Speaker 1: When Elon Musk first launched his AI tool Groc, he
Speaker 1: called it rebellious and anti woke. But over the summer
Speaker 1: what that meant took a disturbing turn. The chatbot, which
Speaker 1: is embedded in must social media platform X, started undressing
Speaker 1: people without their consent.
Speaker 2: So you would post an image saying, hey, having a
Speaker 2: great holidays, and then someone would reply underneath it, hey, GROC,
Speaker 2: can you put this person in a bikini? And it
Speaker 2: would everyone will be able to see it. You wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: Cam Wilson is a tech journalist and associate editor at criche.
Speaker 1: He watched this take hold as more and more people
Speaker 1: pushed Groc to the limit.
Speaker 2: And so people on X using this AI chatbody in
Speaker 2: public were undressing people who were posting their People were
Speaker 2: posting pictures of other people, mostly women, sometimes children as well,
Speaker 2: and this thing, while they didn't actually publicly post naked images,
Speaker 2: it was highly sexual. It was putting people in reviewing clothing,
Speaker 2: It was using saying, putting like donut gaze on people's
Speaker 2: faces to simulate sex acts. So you know, everything up
Speaker 2: to the line very sexualized, all in public allowed on X.
Speaker 1: Anthony Alberinezi has staked his legacy on keeping children safe online,
Speaker 1: so what.
Speaker 3: Is he doing to stop grok.
Speaker 1: I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today
Speaker 1: Cam Wilson and whether it's time for the government to
Speaker 1: get off X. It's Wednesday, January twenty one.
Speaker 3: Cam.
Speaker 1: We've been hearing stories over the past week or so
Speaker 1: about sexualized images of women and children being created and
Speaker 1: distributed on X.
Speaker 3: How widespread is this?
Speaker 4: It was pretty widespread.
Speaker 2: I mean so at its peak we saw people saying
Speaker 2: that Grok was generating I think thousands upon thousands of
Speaker 2: non consensual, generally sexualized images of people.
Speaker 4: Every day.
Speaker 1: Someone proplied to me and asked Rock to put me
Speaker 1: in a bikini.
Speaker 3: I feel like violated seeing it.
Speaker 2: And so what makes us different is that, you know,
Speaker 2: unlike these other AI chatbots, where how you interact with
Speaker 2: these chatbots tends to be fairly private, it is very public.
Speaker 2: And it was just, you know, an endless scroll of
Speaker 2: people whose images had been sexualized to either which really
Speaker 2: you know, sexualize them or in many cases to humiliate
Speaker 2: them as well.
Speaker 5: These look very real, these images, and they also have
Speaker 5: real parts of my real life, like my real son's
Speaker 5: backpack in the background cam.
Speaker 3: It sounds just awful.
Speaker 1: But what are the laws that are being broken and
Speaker 1: is anything being done about it?
Speaker 2: This is something that when it gets to become sexual imagery,
Speaker 2: is in many cases against the war. Australia has federal
Speaker 2: laws against distributing deep fake images, but if it stops
Speaker 2: short of that, if it is just something that is
Speaker 2: sexually suggestive, it may not be against the law.
Speaker 4: And as far as I know in Australia, there's actually.
Speaker 2: No war against the kind of creation of a tool
Speaker 2: that allows you to create sexual images of someone that
Speaker 2: are deep faith. But there's also something else that was
Speaker 2: happening behind the scenes got less attention that's really intertwined
Speaker 2: with it, which is that standalone grock app actually goes
Speaker 2: further on the stand alone app than in x the platform,
Speaker 2: So when users download the app privately, they can actually
Speaker 2: produce sexually explicit material.
Speaker 4: You know, I've seen plenty of examples of producing.
Speaker 2: Topless material, explicit pornography that's produced using this, and according
Speaker 2: to some reports, there were cases of people on forums
Speaker 2: on the Internet sharing what appeared to be images or
Speaker 2: videos of Grock generated material that was sexually explicit of
Speaker 2: people who appeared to be as young as eleven, twelve,
Speaker 2: thirteen years old. That is unambiguously against the ward in
Speaker 2: pretty much every country around the world. In Australia we
Speaker 2: actually have online safety regulations on the Online Safety Act
Speaker 2: that set requirements for providers of major online platforms such
Speaker 2: as x such as grock, to set safeguards to prevent
Speaker 2: the distribution also production of child sexual exploitation material using
Speaker 2: their products. So breaking that can in the first place,
Speaker 2: if it's kind of taken to court, it can end
Speaker 2: up with a fine of up to closet to ten
Speaker 2: million dollars and if you do it repeatedly, you can
Speaker 2: even have your app legally forced to shut down or
Speaker 2: to be removed from the app stores. In Australia, I
Speaker 2: went to the Safety Commissioner and they told me that
Speaker 2: they had received multiple complaints of image based abuse that
Speaker 2: alleged that Grock was used in it. And so as
Speaker 2: a result, the es Sator Commissioner has actually written two.
Speaker 1: X and so how much power does the E Safety
Speaker 1: Commissioner really have to crack down on this and to
Speaker 1: try and stop it from happening.
Speaker 2: So Commissioner is a role that has existed now for
Speaker 2: a bit more than a decade, and it started out
Speaker 2: as this Children's e Safety Commissioner and it was mostly
Speaker 2: focusing on things like children being abused online cybruy abuse.
Speaker 4: Since then, the role has grown a lot in One
Speaker 4: of the.
Speaker 2: Landmark parts of its development is the instruction of the
Speaker 2: Online Safety Act at the start of this decade, they
Speaker 2: gave it a variety of new powers, including the industry
Speaker 2: codes and standards, and then they say, you need to
Speaker 2: come up with basic guidelines that you think I needed.
Speaker 4: To use your products safely.
Speaker 2: You're going to write those, and then you're going to
Speaker 2: propose them to me, the Safety Commissioner. And if I
Speaker 2: think they're acceptable, then I will prove them and they
Speaker 2: will become enforceable. If I don't think they're acceptable, then
Speaker 2: I'll give another chance to.
Speaker 4: Rewrite them, and otherwise I might write them.
Speaker 2: There is this kind of explicit requirement at the moment
Speaker 2: to stop your products from being used to disseminate or
Speaker 2: to produce child sexual exploitation material. I think in this
Speaker 2: example where Grock has clearly been producing sexual images of
Speaker 2: young people and reportedly has been producing sexually explicit images
Speaker 2: of young people. I think this is one of those
Speaker 2: examples where X and Grok have clearly broken the law.
Speaker 4: It's pretty clear that there is.
Speaker 2: Potential damage being done against people, potentially Australians, that really
Speaker 2: need to be counteracted by a.
Speaker 4: Response from Australia.
Speaker 2: And so yes, like writing to X is a good
Speaker 2: first step to say, hey, how are you abiding by
Speaker 2: these rules? As part of what I imagine will be
Speaker 2: an investigation into whether they actually are explicitly abiding by them.
Speaker 2: I'd like to see that split up, because you know
Speaker 2: the damage is happening now.
Speaker 1: And Cam, you have already touched on this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but could you tell us more about the response that
Speaker 1: Australia and other countries are getting from Elon Musk about
Speaker 1: X and GROC.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean for a while Elon must kind of just
Speaker 4: ignored it.
Speaker 6: And then he said, obviously Grek does not spontaneously generate images.
Speaker 6: It does so only according to user requests. When asked
Speaker 6: to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal.
Speaker 2: You know, here's someone who says he is about free speech.
Speaker 2: You know, I think we've seen in some of his
Speaker 2: other behaviors and maybe that's not a full commitment, but
Speaker 2: certainly doesn't like any one, any government, to tell him
Speaker 2: how to act and how his technologies can operate.
Speaker 5: Now, the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines have
Speaker 5: banned the chatbot altogether. Britain and Canada have launched probes
Speaker 5: into greg and the possibility of tougher penalties for Musk
Speaker 5: are on the table.
Speaker 2: But because there was an enormous widespread response from this.
Speaker 4: The company that owns the social.
Speaker 2: Media platform and the AII had limited some of its
Speaker 2: abilities to do some of these things.
Speaker 4: But like according to reporting, not really stopped it.
Speaker 2: So I'm fascinated to see what regulators will find out
Speaker 2: and what they will do around the.
Speaker 1: World coming up, should the Australian government stop giving money
Speaker 1: to x.
Speaker 2: Cam.
Speaker 1: In the years since Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned
Speaker 1: it into x it's really changed, and some news organizations,
Speaker 1: certain government departments they've actually stopped using it and say
Speaker 1: that they're worried about misinformation. So how has its user
Speaker 1: base actually changed?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, one thing that I think isn't noticed
Speaker 2: enough is that its user base has significantly reduced. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was some data that came out Yesday, suggesting that
Speaker 2: X's daily users on mobile.
Speaker 4: In the US had halved over the last year.
Speaker 2: I think it's also telling the kinds of people who
Speaker 2: remain on the platform. I mean, I think it has
Speaker 2: largely become very popular among the right and the kind
Speaker 2: of like file Rights, which was welcomed back with open arms.
Speaker 2: I reported when el Musk took over, he overturned some
Speaker 2: of the bands. We saw neo Nazis, Australian neo Nazis
Speaker 2: flock back to the platform. We've seen people who were
Speaker 2: banned for all kinds of terrible behavior come back on
Speaker 2: the platform.
Speaker 4: So the fact that there's.
Speaker 2: All these you know, world leaders on their Australian departments
Speaker 2: remaining on there, on a platform that increasingly is populated
Speaker 2: by a smaller group of people who are kind of
Speaker 2: from ICEE being like almost a little bit radicalized or
Speaker 2: always putting up in many cases with some really terrible stuff.
Speaker 2: It really boggles the mind. And you know, this thing,
Speaker 2: this step where right in front of them, this platform
Speaker 2: was being used to create and distribute these awful images
Speaker 2: of people, really was personally a breaking point for me.
Speaker 2: I was like, like, you know, how can you be
Speaker 2: Anthony alb and Easy, who I noticed exclusively announced his
Speaker 2: response to what was happening in Venezuela on X, not
Speaker 2: on his website, not on Facebook, exclusively on there. And
Speaker 2: it's between pictures of you know, people who are being
Speaker 2: put in like micro bikinis or whatever against.
Speaker 3: Their will and cam.
Speaker 1: Not only is the federal government still using X, they're
Speaker 1: also using it to promote their work and for advertising
Speaker 1: as well. Do you know how much they're spending on
Speaker 1: advertising there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they continue to advertise on there as far
Speaker 2: as I know. The last full number was I think
Speaker 2: close to three million dollars a year, and I think
Speaker 2: that was the full year after elle Mus took over,
Speaker 2: so that was twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: We know, for example, as recently as last year, the Treasury.
Speaker 2: Was still on there and advertising on there, so we
Speaker 2: know that it kind of continues.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the things.
Speaker 2: You know, even if you accept that there's a platform
Speaker 2: that you know, you need to be honest a world
Speaker 2: leader to come to send that information, it's different to
Speaker 2: be also materially.
Speaker 4: Propping up this company by supporting it.
Speaker 2: You know, the government has spent the last eighteen months
Speaker 2: telling us that the safety of young people is the
Speaker 2: utmost thing that they have. Also, you know, introduced federal
Speaker 2: anti deep fake legislation and they say that they abhor
Speaker 2: what is happening on these platforms, and they remain on it.
Speaker 2: So the fact where like you know, the team social
Speaker 2: media bans then.
Speaker 4: Who's followed by reporting is one of those.
Speaker 2: Things that I think, you know, the evidence is a
Speaker 2: little bit less clear on. I don't think there is
Speaker 2: anyone in the general public opposers stopping the production of
Speaker 2: non consensual sexualized images of people.
Speaker 4: It's unambiguous.
Speaker 2: And yet the government remains, you know, not only supporting
Speaker 2: in terms of the advertising, but also literally supporting it
Speaker 2: in terms of putting its content on there.
Speaker 4: So it's a place that people have to remain.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I think the government and Anthony Aveneze's
Speaker 2: office gave me a statement being like, you know, we
Speaker 2: cared deeply about this reactant on people's online safety.
Speaker 4: I think that the words are very different to their actions.
Speaker 1: Here, Cam, it's been great speaking with you, Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the Commonwealth Renumeration Tribunal has tightened
Speaker 1: the rules for politicians travel after last year's expenses saga.
Speaker 3: It follows criticism of.
Speaker 1: Taxpayer funded tricks claimed by ministers including Anika Wells, Don
Speaker 1: Farrell and Michelle Rowland to take their families with them
Speaker 1: two events like the Australian Open and major NRL and
Speaker 1: AFL matches. The tribunal recommends family reunion travel be economy
Speaker 1: class and that extra spending for ministers and other senior
Speaker 1: officeholders be wound back. And New South Wales has extended
Speaker 1: protest restrictions in parts of Sydney for another two weeks.
Speaker 1: The laws were enacted following the Bondai massacre, initially allowing
Speaker 1: the state's Police Commissioner to ban protests for the fortnight
Speaker 1: following the mass shooting. However, the Commissioner noted that January
Speaker 1: twenty six marches, including the Invasion Day March, could go
Speaker 1: ahead as the restricted area would not include the protest's
Speaker 1: usual congregation point of Hyde Park. I'm Nicole Johnston. This
Speaker 1: is seven a m catulator