A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Talking about social media as though it was just one entity is like thinking the property market is all about the price of one particular house; just as there’s a world of difference between prices in Dublin 4 and the heart of rural Ireland, the world wide web is both a source of wonder and a toxic cesspit.

That said, social media continues to reveal its true colours for the worse – and while it can still be a source of information and comfort or just entertainment, it is increasingly primarily a platform for bile and deepfake tomfoolery that is causing extreme pain to so many.

And that race to the bottom has been accelerated by the development of Artificial Intelligence – again a source of great good and wonder in the right hands, but a very dangerous tool in the hands of others.

The current raging debate is over X’s AI Chatbot Grok and its ability to ‘nudify’ and ‘pornify’ photographs of innocent people without their permission or knowledge.

Elon Musk’s partial capitulation to the backlash didn’t see him do what he should have done – as in, close this down – but merely limit it to those stupid enough to pay for his blue ticks.

For those lucky enough to know nothing about this, you only need a quick flick through X – formerly Twitter – to see a load of photos with requests for Grok to photoshop the pic so that the female in the original photo now wearing little or no clothes.

The problem is that the subject of the photo may never know this has happened and the fact that it’s not real is irrelevant; by all accounts, the doctored image is very realistic – and very damaging.

This appears to have started, as many things do, in innocence; you’ve an old pic and you’d love to have someone photoshopped out because they’ve spoiled the original, or someone has their eyes closed and it would be great if they were open.

This isn’t wonderful either because it’s no longer the original photo – an image of a moment in time – but it’s somewhat understandable and it’s largely unharmful.

But when the same technology is used to doctor photographs of young girls – be they real or AI generated – to turn them into pornographic images that can be seen by viewers of all ages, then this is a sinister step too far.