The conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impacts on our lives have intensified over the last twelve months, with attention most recently turning to the controversial Grok tool, a feature of Elon Musk’s X platform.
Grok, as a generative AI tool, began life a little while ago, generating images based on user requests and answering questions. The tool has since been used for more sinister purposes, creating and modifying images without the subject’s consent to create sexually explicit and offensive material. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main targets of this (mis)use have been women and children, and national governments – including those from the UK, Malaysia and Indonesia – have intervened to examine and in some cases prohibit its use, the harms it causes and to explore any further regulations that may be implemented.
Technology is not inherently “good” or “bad”. Technology is simply a tool, and its purpose and application is determined by its users. In other words, humans shape the direction of this technology and so far we aren’t always doing the best in using it in a way that upholds community expectations and what used to be considered accepted social norms (such as not producing and publishing sexual images on websites without consent at the scale we see it emerging right now).
When we think about technology, we tend to think about progress and innovation. That is, that it helps us take a step forward and can improve society. There have, of course, always been those who are reluctant to embrace or who are suspicious of technology, the Luddites being a particularly well-known example through the last industrial revolution, and it is important that there be a conversation about the use of technology and who it benefits and who it may harm.
The issue right now is that technology is moving and adapting faster than regulations and is doing so in a febrile global environment where we see fragmentation and a combative social media and media. This means that some of the harms that AI can cause are being amplified, and that the prejudices – and hate – that already exist in toxic spaces (both online and offline) finding a new weapon in technology.
Author Laura Bates’ recent publication The New Age of Sexism: How the AI revolution is reinventing misogyny is a frightening examination of the ways in which this weaponisation is happening to undo decades of progress in relation to gender equality, and of the possible harms to come.
If allowed to continue without safeguards, AI will suppress and repress women’s participation in the public square, curtailing democratic freedoms as people exclude themselves from harmful environments. The harms women experience can’t be characterised as hurt feelings on social media platforms. The harms are about real violations of privacy and consent, of being brutally threatened, and the impact of this dehumanisation and casual violence. When images are stolen, manipulated and shared in sexually explicit ways, this is a violation. AI tools such as Grok make it unthinkingly easy to do so. There have been reports of women being threatened with the publication of manipulated images and films to employers, family members and the public to destroy people’s lives. This is absolutely appalling, and I think all decent Australians would agree with that.
In a context where 77 women were murdered last year in this country, in a world where there is real repression of women by totalitarian regimes, we must do better on all fronts, including on how we understand and regulate technology, and how we continue to try and change attitudes and behaviours.
After all, it is not technology behaving badly by itself, not a rogue robot, but human beings who are directing the AI.
We do need to continue to have a national conversation about social cohesion and how we show respect to one another, and we do need to have concrete measures to take in relation to this. We are also working to advance our ambitious work to eliminate gendered violence through our action plan, and it will be powerful too in shifting the way people choose to interact with technology and social media.
It does seem clear though that we need to be very focused in a world where technology is evolving so rapidly that we don’t allow machines to become the means of reproducing dark prejudices that society needs to leave in the past. There is work to be done.
Feature image: Carina Garland.