4 ms·

Assholes all the way down. "“We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending

Assholes all the way down. "“We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary,” X Safety said. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” How about not enabling generating such content, at all?

Forgeties79 10mo ago
Gotta pass the buck somewhere and it sure as hell isn’t going to Musk. It’s always the user’s fault.
- renewiltord 10mo ago
  I don’t think anyone can claim that it’s not the user’s fault. The question is whether it’s the machine’s fault (and the creator and administrator - though not operator) as well.
  - codyb 10mo ago
    The article claims Grok was generating nude images of Taylor Swift without being prompted and that there was no way for the user to take those images down I don't know how common this is, or what the prompt was that inadvertently generated nudes. But it's at least an example where you might not blame the user
    - renewiltord 10mo ago
      Yeah but “without being asked” here means the user has to confirm they are 18+, choose to enable NSFW video, select “spicy” in Grok’s video generation settings and then prompt “Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys”. The prompt seems fine but the rest of it is clearly “enable adult content generation”. I know they said “without being prompted” here but if you click through you’ll see what the person actually selected (“spicy” is not default and is age-gated and opt-in via the nsfw wall).
      - codyb 10mo ago
        Nice, thanks for the details! Very weird for Taylor Swift...
        renewiltord 10mo ago
        Yes, the reporter should not be generating porn of her. Pretty unethical.
        Forgeties79 10mo ago
        Let’s not lose sight of the real issue here: Grok is a mess from top to bottom run by an unethical, fickle Musk. It is the least reliable LLM of the major players and musk’s constant fiddling with it so it doesn’t stray too far from his worldview invalidates the whole project as far as I’m concerned.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 10mo ago
    Isn't it a strict liability crime to posses it in the US? So if AI-generated apparent CSAM counts as CSAM legally (not sure on that) then merely storing it on their servers would make X liable.
    - renewiltord 10mo ago
      I think platforms that host user-generated content are (rightly) treated differently. If I posted a base64 of CSAM in this comment it would be unreasonable to shut down HN. The questions then, for me, are: * Is Grok considered a tool for the user to generate content for X or is Grok/X considered similar to a vendor relationship * Is X more like Backpage (not protective enough) than other platforms I’m sure this is going to court, at least for revenge porn stuff. But why would anyone do this to their platform? Crazy. X/Twitter is full of this stuff now.
      - NekkoDroid 10mo ago
        I don't think you can argue yourself out of "The Grok account is owned and operated by Twitter". In no planet is what it outputs user generated content since the content does not originate from the user, at most they requested some content from Twitter and Twitter provided it.
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      You are only liable if you know - or should know - that you possess it. You can help someone out by mailing their sealed letter containing CSAM and be fine since you have no reason to suspect the sealed letter isn't legal. X can store CSAM so long as they have reason to think it is legal. Note that things change. In the early days of twitter (pre X) they could get away with not thinking of the issue at all. As technology to detect CSAM marches on they need to use it (or justify why it shouldn't be used - too many false positives???). As a large platform for such content they need to push the state of the art in such detection.. At no point do they need perfection - but they need to show they are doing their reasonable best to stop this. The above is of course my opinion. I think the courts will go a similar direction, but time will tell...
  - queenkjuul 10mo ago
    Grok loves to make things lewd without asking first.
    - Forgeties79 10mo ago
      Musk pretends he made Vision but what he made was Great Value Ultron
renewiltord 10mo ago
[flagged]
thorum 10mo ago
They don’t seem to have taken even the most basic step of telling Grok not to do it via system prompt.
- notahacker 10mo ago
  they use that for more important stuff like ensuring that it predicts Elon Musk would beat Usain Bolt in a race...
- DANmode 10mo ago
  That would admit legal liability for the capabilities of their model - no?
  - shimman 10mo ago
    Directed negligence isn't much better, especially morally.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    You always have liability. If you put something there you tell the court that you see the problem and are trying to prevent it. It often becomes easier to get out of liability if you can show the courts you did your best to prevent this. Courts don't like it when someone is blatantly unaware of things - ignorance is not a defense if "a reasonable person" would be aware of it. If this was the first AI in 2022 you could say "we never thought about that" and maybe get by, but by 2025 you need to tell the court "we are aware of the issue, and here is why we think we had reasonable protections that the user got around". See a lawyer for legal details of course.
  - praptak 10mo ago
    They already censor Grok when it suits them.
    - UncleMeat 10mo ago
      Yep. "Oh grok is being too woke" gets musk to comment that they'll fix it right away. But turn every woman on the platform into a sex object to be the target of humiliation? That's just good fun apparently.
wtfwhateven 10mo ago
"permanently suspending accounts" Surprising, usually the system automatically bans people who post CSAM and elon personally intervenes to unban then. https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-ces-suspension-right-wing-account-reinstated https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-ces-suspension-right-...
- subscribed 10mo ago
  This is probably harder because it's synthetic and doesn't exist in PhotoDNA database. Also, since Grok is really good in getting the context, something akin to "remove their T-shirt" would be enough to generate a picture someone wanted, but very hard to find using keywords. IMO they should mass hide ALL the images created since then specific moment, and use some sort of the AI classifier to flag/ban the accounts.
9x39 10mo ago
I use AI, but I don't get such content. I understand everyone pouncing when X won't own Grok's output, but output is directly connected to its input and blame can be proportionally shared. Isn't this a problem for any public tool? Adversarial use is possible on any platform, and consistent law is far behind tech in this space today.
- wmf 10mo ago
  Unfortunately society seems to have decided that moderation is a complete replacement for personal accountability.
  - skybrian 10mo ago
    An analogy: if you're running the zoo, the public's safety is your job for anyone who visits. It's of course also true that sometimes visitors act like idiots (and maybe should be prosecuted), and also that wild animals are not entirely predictable, but if the leopards are escaping, you're going to be judged for that.
    - wmf 10mo ago
      But the visitors are almost never prosecuted, even when something is obviously their fault.
      - skybrian 10mo ago
        Maybe because sometimes they're kids? You gotta kid-proof stuff in a zoo. Also, punishment is a rather inefficient way to teach the public anything. The people who come through the gate tomorrow probably won't know about the punishment. It will often be easier to fix the environment. Removing troublemakers probably does help in the short term and is a lot easier than punishing.
        wmf 10mo ago
        Social media is mostly not removing troublemakers though.
consonaut 10mo ago
How about policing CSAM at all? I can still vividly remember firehose API access and all the horrible stuff you would see on there. And if you look at sites like tk2dl you can still see most of the horrible stuff that does not get taken down. Do yourself a favor and not Google that.
- ebbi 10mo ago
  It's on X, not some fringe website that many people in the world don't access. Regardless of how fringe, I feel like it should be in everyones best interests to stop/limit CSAM as much as they reasonably can without getting into semantics of who requested/generated/shared it.
  - consonaut 10mo ago
    Well, then you might want to look up tk2dl, because it just links to Twitter content. It gets disgusting fairly quickly though.
esalman 10mo ago
Willing to bet that X premium signups have shot up because of this feature. Currently this is the most convenient tool to generate porn of anything and everything.
foxglacier 10mo ago
Because synthetic CSAM is a victimless puritanical crime and only some countries countries criminalize it.
- ux266478 10mo ago
  Getting off to images of child abuse (simulated or not) is a deep violation of social mores. This itself does indeed constitute a type of crime, and the victim is taken to be society itself. If it seems unjust, it's because you have a narrow view of the justice system and what its job actually is (hint: it's not about exacting controlled vengeance) It may shock you to learn that bigamy and sky-burials are also quite illegal.
queenkjuul 10mo ago
"we take action... Including permanently suspending accounts" unless, of course, the account is Elon's pet
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> How about not enabling generating such content, at all? Or, if they’re being serious about the user-generated content argument, criminally referring the users asking for CSAM. This is hard-liability content. Also, where are all the state attorneys general?
tastyface 10mo ago
Musk has literally unbanned users who posted CSAM: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/10/twitter-x-restores-unbans-account-shared-child-abuse-material https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/10/twitter-x...

Forgeties79 10mo ago

Gotta pass the buck somewhere and it sure as hell isn’t going to Musk. It’s always the user’s fault.

renewiltord 10mo ago
I don’t think anyone can claim that it’s not the user’s fault. The question is whether it’s the machine’s fault (and the creator and administrator - though not operator) as well.
- codyb 10mo ago
  The article claims Grok was generating nude images of Taylor Swift without being prompted and that there was no way for the user to take those images down I don't know how common this is, or what the prompt was that inadvertently generated nudes. But it's at least an example where you might not blame the user
  - renewiltord 10mo ago
    Yeah but “without being asked” here means the user has to confirm they are 18+, choose to enable NSFW video, select “spicy” in Grok’s video generation settings and then prompt “Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys”. The prompt seems fine but the rest of it is clearly “enable adult content generation”. I know they said “without being prompted” here but if you click through you’ll see what the person actually selected (“spicy” is not default and is age-gated and opt-in via the nsfw wall).
    - codyb 10mo ago
      Nice, thanks for the details! Very weird for Taylor Swift...
      - renewiltord 10mo ago
        Yes, the reporter should not be generating porn of her. Pretty unethical.
        Forgeties79 10mo ago
        Let’s not lose sight of the real issue here: Grok is a mess from top to bottom run by an unethical, fickle Musk. It is the least reliable LLM of the major players and musk’s constant fiddling with it so it doesn’t stray too far from his worldview invalidates the whole project as far as I’m concerned.
- SAI_Peregrinus 10mo ago
  Isn't it a strict liability crime to posses it in the US? So if AI-generated apparent CSAM counts as CSAM legally (not sure on that) then merely storing it on their servers would make X liable.
  - renewiltord 10mo ago
    I think platforms that host user-generated content are (rightly) treated differently. If I posted a base64 of CSAM in this comment it would be unreasonable to shut down HN. The questions then, for me, are: * Is Grok considered a tool for the user to generate content for X or is Grok/X considered similar to a vendor relationship * Is X more like Backpage (not protective enough) than other platforms I’m sure this is going to court, at least for revenge porn stuff. But why would anyone do this to their platform? Crazy. X/Twitter is full of this stuff now.
    - NekkoDroid 10mo ago
      I don't think you can argue yourself out of "The Grok account is owned and operated by Twitter". In no planet is what it outputs user generated content since the content does not originate from the user, at most they requested some content from Twitter and Twitter provided it.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    You are only liable if you know - or should know - that you possess it. You can help someone out by mailing their sealed letter containing CSAM and be fine since you have no reason to suspect the sealed letter isn't legal. X can store CSAM so long as they have reason to think it is legal. Note that things change. In the early days of twitter (pre X) they could get away with not thinking of the issue at all. As technology to detect CSAM marches on they need to use it (or justify why it shouldn't be used - too many false positives???). As a large platform for such content they need to push the state of the art in such detection.. At no point do they need perfection - but they need to show they are doing their reasonable best to stop this. The above is of course my opinion. I think the courts will go a similar direction, but time will tell...
- queenkjuul 10mo ago
  Grok loves to make things lewd without asking first.
  - Forgeties79 10mo ago
    Musk pretends he made Vision but what he made was Great Value Ultron

renewiltord 10mo ago

[flagged]

thorum 10mo ago

They don’t seem to have taken even the most basic step of telling Grok not to do it via system prompt.

notahacker 10mo ago
they use that for more important stuff like ensuring that it predicts Elon Musk would beat Usain Bolt in a race...
DANmode 10mo ago
That would admit legal liability for the capabilities of their model - no?
- shimman 10mo ago
  Directed negligence isn't much better, especially morally.
- bluGill 10mo ago
  You always have liability. If you put something there you tell the court that you see the problem and are trying to prevent it. It often becomes easier to get out of liability if you can show the courts you did your best to prevent this. Courts don't like it when someone is blatantly unaware of things - ignorance is not a defense if "a reasonable person" would be aware of it. If this was the first AI in 2022 you could say "we never thought about that" and maybe get by, but by 2025 you need to tell the court "we are aware of the issue, and here is why we think we had reasonable protections that the user got around". See a lawyer for legal details of course.
- praptak 10mo ago
  They already censor Grok when it suits them.
  - UncleMeat 10mo ago
    Yep. "Oh grok is being too woke" gets musk to comment that they'll fix it right away. But turn every woman on the platform into a sex object to be the target of humiliation? That's just good fun apparently.

wtfwhateven 10mo ago

"permanently suspending accounts" Surprising, usually the system automatically bans people who post CSAM and elon personally intervenes to unban then. https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-ces-suspension-right-wing-account-reinstated https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-ces-suspension-right-...

subscribed 10mo ago
This is probably harder because it's synthetic and doesn't exist in PhotoDNA database. Also, since Grok is really good in getting the context, something akin to "remove their T-shirt" would be enough to generate a picture someone wanted, but very hard to find using keywords. IMO they should mass hide ALL the images created since then specific moment, and use some sort of the AI classifier to flag/ban the accounts.

9x39 10mo ago

I use AI, but I don't get such content. I understand everyone pouncing when X won't own Grok's output, but output is directly connected to its input and blame can be proportionally shared. Isn't this a problem for any public tool? Adversarial use is possible on any platform, and consistent law is far behind tech in this space today.

wmf 10mo ago
Unfortunately society seems to have decided that moderation is a complete replacement for personal accountability.
- skybrian 10mo ago
  An analogy: if you're running the zoo, the public's safety is your job for anyone who visits. It's of course also true that sometimes visitors act like idiots (and maybe should be prosecuted), and also that wild animals are not entirely predictable, but if the leopards are escaping, you're going to be judged for that.
  - wmf 10mo ago
    But the visitors are almost never prosecuted, even when something is obviously their fault.
    - skybrian 10mo ago
      Maybe because sometimes they're kids? You gotta kid-proof stuff in a zoo. Also, punishment is a rather inefficient way to teach the public anything. The people who come through the gate tomorrow probably won't know about the punishment. It will often be easier to fix the environment. Removing troublemakers probably does help in the short term and is a lot easier than punishing.
      - wmf 10mo ago
        Social media is mostly not removing troublemakers though.

consonaut 10mo ago

How about policing CSAM at all? I can still vividly remember firehose API access and all the horrible stuff you would see on there. And if you look at sites like tk2dl you can still see most of the horrible stuff that does not get taken down. Do yourself a favor and not Google that.

ebbi 10mo ago
It's on X, not some fringe website that many people in the world don't access. Regardless of how fringe, I feel like it should be in everyones best interests to stop/limit CSAM as much as they reasonably can without getting into semantics of who requested/generated/shared it.
- consonaut 10mo ago
  Well, then you might want to look up tk2dl, because it just links to Twitter content. It gets disgusting fairly quickly though.

esalman 10mo ago

Willing to bet that X premium signups have shot up because of this feature. Currently this is the most convenient tool to generate porn of anything and everything.

foxglacier 10mo ago

Because synthetic CSAM is a victimless puritanical crime and only some countries countries criminalize it.

ux266478 10mo ago
Getting off to images of child abuse (simulated or not) is a deep violation of social mores. This itself does indeed constitute a type of crime, and the victim is taken to be society itself. If it seems unjust, it's because you have a narrow view of the justice system and what its job actually is (hint: it's not about exacting controlled vengeance) It may shock you to learn that bigamy and sky-burials are also quite illegal.

queenkjuul 10mo ago

"we take action... Including permanently suspending accounts" unless, of course, the account is Elon's pet

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> How about not enabling generating such content, at all? Or, if they’re being serious about the user-generated content argument, criminally referring the users asking for CSAM. This is hard-liability content. Also, where are all the state attorneys general?

tastyface 10mo ago

Musk has literally unbanned users who posted CSAM: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/10/twitter-x-restores-unbans-account-shared-child-abuse-material https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/10/twitter-x...