While Grok has introduced belated safeguards to prevent sexualised AI imagery, other tools have far fewer limits
“Since discovering Grok AI, regular porn doesn’t do it for me anymore, it just sounds absurd now,” one enthusiast for the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot wrote on Reddit. Another agreed: “If I want a really specific person, yes.”
If those who have been horrified by the distribution of sexualised imagery on Grok hoped that last week’s belated safeguards could put the genie back in the bottle, there are many such posts on Reddit and elsewhere that tell a different story.
And while Grok has undoubtedly transformed public understanding of the power of artificial intelligence, it has also pointed to a much wider problem: the growing availability of tools, and means of distribution, that present worldwide regulators with what many view as an impossible task. Even as the UK announces that creating nonconsensual sexual and intimate images will soon be a criminal offence, experts say that the use of AI to harm women has only just begun.
It requires 0 sophistication of thought to revel in simple brutish enjoyment of tormenting the weak
You are simply mistaken
Marital rape is common. Psychopathic enjoyment of the suffering of others is uncommon. Enjoyment of sex is nearly universal.
If I said that theft was mainly about power over the victim, not motivated by the acquisition of valuable property, would you believe me without argument? You would not, obviously: it should take serious evidence to reject the obvious conclusion that rape is usually carried out for sexual gratification.
I take it you’ve just not done any research then?
According to rapists themselves the dominant reasons for rape are always to express power or anger. Please show me your research suggesting it’s about sexual gratification instead of you just making intuitive logical conclusions that are in fact wrong
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.134.11.1239
I was pretty explicit about the intuitive background of my position, and request for anything except a just-so story. Your article already accommodates another explanation than power, so we have already moved to a better understanding than you or the OP expressed. And I certainly acknowledge that it challenges my intuition; clearly power and anger are important motivations that I wasn’t really considering. However, I don’t think the article or what I’ve now been reading really support that “almost all rapoe is about power and not sexual gratification.”
This thesis provides a broader survey and importantly when it talks about rape and power, it talks about power rape used to “conquer and sexually dominate” the victim. That to me says there is a key element of sexual gratification at play, because sexual domination is itself about sexual gratification.
The other aspect the author surveys that hasn’t come up yet is hostility towards women as a key predictive factor. We know from the whole incel phenomenon that a key factor in men becoming hostile towards women is in difficulty finding a sexual partner, so this is a whole side to the story which, simmering below it, has sexual gratification as an important influence.
And I still don’t understand how rape through the use of date rape drugs can truly be an expression of anger, or a means of exerting power: these rapes are often intended to remain secret from the victim, so cannot be used in that way. I worry that there’s a tendency when throwing out these sweeping generalisations to ignore high numbers of rape enabled by drink and drugs
So, you’ve certainly helped evolve my view on this, but I don’t agree with the original statement still.
It baffles me how you fail to connect rendering a victim unconscious to be manipulated as the perpetrator sees fit with an expression of power
You additionally fail to connect hostility toward women to anger rapes and continue to insist it is actually sexual gratification at the root of the issue
Best of luck
I supposed I shouldn’t have expected you to actually read what I wrote. Curse my unbridled optimism.
I don’t have time to respond properly, but see that this thread has differing definitions of terms like power and gratification. Yes, those two blur together when looked at in a certain way, but you are asking for academic rigour without applying it yourself. Terms need definitions. People think you are conflating gratification with power blithely.