Tag: Grok

Apple and Google Still Generating Profits from Grok’s Sexualized Image Generation

It’s my rule. I’ll break it if I want.

Rules are made to be broken is the cliché. That’s a theme that’s running louder and wilder through much of life these days. Build complicated and successful things. Create rules to protect what you’ve built. Mass enough power and then bend or ignore the rules when they become inconvenient.

Image 4-15-26 at 07.50.

That theme surfaces frequently enough that it’s almost a meme. In politics it happens every day, enough to make a mocking myth of things like the rule of law and the constitution. We see it in religion. We see it in business, too frequently in the business of tech. When you’re big enough that you have to, and can create rules to protect what you’ve built against others, and yourself, you substitute the convenience of adhering to the rules for the inconvenience of principle.

Back in January, (damn that seems so long ago), Elon Musk’s Grok released an AI image editing feature that allowed users to create nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes. It was ugly and disgusting.

As with all new things tech, it caught on like wildfire, and then X took fire from many quarters including some governments. (Not ours — caterwauling congress critters no longer count.) Apple and Google also took hits for continuing to allow the app on their respective App stores in violation of existing rules. There were calls for both Apple and Google to follow those rules and take the app down. Something both companies have done for other rule violating apps with and without public punity.

That didn’t happen.

Yesterday, a report from NBC revealed that Apple, in a letter to U.S. Senators, claimed that it worked behind the scenes of the public uproar to demand that the developers “create a plan to improve content moderation.” According to The Verge, 

Throughout this covert back-and-forth, Grok and X appear to have remained live on the App Store, a drawn-out process that may help explain the confusing, haphazard rollout of moderation changes announced in real time. This included limiting Grok on X to paying subscribers and attempting to stop Grok from undressing women. Our investigations revealed that neither were particularly effective beyond making the tool a bit harder to access. Later interventions, like X letting users block Grok from editing their photos, are also easily circumvented.

Despite Apple’s approval and xAI’s claims it has tightened safeguards, Grok still appears to be able to generate sexualized deepfakes with relative ease.

So, essentially nothing of any real effect happened. Scratch that. Something did. X and Grok put the feature behind a paying subscription. One that Apple also reaped profits from and still does. As does Google.

The one rule this era has taught us is that if you’re big and rich enough, and can weather the storm of public scorn, you can essentially ignore the rules. Even those you’ve written yourself. With impunity.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

 

“Then No Line Exists”

Musk’s Grok has erased them all

I recently linked to Eizabeth Lopatto’s excellent and scathing article pointing fingers at Apple and Google for continuing to allow Elon Musk’s Grok AI to undress without consent adults and children. Calling Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai cowards in the headline on this issue is, in my opinion, table stakes and will be until they take public action and actually apologize for violating their own rules and the privacy of the users that pump money into their bank accounts.

1001 PandorasBox.

Following that up I’m linking to another excellent article on the topic from Charlie Warzel and Matteo Wong, published in the Atlantic. The headline is strong, saying Elon Musk Cannot Get Away With This. The article is stronger still. Yet, the sad reality is that he already has, and even if Cook and Pichai suddenly change direction, the damage has already been done. Like the political figures they have bent knees to, they won’t be able to find a mirror to look in that won’t reflect their cowardice back at them.

Hiding under their respective rocks, both Cook and Pichai have let Musk turn this from a ruinous troubling feature into a paid premium feature, which is not only ridiculous but makes a mockery of both Apple and Google. I’ve already said that any X users who still hang onto that platform are just as culpable.

But then that’s the world we live in. We ignore the horrible nature of what’s unfolding in front of our faces. So many demons have flown out of this era’s Pandora’s Box we find ourselves it is impossible to count them, much less have any hope of banishing them. But then, that’s what the demons are counting on. As the article says:

This crisis is an outgrowth of a breakneck information ecosystem in which few stories have staying power. No one person or group has to flood the zone with shit, because the zone is overflowing constantly. People with power have learned to exploit this—to weather scandals by hunkering down and letting them pass, or by refusing to apologize and turning any problem into a culture-war issue.

As Warzel and Wong also say, “the silence says everything.”

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.