‘Just the start’: X’s new AI software driving online racist abuse, experts warn
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Amid reports of creation of fake racist images, Signify warns problem will get ‘so much worse’ over the next year. A rise in online racism driven by fake images is “just the start of a coming problem” after the latest release of X’s AI software, online abuse experts have warned.
Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year. Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok’s latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent.
“It is a problem now, but it’s really just the start of a coming problem. It is going to get so much worse and we’re just at the start, I expect over the next 12 months it will become incredibly serious.”. Grok was launched in 2023 by Elon Musk, and recently gained a new text to image feature named Aurora, which created photorealistic AI images based on simple prompts written by the user.
A previous, less advanced version, called Flux, drew controversy earlier this year as it was found to do things that many other similar software would not, such as depict copyrighted characters and public figures in compromising positions, taking drugs or committing acts of violence.
There have been several reports of the newest Grok update being used to create photo realistic racist imagery of several football players and managers. One image depicts a player, who is black, picking cotton while another shows that same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest. A separate image depicts two different players as pilots in a plane’s cockpit with the twin towers in the background. More images depict a variety of players and managers meeting and conversing with controversial historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
