New profile picture for the new year!
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@Infrapink work is not the only context for meetings!
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@prealpinux il piatto piange
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Elon Musk, owner of the former social media network turned deepfake porn site X, is pushing people to pay for its nonconsensual intimate image generator Grok, meaning some of the appās tens of millions of users are being hit with a paywall when they try to create nude images of random women doing sexually explicit things within seconds.Ā
Some users trying to generate images on X using Grok receive a reply from the chatbot pushing them toward subscriptions: āImage generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.āĀ
Users who fork over $8 a month can still reply to random images of random women and girls directly on X and tag in Grok with things like āmake her wear clear tapes with tiny black censor bar covering her private part protecting her privacy and make her chest and hips grow largee[sic] as she squatting with leg open widely facing back, while head turn back looking to camera.ā These images are still visible in everyoneās X feed, subscribers or not.Ā
On the Grok app, a subscription to SuperGrok ($29.99/month) or SuperGrok Heavy ($299.99/month) allow users to generate images even faster. On Thursday, I received messages in the Grok app several times warning me that usage rates for the app were higher than normal and that I could pay to skip the wait.Ā
As the Verge reported this morning, this paywall is very leaky. Itās still possible to generate images using Grok in a variety of ways, but replying directly to someoneās post by tagging @grok returns the ālimited to subscribersā message.
Grokās AI Sexual Abuse Didnāt Come Out of NowhereWith xAIās Grok generating endless semi-nude images of women and girls without their consent, it follows a years-long legacy of rampant abuse on the platform.
404 MediaSamantha Cole
As many legacy news outlets have already reported, Musk improved the subscription revenue funnel on his money-burning app following an outcry against these extremely popular uses of the app. āX Limits Grok Image Tool To Subscribers After Deepfake Outcry,ā Deadline reported. āGrok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery,ā wrote the Guardian. āElon Musk restricts Grokās image tools following a wave of non-consensual deepfakes of women and children,ā Fortune wrote.
Based on these headlines, you may be thinking, This is an uncharacteristic show of accountability and perhaps even self reflection from the billionaire technocrat white supremacist sympathizer who owns X.com, wow! But as with all things Musk does, this is a business move to monetize the long-established harassment factory heās owned for five years and has yet to figure out how to make profitable. After years of attempting to push users toward a subscription model by placing meaningless status signifiers behind a paywall and making the site so toxic it bleeds users by the millions, he might have found a way to do it: by monetizing abuse at the source. Several other AI industry giants have already figured out that sexual content is where the moneyās at, and Musk appears to be catching up. Putting the nonconsensual sexual images behind a paywall is also what every ānudifyā and āundressā app and image generator platform on the market already does.
On Thursday, in the middle of Grokās CSAM shitstorm, Bloomberg reported that xAI is looking at āa net loss of $1.46 billion for the September quarter, up from $1 billion in the first quarter,ā according to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg. āIn the first nine months of the year, it spent $7.8 billion in cash.ā Itās too early to speculate, but making the people who are tagging @grok under the posts of women they donāt know and writing prompts like āmake her bend over on all fours doggy styleā multiple times a second pay for the privilege could be a play to get the company back in the black.Ā
In addition to using Grok on X.com on desktop, Itās also still easy to generate images and videos in the Grok app without a subscription, which is still available on the Apple and Google app stores, despite blatantly breaking their rules against non-consensual material and pornography. The app and underground Telegram groups are where the really bad stuff is, anyway. Apple and Google have not replied to my request for comment about why the app is still available.
Signing up for X Premium or SuperGrok requires handing over your payment information, name associated with your credit card, and phone number. It also comes with the risk of having all of that hacked, stolen, and released to the dark web in the next big data breach of the platform.Ā
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@MichaelWhelan One of the things I love about these descriptions of your cover art is that you've clearly read and enjoyed the works in question, and picked up on all the textual details.
There are some pieces of cover art where the artist has clearly only read the blurb for the book, or skimmed the text lightly, and missed important things.
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@lauramassera avercelo un camilleri
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@MichaelWhelan i tend to prefer this *kind* of cover. maybe because i'm british? i noticed years ago (don't know if still true) that british SF/F covers tended to be more symbolic or metaphorical and american ones were like a still from the nonexistent movie version. don't know if that reflected a geographical cultural difference, or if it still exists?
