ben_w
21 hours ago
At the same time others in Congress are threatening to sanction the UK for enforcing the same rules.
"We write to ask that you enforce your app stores' terms of service against X" [pdf]
47 pointsposted a day ago
by robin_reala18 Comments
jmclnx
20 hours ago
If Twitter/Grok is creating these images, then all he is asking is Google and Apple do to Twitter what they do to smaller companies without any hesitation.
Seems fair to me.
0xy
18 hours ago
Gemini and ChatGPT both generate the same types of images, so this performative enforcement is inherently political.
acdha
18 hours ago
Do they? All of the reporting I’ve read says that they’re a lot better at preventing this, so the popular choices before Grok were things like Civitai, not Google or OpenAI, because X explicitly embraced “spicy” mode as a growth strategy:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-m...
ls612
17 hours ago
“Better at preventing” \neq “can’t”. The hoopla you are seeing here is textbook selective enforcement. There’s also the kafkatrap of showing that a model can do this makes you technically criminally liable for possession of CSAM, which I’m sure will be enforced against the journalists who demonstrated it as rigorously as they want it to be enforced against Twitter.
ben_w
9 hours ago
> “Better at preventing” \neq “can’t”. The hoopla you are seeing here is textbook selective enforcement.
When the prevention is sufficient that the politicians and law enforcement don't realise a crime has occurred, it's no more selective than policing being limited to where the police and CCTV cameras actually are.
Given both (1) the scale of the web means it can only be searched by the same kind of AI that would also be used by a more respectable GenAI supplier to prevent unlawful output in the first place; and also given that (2) Gemini and ChatGPT image generation are not as heavily tied to a social network as Grok is to Twitter, it may simply be that nobody has any evidence of wrongdoing by other specifically identifiable GenAI image providers, at most it will be "we know this image was GenAI, but don't know if this was an online service or local, nor if money changed hands for this".
X makes it easy to know that X is to blame. Sora probably could have had this drama if they didn't filter out stuff like this, but they do filter well enough.
tzs
12 hours ago
> “Better at preventing” \neq “can’t”.
That's not really relevant. Generally with things that have both good and bad uses you can't reasonably prevent all the bad uses. You can just put in safeguards to try to reduce them.
ls612
11 hours ago
This is true for most things but not for CSAM which is a strict liability crime in most places.
acdha
16 hours ago
> The hoopla you are seeing here is textbook selective enforcement
This is true in the same way that American gun nuts say shootings happen in other countries, hoping you won’t check absolute numbers. The fact that the large groups which specialize in creating this content favor Grok over the other major players strongly suggests the complaint is valid.
https://www.404media.co/grok-ai-sexual-abuse-imagery-twitter...
TitaRusell
18 hours ago
All enforcement is political. Laws are made by a parliament after all.
And performative? Ofcourse pedophiles are not very well liked after all.
gambiting
21 hours ago
Given that the US government is literally threatening to sanction UK and its politicians for any attempt to block X while this is happening, I very much doubt that Google/Apple will want to take any action lest they attract ire of their own government. Who would have thought that government led by a convicted criminal would rather sanction its closest ally than force X to take action against this.
ben_w
21 hours ago
A convicted criminal who is also in the middle of a simultaneous scandal involving his relationship with Epstein and his administration's failure to release all the Epstein files as ordered.
While the owner of X also keeps spreading stories suggesting the UK isn't doing enough to stop exactly the sort of thing that X is now taking money for, and who has previously said that aforementioned convicted criminal is in the Epstein files in a particularly bad way.
sndksksk
20 hours ago
I can say what I want : good
I can't say what I want : bad
understand?
collingreen
17 hours ago
You forgot the third pillar:
You can say what I don't want: bad
ben_w
20 hours ago
Musk takes money to create criminal material, and spends that money to politically support someone personally accused of the same category of criminal conductand who has also definitely interfered with the investigation of criminal conduct regarding the same, where both material and conduct is in a category Musk himself states is worthy of a civil war for not preventing.
He's a hypocrite.
Or to phrase it the way you did:
CSAM when Musk or his allies do it: Musk claims freedom of speech.
CSAM when opponents of Musk have not pulled every lever to wipe it out: Musk calls for civil war and regime change.
drcongo
20 hours ago
Can the UK really still be described as the US's closest ally? Feels a lot more like we're America's gimp these days.
ben_w
19 hours ago
Closest, but not close. UK's "independent" nuclear deterrant is British made warheads in British made submarines, but the missiles fired from those subs and to which those warheads are attached, are American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(missile)
Still, plenty of times the UK has gone to bite, only to metaphorically boinked on the nose by a rolled up newspaper. Notably the Suez crisis.
polotics
19 hours ago
Orwell's "Airstrip One" moniker from 1984 comes to mind. Most apt in the context of the recent north-Atlantic tanker interdiction exercise. Them NATO bases are quite useful!