Deepfakes, incels and the dehumanization of a generation
Illustration by Kamaal Samuel, Illustrator
After countless scandals of sexual exploitation and a pedophile island, you’d think we’d be more focused on how we can protect people from dehumanization and sexual harm. But what happened instead? The creation of deepfake AI images of women and children naked, stripping away consent altogether.
Grok is an AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s company, xAI, and will create images, write code or provide most real-time answers for a user.
Over the past few months, millions of AI nudes have been produced by Grok and dispersed on another Musk entity, X. These images consisted of completely generated photos, altered photos of real people or whatever lonely perverts want to see and can access with 0% consent.
After a wave of reports from users and regulators of these images, Grok’s capabilities were “restricted,” though NBC news reported that the chatbot itself admitted that it was still able to make the sexualized images under certain conditions.
That was back in January. From what I have read in the news, all that has changed is a paywall, a few restricted regions and class action lawsuits against the robophile.
This isn’t the only case of Grok having its own philosophy on free speech, but it reflects a larger issue with the billionaires in our country being able to do whatever they want. I’m not saying Elon Musk is sitting in his bed everyday making creepy porn videos on his tech spawn, but he sure is letting loads of other people do it.
And I don’t think he cares! It makes him a whole lot more money when the desperate incels of the world will pay him to be sex offenders.
This AI porn epidemic is adding to another problem regarding the rise of social media and technology in general: abandoning connection.
Artificial intimacy replacing real connection is not just some tech trend and, at its core, it’s ruining people’s character development.
In the case of AI porn, it’s instilling an idea in people’s minds that it is okay to do whatever you want to people or that the sky is the limit. But it’s not.
Outside of this indecency, people in general have grown so comfortable with being present mostly or solely on social media.
Real connections and relationships require vulnerability, sacrifice and feeling hurt at times. AI interactions rewrite control as the driver of your brain and show you that you don’t need to face rejection or surprise.
An example of this — not so much in the AI sense, but in the media sense — is Clavicular. This guy shoots up meth and smashes his cheekbones to “look hot,” but then says he sees almost no benefit in interacting with people since most of them are “extremely jester.”
Why would I watch sports or go to a bar when I could study PubMed to see how I can “looksmax” better? Duh.
In plenty of his livestreamed videos, he talks about his view on women, especially how they should be treated sexually in comparison to men. Men should sleep with as many women as possible and women should be virgins till marriage is essentially his ideal.
This may seem a bit unrelated, but both are the extreme consequences of the growing presence of AI and social media without guidelines or any push to continue forming real connections. And, I don’t know, maybe touch some grass!
These are symptoms of a generation running from uncertainty and humanity in favor of isolation, control and fake validation. Clavicular is an extreme case, but it shows the same logic: people are not important and should be modified, optimized or avoided entirely.
At the end of Andrew Callaghan’s interview with Clavicular, the latter explained his theory of “trickle-down economics.”
Basically, he has invited too many “bitches” to the club, and he can’t have sex with all of them, because that’d be too much work. But they will eventually trickle down and “the buddies” can take care of it.
This had me beyond repulsed. He has a theory on the most optimal way to sleep with women… as a man who doesn’t even want to be involved with other humans. I’m not sure what kind of woman wants to interact with him, but that’s something else that should be looked into.
Clavicular has a decent following and definitely influences the minds of young men. He is creating a textbook for more insecure and attention-seeking people to follow, and that’s scary.
Whether it’s AI-generated porn or social media ragebait, the themes are the same. Technology and social media are enabling a culture where control is above all and we risk raising our future generations as people who view others, and maybe themselves, as objectifiable and merely transactional.
At the end of the day, I do believe that most people want to love and feel loved, and that they do take steps everyday to be a part of society. But there will always be outliers. There’s no single solution because this is part of a larger technological crisis, but I hope to see a push in our culture for stronger humanity and empathy.