While Grok has introduced belated safeguards to prevent sexualised AI imagery, other tools have far fewer limits

“Since discovering Grok AI, regular porn doesn’t do it for me anymore, it just sounds absurd now,” one enthusiast for the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot wrote on Reddit. Another agreed: “If I want a really specific person, yes.”

If those who have been horrified by the distribution of sexualised imagery on Grok hoped that last week’s belated safeguards could put the genie back in the bottle, there are many such posts on Reddit and elsewhere that tell a different story.

And while Grok has undoubtedly transformed public understanding of the power of artificial intelligence, it has also pointed to a much wider problem: the growing availability of tools, and means of distribution, that present worldwide regulators with what many view as an impossible task. Even as the UK announces that creating nonconsensual sexual and intimate images will soon be a criminal offence, experts say that the use of AI to harm women has only just begun.

  • P1nkman@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Can’t we all just make a Shitter account and ask Groknto create unflattering images of Musk? He’d hate that.

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      Musk’s actual body is unflattering, he’s a fat sloppy bitch. Shirt off pic is around from some boat, his tailors hide his fat. Probably wears a man girdle too.

  • LouNeko@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Imagine not only being that horny, but also having such a peanut sized brain that you voluntarily type in all you fucked up sexual fantasies into a website that makes all it’s money from data analytics and ads.

    At least with regular porn sites, you can use a VPN or Tor to at least keep some veil of privacy, but with Grok people have to make a Twitter account, verify their identity and enter their credit card information.

    People that use off-the-shelf AI like for sexual stuff are literally retarded.

    It’s not even cheap either. In the long run, grabbing a used GPU from eBay and running your own model on it will not only keep your kinky shit private, but also save you money.

    On the other hand, I hope these fucks that generate un-consenting real-person porn will get exposed in the next big “oopsie-woopsie” data leak, because they were dumb enough to leave all their private info behind.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      …I think this is less about just horniness in general and more to do with revenge porn centered around unreasonable anger and inability to process rejection as the main problem here.

    • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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      So it’s interesting you say that - because I tried doing some faceswap stuff with Trump and Baron Harkkonen and it was extremely time consuming, took forever to install, and the results were disappointing.

      So there’s another aspect too: these people have absolutely nothing else going on!

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        I would say that would be an insult to House Harkonnen, but then I considered that Drumph might actually be the ancestor of one of those evil fucks.

        • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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          Not the whole house, no. The house as a whole was pretty legit. But Baron Harkonnen, (which is interesting we only get his title) was a monster. And a pedophile. And grossly unhealthy. An ultimate backstabber. Traded intellect for cleverness. Power and wealth hungry, fuck all the rest types.

          They are almost indistinguishable, other than Trump appears to be able to support his own weight.

  • FerretyFever0@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Sorry, it “sounds absurd” to view pornography of consenting adults instead of violating the privacy of countless women (and children) that were minding their fucking business?

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        I don’t believe this is true at all. A vast number of sex crimes are things like spousal rape which, in the minds of many offenders, isn’t a crime at all. They see sex with their partner as their right, and I think it’s unrealistic to impute into them the sophistication of thought required to use it as a means of exerting power when they don’t even understand it as a violation, when it is the violatry aspect of rape which gives it power.

        My understanding is that this meme comes from studies done on prison populations as an explanation for the prevalence of male-on-male rape perpetrated by straight-identifying men.

          • FishFace@piefed.social
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            Why should I believe you? We all understand that sex is gratifying and so people are motivated to have it. Why does rape require the motive of power over the victim when there is already this obvious motive? Do you have any evidence or argument? You’ve not tried to make one, and nor has anyone else.

            If I said that theft was mainly about power over the victim, not motivated by the acquisition of valuable property, would you believe me without argument? You would not, obviously.

            How can someone in a society which generally believes that marriage is consent even conceptualise that rape gives them more control than they already have? In their mind they are merely taking what has already been given to them (and for some reason they cannot understand, their partner is unreasonably trying to withold it)

            • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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              Researchgate

              There’s one of many. You could also ask the next psychiatrist or psychologist of your choice what’s the current status quo in science.

              OR you could just ignore that and stick to your just-horny-theory.

              Also, did you consider a thing can be both? One primarily wants to excert control and also gets off of it “on the side”.

              I could give you a beating because I love violence, but it would also be a nice workout. But rarely anyone would do that AS a workout.

              • FishFace@piefed.social
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                Erm… thank you for the article, I found it very informative. But did you read it? From the conclusion:

                at present, the evidence does not justify the denial of sexual motivation on behalf of the rapist.

                The article is from 1988, so not the latest, and didn’t conduct its own research so much as pointed out flaws in other research, but it did so quite effectively. Remember the claim I replied to:

                Sex crimes are almost always about power and not about sexual gratification.

                If that were the case, then why did Groth (cited as 1979a) find multiple quotes which he attributed to power but which explicitly expressed a sexual motivation, for instance:

                I just wanted to have sex with her and that was that

                (There’s a more graphic quote as well which is more convincing but which I won’t reproduce here). In examining the use of violence in rape, Geis (1977) reported that 78% of the rapists in the study “wanted the victim to cooperate”, and similarly the Queen’s Bench Foundation (1978) reported that 71.2% in their study “stated that they were hoping the victim would comply”, 61.7% said “they had not intended to use violence.”

                The author cites a couple of instances of an argument that rape is about power and/or violence because it uses the vulnerability of the victim, which explains why the elderly are raped in spite of their assumed lack of physical sexual attractiveness, which would appear to contradict a sexual motivation. Yet the author points out that the age distribution of rape victims is inversely proportional to vulnerability, with young women being far more likely to be victims than are the elderly or children.

                The most concrete counter-argument is that about recidivism rates amongst rapists who are castrated. If rape is simply a violent crime performed in a sexual way, then we would expect that castrating a rapist, while it might prevent future sexual violence, would not prevent the one-time rapist from enacting their violent tendencies in other ways. But the paper cites a Danish study which found that violent recidivism rates among rapists, once sexual crimes were removed, were 8.8% among those castrated, and 21% among those who weren’t. It was a small study and was not recent when the paper you linked was published, but it is still quite powerful because it doesn’t rely on reports by rapists nor on indirect evidence like demographic data.

                Also, did you consider a thing can be both? One primarily wants to excert control and also gets off of it “on the side”.

                Certainly - though this conversation has been crucial in understanding the depth of this aspect. But remember, I argued back against the claim that “sex crimes are almost always about power and not about sexual gratification.”

                I would say in light of the article you linked I am more certain now that that statement was wrong.

                • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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                  No,i did not read it, I just threw in the very first thing to find. Obviously, that was not very helpful in my argument.

                  I don’t know why this distinction is so important to you. I hope it’s just scientific obsession with data and facts.

                  Anyhow, I’d argue that the majority of rapists are from the spectrum of personality disorders in the range of NPD and the classical ASPDs. All those need to be in control. By definition. So even if one say “I just wanted to fuck her”, doesn’t really mean it’s just for sexual gratification. If you had ever worked with victims you’d know that sex is the byproduct of control for those.

                  And anyone who JUST needs instant sexual gratification right now, and hence rapes ONLY for the sole reason because the woman doesn’t want to (and would have the exact same.“fun” with clear consent) is clearly antisocial anyway (and/or of some archaicly weird (religious) belief, like women were not people but property). Which then circles back to the aforementioned.

        • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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          It requires 0 sophistication of though to revel in simple brutish enjoyment of tormenting the weak

          You are simply mistaken

          • FishFace@piefed.social
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            Marital rape is common. Psychopathic enjoyment of the suffering of others is uncommon. Enjoyment of sex is nearly universal.

            If I said that theft was mainly about power over the victim, not motivated by the acquisition of valuable property, would you believe me without argument? You would not, obviously: it should take serious evidence to reject the obvious conclusion that rape is usually carried out for sexual gratification.

              • FishFace@piefed.social
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                I was pretty explicit about the intuitive background of my position, and request for anything except a just-so story. Your article already accommodates another explanation than power, so we have already moved to a better understanding than you or the OP expressed. And I certainly acknowledge that it challenges my intuition; clearly power and anger are important motivations that I wasn’t really considering. However, I don’t think the article or what I’ve now been reading really support that “almost all rapoe is about power and not sexual gratification.”

                This thesis provides a broader survey and importantly when it talks about rape and power, it talks about power rape used to “conquer and sexually dominate” the victim. That to me says there is a key element of sexual gratification at play, because sexual domination is itself about sexual gratification.

                The other aspect the author surveys that hasn’t come up yet is hostility towards women as a key predictive factor. We know from the whole incel phenomenon that a key factor in men becoming hostile towards women is in difficulty finding a sexual partner, so this is a whole side to the story which, simmering below it, has sexual gratification as an important influence.

                And I still don’t understand how rape through the use of date rape drugs can truly be an expression of anger, or a means of exerting power: these rapes are often intended to remain secret from the victim, so cannot be used in that way. I worry that there’s a tendency when throwing out these sweeping generalisations to ignore high numbers of rape enabled by drink and drugs

                So, you’ve certainly helped evolve my view on this, but I don’t agree with the original statement still.

                • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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                  It baffles me how you fail to connect rendering a victim unconscious to be manipulated as the perpetrator sees fit with an expression of power

                  You additionally fail to connect hostility toward women to anger rapes and continue to insist it is actually sexual gratification at the root of the issue

                  Best of luck

  • arin@lemmy.world
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    Photoshop has existed since the 90’s, and so have scissors and glue. It’s not AI harming women, it’s the shitty retarded conservatives that don’t know how to use photoshop or have any creativity for scissors and glue, using new technology to be the same retarded clown they were when they failed primary school.

    • TheRealKuni@piefed.social
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      Nonsense. AI makes the process trivial and, with extreme ease, more realistic than the photoshop/scissors and glue of yore.

      Could you imagine finding out kids at your school were passing around extremely realistic nude pictures of you? Or having any argument you make be shut down by something producing a lurid picture of you? Even if it’s fake, that’s gotta do a number on people.

      This is different.

      • hector@lemmy.today
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        It is different, but why are we only worried about woman being victimized? Men are not fair game to abuse either, and are not responsible for the accumulated sins of men any more than a citizen is not responsible for their government.

        • TheRealKuni@piefed.social
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          I didn’t say anything about women or men. I never said men are to blame for the accumulated sins of men. I never said men were fair game to abuse. I’m not sure where you’re getting this nonsense.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        Why are people concerned about having a fake (but realistic) nude photo of themselves being shared around?

        Not because people are looking at their actual naked body, obviously, because they aren’t. Rather, it’s because of what the people sharing those images are thinking and feeling while doing so; it’s because those people are sharing fake nudes as a way to sexually demean their victim. That aspect is wholly identical regardless of how exactly they are doing it. Sharing fake nudes should be treated the same regardless of the method: as sexual bullying. Maybe we didn’t recognise how serious it was when it was rare and required effort, but we also shouldn’t over-correct now.

        • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
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          Also, AI continues to get more indistinguishable from actual images. If someone shares revenge porn but acts like it’s AI, the victim should not have to prove one way or the other. Currently, I think real or AI should be treated the same, but it’s possible I’m overlooking some unintended consequences of that.

    • Kühlschrank@lemmy.world
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      I hear that argument a lot but the old method required access to the software and some actual skill with it. With Grok any smooth brain that can write at a fifth grade level has the ability to publicly victimize the women and/or girls in their life.

  • hector@lemmy.today
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    To hurt people more like it. As if men will not be victimized. But parts of society celebrate men getting hurt, blaming all men for the ones that hurt others.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    I’m highly ambivalent about the use of AI for porn. On one hand it’s unequivocally bad when used to make porn or images of unwilling and unknowing people, doubly so when shared publicly and/or used maliciously.

    OTOH it allows creation of whatever fetish or kink someone might have that might be difficult to deal with outside of fantsy and harms nobody so long as it remains contained.

    I can’t get into the psychology of it, I don’t know if casual use of such imagery bleeds over into real life problems. Obsessive use would obviously be a problem, but that would be a problem with or without AI.

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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      Its not complicated, people want to have their cake and eat it too.

      There’s no way to practice abusive things in isolation that will not affect you around other people. Its a stupid thing to want to figure out in the first place, in my opinion.