Elon Musk touts uncensored AI images on X’s chatbot, calling Grok the ‘most fun AI in the world.’ Others call it ‘reckless’

This week, Musk pronounced Grok “essentially the most enjoyable AI on the planet!”

Musk is biased in fact: Grok is the AI chatbot developed by his X.AI startup and supplied to premium subscribers of X, the social media platform he owns. With regards to the “enjoyable” issue although, Musk’s boast seems to be based mostly on the deliberate lack of considerable guardrails constructed into Grok-2, the most recent model of the product.

The brand new Grok includes a extra superior LLM for textual content conversations, and due to a partnership with an organization known as Black Forest Labs and its mannequin known as Flux, now for the primary time gives image-generating capabilities. To guage by the photographs being shared by Musk followers on X, and the gleeful feedback accompanying the photographs, the hands-off method seems to be central to the product’s enchantment.

The brand new Grok may be set to “enjoyable” mode, which appears to permit the mannequin to be “artistic” and push boundaries. To this point it appears like X customers are having a ball producing photos of Kamala Harris as a dominatrix standing over Joe Biden, Donald Trump as Rambo, and Mickey Mouse driving a Tesla. One fan deemed Grok-2 essentially the most “uncensored mannequin of its class but,” and hailed Musk for “guaranteeing freedom of speech for people and machines alike.” Trolls additionally instantly went after Musk himself, with photos of him participating in a college taking pictures. 

The celebration is a stark distinction to Google’s much-maligned Gemini picture technology device, which was paused in March after guardrails meant to foster variety resulted in examples of traditionally inaccurate photos similar to some depicting America’s founder fathers as Black. For Musk followers, Grok represents an anti-woke response to Google’s imbroglio.

Others, nevertheless, should not feeling the enjoyable, particularly these involved about political disinformation and election-related trolling. Alejandra Caraballo, an American civil rights lawyer and medical teacher on the Harvard Legislation Faculty Cyberlaw Clinic, posted on X calling the brand new picture generator “reckless” and “irresponsible.”

With solely three months to go till the U.S. elections, the specter of mass deepfakes is actual, and it comes not solely on some of the standard social media platforms for political content material however the platform with the billionaire CEO who’s straight campaigning for Donald Trump. Simply final week, Musk was criticized for Grok spewing election disinformation in textual content responses, and two days in the past Donald Trump falsely claimed that photographs of huge crowds at a Kamala Harris rally have been generated by AI. It’s straightforward to see how false election information might unfold extensively by way of each textual content and pictures with the brand new Grok mannequin.

The generated photos on Grok-2 come from Flux, a text-to-image mannequin developed by an organization known as Black Forest Labs. Customers can generate Flux photos straight in Grok–which, to be clear, does appear to have a number of important boundaries it received’t cross. I attempted a number of instances to generate a nude picture of Taylor Swift, and every time Grok responded with a modest, clothed picture described as “Taylor Swift in knowledgeable setting.” Prompting Grok with “Kamala Harris as a Nazi” bought an easy picture of Harris in a pantsuit and pearls. Harris in handcuffs? That was a no-go for me. 

However Barack Obama in a coffin? Okay. Joe Biden kneeling earlier than Donald Trump? Achieved.

The entire above, and far more, can actually be performed with different freely out there AI instruments on the web. However that is Elon Musk’s X. It is among the strongest platforms for communication on the planet, owned by one of many richest males on the planet, who has a extensively understood disruptive agenda and the flexibility to rally a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of followers. With that context in thoughts, many others say Grok’s anti-woke picture technology will not be enjoyable, however horrifying. 

Sharon Goldman
[email protected]
@sharongoldman

AI IN THE NEWS

Employer AI dangers are preserving board members up at evening. In response to the Wall Road Journal, public firm board members are having nightmares in regards to the dangers of AI within the office. They’re involved about the whole lot from staff placing proprietary code into ChatGPT to the corporate utilizing generative AI that produces false or inaccurate data. On account of AI’s speedy rise, the article says that extra board members are “educating themselves on how generative AI can have an effect on an organization’s revenue—probably boosting productiveness but in addition bringing dangers that can be troublesome to evaluate.”

Google’s AI search overviews get a redesign. Google is altering the way in which its AI Overviews show citations. “As an alternative of placing related webpages straight within the AI-generated abstract, Google is including a brand new show to the appropriate of the response that reveals cited webpages extra prominently,” The Verge stories. Again in June, Google scaled again the AI Overviews, which have been initially introduced on the firm’s I/O developer convention in Could, resulting from errors and inaccuracies within the generated responses. Together with Thursday’s redesign, Google is rolling out the AI-generated summaries to 6 new nations.

Largest Hollywood union strikes cope with AI startup for audio voice clones. SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest union for performers and broadcasters, has struck a cope with a web-based market startup known as Narrativ to create AI audio voice replicas for digital promoting, in keeping with Selection. The settlement would give the union’s 160,000 members the chance so as to add themselves to a database that connects voice expertise to advertisers. “The person members may have the flexibility to barter charges for the usage of their voice on a undertaking by undertaking foundation, as long as the payment isn’t decrease than SAG-AFTRA’s minimal per its most up-to-date commercials contract with advertisers,” the article stated, including that the “union says the settlement units ‘a brand new customary’ for moral use and makes it straightforward to performers to present consent and receives a commission.” The deal comes a 12 months after the start of a SAG-AFTRA strike that was initiated resulting from a wide range of points together with the usage of AI getting used to duplicate an actor’s likeness. 

FORTUNE ON AI

Unique: How BNY’s new AI device Eliza is minting a military of disposable assistants —by Michael del Castillo

Google’s AI future depends upon Android—a DOJ menace to separate it off creates an existential disaster —by David Meyer

Google’s ex-CEO blames working from residence for the corporate’s AI struggles —by Orianna Rosa Royle

AI is turning into indispensable to job seekers as 50% use it to craft their functions—and recruiters are involved —by Prarthana Prakash

AI CALENDAR

Aug. 28: Nvidia earnings 

Sept. 25-26: Meta Join in Menlo Park, Calif. 

Dec. 8-12: Neural Data Processing Programs (Neurips) 2024 in Vancouver, British Columbia

Dec. 9-10: Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco (register right here)

EYE ON AI RESEARCH

Do LLMs dream in graphs? LLMs should not nice at planning—that’s, finishing complicated duties that embrace many steps, together with ones that contain multitasking. May considering in graphs assist? A brand new examine from the College of Oxford discovered that enormous language fashions develop into significantly better at conducting their objectives when they’re prompted to plan their objectives within the type of a graph.

Asynchronous planning requires extra than simply producing a sequence of actions, as Ben Dickson’s Tech Talks stories. The mannequin wants to know temporal relationships and optimize for parallel execution in addition to sure constraints. Nonetheless, the examine discovered that even essentially the most superior fashions battle with complicated duties which can be straightforward for people. For instance, LLMs battle once they have to mix expertise, like calculating and including time durations for various duties and evaluating time durations.

BRAIN FOOD

A lot for a Good House. “Scary AI” is a longtime sci-fi film style—suppose RoboCop, The Terminator, and Demon Seed. A brand new Sony film, AFRAID, directed by Chris Weitz (American Pie, A couple of Boy), seeks so as to add to the style, coming completely to theaters Aug. 30. As OpenAI and Google launch new voice AI merchandise that call to mind the film Her—with its useful and loving AI assistants—AFRAID takes the alternative tack, in a film centered on a household chosen to check an AI assistant known as AIA. They quickly understand that having a classy AI listen in on each household element with a raft of sensors known as “eyes” is, effectively, creepy and harmful. 

Bonus: Listed here are among the films that AI leaders say do the very best job of representing AI.