Musk has accused the British government of wanting to suppress free speech. He also posted an AI image of Kima in a bikini. So, a lot going on. Tech expert Paul Spain joined me earlier to talk us through it. Well, I guess, you know, if we look back, we've had a range of tools available online that will do untoward things with images for probably five or six years. Um, but what we've got now is, is a scenario where X, or Twitter, as a lot of us still call it, has become incredibly popular. Um, you know, hit number one app in, in New Zealand, uh, recently. It's been doing that in countries around the world. So, suddenly you've got this tool, uh, that can put people in bikinis and other things that are that are more sort of sexually oriented. Uh, and that's attracted, you know, a lot of attention. Now, Elon Musk says they've turned off that image generation capability. But I think there's, uh, there's there's not a lot of, uh, uh, love for for Musk and for, uh, for the X platform these days. So it, it's creating a lot of a lot of drama, um, you know, particularly because of this, this misuse of, uh, of the platform. X has made changes to Grock's image service. What were they and how have they been received? Grock was never supposed to be, uh, you know, able to, you know, generate, you know, completely, you know, uh, naked versions of of, you know, photos that you you upload. But there there's obviously been some some variations on that in terms of what was created. The new, uh, switch that they've apparently flicked, uh, means that generating any images, uh, is now blocked, you know, except for those that have a a paid Grock subscription, which would be, you know, a very small percentage of their, uh, users as far as I can as far as I can tell. And of course, Elon Musk hasn't taken too kindly to the criticism, saying the UK is looking for any excuse for censorship. Does he have a point? Look, yeah, but potentially, I mean, we've, you know, we've seen, um, you know, the blocking of, of varying apps from time to time. But it's it's been, you know, reasonably common. Yeah, this is something we used to with, say, China would would block social media apps. Uh, obviously, there's there's Australia and and, you know, some other, uh, areas where we've seen social media apps blocked for, for youngsters. Um, but interestingly, even there in Australia, um, the Twitter competitors, um, generally not blocked. So it was just sort of X and Twitter, um, blocked for the youngsters, but if you were using one of the competing platforms as a youngster, uh, no problem. So there there is, uh, may maybe some political, um, you know, bias here. Gorilla takes Paul Spain. Thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure.