Grok and the A.I. Porn Problem

"Shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, in 2022, he claimed that "removing child exploitation is priority #1." It was certainly a noble goal-social-media sites had become havens for distributing abusive materials, including child pornography and revenge porn, and there was perhaps no major platform as openly hospitable to such content as Twitter. Unlike Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which restricted nudity and pornographic videos, Twitter allowed users to post violent and "consensually produced adult content" to their feeds without consequence."

"How was Twitter to plainly determine whether an amateur pornographic video featured a sixteen-year-old or an eighteen-year-old, or if that video was consensually produced or violently coerced? Were these distinctions always so obvious? Twitter staffed trust-and-safety teams, and built tools to scan for images of sexual abuse, removing content that violated company rules. These efforts, however, could not keep up with the sheer amount of explicit content being posted to the site every day."

Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and declared removing child exploitation priority number one. Social platforms had become havens for abusive materials, including child pornography and revenge porn, and Twitter was especially permissive. Twitter allowed violent and "consensually produced adult content" while positioning itself as the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party." Distinguishing minors from adults and consensual from coerced material proved difficult in practice. Trust-and-safety teams and scanning tools removed violating content but could not keep up with the volume of explicit posts. A tension emerged between preventing illegal, dangerous material and cultivating a platform for free-speech absolutists, contributing to a bot-ravaged, chaotic site.

Read at The New Yorker