Genies are notoriously reluctant to go back in bottles, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. The thing about AI is that, like any computer software, it's a tool, and as a tool, it can be put to good use or bad use. It can be used to fake images and video, or it can be used to create original (well, semi-original) content. Some AI packages give the user something that's essentially a search engine on steroids, cutting way back on the time involved in searching out basic data, like demographics, or energy consumption of a given state; you name it.
Then there are the bad uses, like using AI and image manipulation to fake images of people, public and private. That's a problem, but it's also a problem that can't really be legislated or sued away.
Over in the U.K., a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) named Jess Asato is trying to sue away the problem. The issue involves fake images of her in a bikini; the target of her lawsuit is the X/Grok empire. Dr. Reuben Kirkham is a Director of the Free Speech Union of Australia, and he has some thoughts.
As a trained computer scientist, I have watched the political Establishment’s attempts to manage technology with an ever-increasing sense of bemusement. Many politicos seeming still think the internet is a ‘series of tubes’, despite that description being of some 20 years vintage.
This brings me to the latest curiosity (no pun intended). A UK Labour MP, Jess Asato, has decided to sue to prevent AI making bikini pics that appear to be of her. Perhaps predictably, her complaint is only against X and Grok, the bête noire of today’s censorship caste. Sir Keir Starmer, the UK’s departing Prime Minister, says he is “100% behind” her. The apparent legal claim is the misuse of private information and claimed breaches of the Data Protection Act. Yet, assuming the court has a technologically literate judge, she must lose – although as the Horizon Scandal shows, such judges might be in short supply. Certainly, Asato’s lawyer doesn’t get it.
Here's the first problem: As an MP, Jess Asato is a public figure, and one can't really copyright a face.
Here’s why. There is nothing private about a face (especially of a public figure) – so it is unclear what her cause of action can be, at least in the real world. As for the bikini, that isn’t a picture of her per se but of a random body in a bikini. Distributing it might not be very nice, but Grok and X aren’t responsible for creating it, as she claims. She argues this is due to bad design choices by Grok and xAI. Would she say the same for Photoshop? After all, Photoshop has long been capable of doing the same thing. Why not sue Adobe to make sure everyone is safe? Perhaps she should sue Microsoft for create MS Paint whilst she is at it.
In other words, xAI and Grok gave someone the tools to create a fake image. Well, those tools can be put to a wide variety of uses, and just as a hammer might be used to drive nails to help in the building of a house, it can also be used to clout someone on the head. One of the modern left's major flaws in logical thinking, in matters ranging from AI to gun control, is to blame the tool for the hand that wields it. And here, we meet that genie again:
Now time for some reality. The models that can ‘nudify’ someone are all available freely on the internet. One can simply download them from Hugging Face or any other repository. They are just a set of numbers, called model weights. When you have those model weights, anyone can run the model on their computer – the only difference is speed and having enough storage space. This is something that can be done using open-source software, even if a computer lacks sufficient memory. Now a cheap computer is enough for the largest of models, as long as you are prepared to wait.
In other words, any attempt at censoring these models and their outputs is doomed to fail.
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There are hundreds of these image manipulation tools out there. In another year or two, there will be hundreds more. They are being put to a wide range of uses, including a lot of original content; in a few more years, we are likely to see an explosion of feature-length films produced with AI. And, yes, there will be some trouble with deepfakes and even troubling portrayals of underage characters.
But when there has been any infraction, any actionable content, it's the human creator that did it; the AI remains, as it was, just a tool. And it's never good policy to punish a tool for the hand that wields it. Just as in Second Amendment issues and gun control laws, any attempt like this is ultimately futile.
Furthermore, this isn't a new capability. AI has made it easier, but anyone adept with, say, Adobe Photoshop could have done this years ago.
Jess Asato is likely to be unsuccessful in her suit, and not simply because Elon Musk can literally submerge her in lawyers if he chooses. She is likely to be unsuccessful because she's going after the wrong target.
She'd do better, as a politician and a public figure, to grow a little thicker skin.
