Most Self-Respecting X Customers Are Most likely Going to Need to Change This New Setting

Earlier this 12 months, a bunch of freaks on Twitter discovered that they might immediate Grok, the “non-woke” chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, to generate sexualized images of individuals on X, even with out their consent. Three months later, X has finished one thing about it…kinda. In line with a report from Social Media Today, the social platform quietly added a brand new characteristic to its iOS app that permits folks to choose to “block modifications by Grok” when importing content material.

Per the report, customers ought to begin seeing a toggle once they add photographs or movies to incorporate in a publish. When that toggle is enabled, it is going to forestall Grok from modifying the fabric. It’s a helpful characteristic in idea, given the replies of each publish on that god-forsaken platform now embody some unhappy sack tagging Grok to do one thing for them, together with tweaking peoples’ footage.

The issue, although, in response to The Verge, is that the characteristic has an extremely slender use case. Particularly, the publication mentioned the toggle says it will probably “forestall @Grok from modifying this content material.” Meaning it solely stops folks from tagging Grok in a thread to switch photographs. It doesn’t cease folks from modifying the picture within the Grok app. In actual fact, they don’t even must obtain the unique picture to take action. Per The Verge, X customers can maintain down on a picture within the X app and choose the choice “Edit picture with Grok,” and the picture will open within the Grok app, the place it may be freely modified. Customers may also save the unique picture, re-upload it to an X publish, and tag Grok to vary it.

So principally, X has taken away the bottom hanging fruit—and has finished so in a restricted means, seeing because the characteristic is barely obtainable in iOS and so far isn’t obtainable to everybody and isn’t significantly simple to search out. At the moment, it’s hidden within the menu that’s pulled up by tapping the paintbrush image in X when importing content material. Regardless of the naked minimal is, it looks like X has simply barely exceeded that.

It appears unlikely this “safety” will fulfill the handfuls of regulatory authorities that launched investigations into X and Grok following the debacle that noticed customers on X utilizing the generative AI device to create nude and sexually explicit images of people—together with minors—with out consent. The corporate beforehand locked image editing features behind a paywall, which can have prevented some issues and will have simply monetized folks’s perversions and acts of digital sexual abuse. That, mixed with this new effort of the hidden characteristic that solely kinda works, ought to inform everybody how critical the platform is about fixing the issue.