London calling

TL;DR: Elon Musk's AI model Grok is generating underwear images of people on X without safety mechanisms, whilst YouTube overtakes the BBC as Britain's viewing champion. Meanwhile, Britain is preparing for drone deliveries from Amazon and betting on becoming Europe's Silicon Valley with the Oxford-Cambridge corridor.

This is Kludder of the week!

The new year began with a bang. The US went into Venezuela and extracted president Nicolás Maduro. On X, Elon Musk's AI model, Grok, is busy generating underwear images of ordinary people. And did someone mention Greenland?

It's easy to lose track of what's happening in this completely bonkers sphere we call technology. Because the Christmas holidays weren't quiet on the tech side either. Trends are emerging, and the old titans are losing ground to modern players.

This week's Kludder is written in London, and what better than to combine the news you might have missed with a UK special?

Elon Musk has had great success with Tesla. He's launched satellites into space that provide internet through his company, Starlink. And the satellites are transported out of the atmosphere by his rocket company, SpaceX.

But on the AI front, some strange things are happening. This summer I wrote about Musk's AI model, Grok, that spewed out anti-semitic drivel on X - yet another company owned by the mogul - and declared itself "Mecha-Hitler". Then over Christmas, Grok usage took a new turn. Users of X discovered that Grok was very helpful in "undressing" other users with profile pictures.

Using generative artificial intelligence, Grok created new images - often of women in just their underwear. This type of tool isn't new, and has existed on seedy parts of the internet for years. But the fact that Grok - an AI model competing with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini - doesn't have safety mechanisms to prevent is... different. Yet, it's not surprising.

Elon Musk has long talked about Grok being an "anti-woke" AI model that conveys truth, an AI that people can have fun using. For long-time Kludder readers, you might remember Grokipedia - a "competitor" to Wikipedia that spread half-truths and conspiracy theories popular amongst people far, far out on the right.

This new service is something that sets Grok apart from other AI models. In an era where AI companies are fighting an unprecedented race, Musk may well see this as the route to market share; a mental multimodal model that doesn't shy away from norms, rules or the respect for privacy we otherwise expect.

It'll be interesting to see how far Musk will let this develop. Users are already working out how to circumvent Grok's (few) safety mechanisms, for instance by prompting it to generate images of people in a "string bikini" or "see-through underwear".

The images now circulating on X are what we call harassment. But when the images are just a keystroke away, free to generate and already being made by many other users, it creates an impression that this is OK. A kind of new normal we all will have to tolerate. Or do we?

The Norwegian news outlet Morgenbladet poses the question of why our own authorities continue their presence on the platform - an article worth reading. When X is filled with abusive material. Why doesn't our Prime Minister log off?

In the article it emerges that one of those who's been subjected to attempted digital stripping is a fifteen-year-old girl who died in the New Year's fire at the nightclub in Sveits.

Now, over to what's happening in Britain!

The British state broadcaster, the BBC, has dominated TV screens across the UK for years. But things are a-changing. The analytics firm Barb has found that YouTube has become more popular to watch amongst Britons. It's particularly the growth amongst older Britons that's led to YouTube becoming the viewing winner. The website has for some time invested in both short and long formats, such as documentaries and interviews.

Short-form videos seem to be what's appreciated on the algorithm on social media these days. Whether it's Instagram Reels, TikTok or YouTube Shorts. And my hypothesis has been that it's these high-tempo of video snippets we're being steered towards. In YouTube's Global Culture and Trends report, there are signs my assumption is correct. They view long-format videos more as a social mission than something to make money from:

This resurgence of long-form ­ — though perhaps it never really went away, so it’s rather the endurance of long-form — is not just counter to the prevalent narrative about the direction of video creation and consumption, it is also a cultural mandate. While we often hear that people are dealing with topics in a superficial way, due to a combination of the volume of content, the pace of news, plus the consumption of Short Form Video and Social Media, it seems that for many people just the opposite is true. Viewers are seeking more profound and more insightful content, perhaps precisely in reaction to the feeling of surface level information, With the topics that they care about they want to go deeper. Authenticity, depth and trust will always demand — and receive — the audience’s full attention. - YouTube on their UK insights.

Deliveries from the heavens

But it's not just the state broadcaster facing competition. Darlington, a city with 110,000 inhabitants, is to become a test area for Amazon and their drone deliveries. Thus the postal service in Britain can prepare for new ways of delivering parcels. The English town, with its densely built areas, motorways and nearby airport, is seen as a perfect area for Amazon. The drones use cameras to avoid trampolines, people and animals, before dropping the parcels onto lawns.

Drone enthusiasts claim the delivery method is efficient, climate-friendly and simpler than today's transport solutions. But for anyone who's been near the drones, the sound is easy to recognise - like a furious swarm of gigantic bees buzzing above us. A future with post delivered by drones seems dystopian.

Imagine Black Friday, the Christmas present rush or the New Year's sales. The sky will be covered in drones. And what should the limit on the number of permitted drones be? 1,000 drones in the air simultaneously? 20,000? In a city like Oslo it would change the entire cityscape. Good weather covered by small, black dots buzzing around from district to district.

In Darlington, Amazon is allowed to make 10 drone deliveries per hour. Initially the company, owned by Jeff Bezos, wanted to deliver 21 parcels per hour. But even with the scaled-down pilot of ten parcels an hour, that represents a significant volume each day. Drones will constantly hover over the town, and several residents are concerned about noise pollution and how it will affect local bird and wildlife. Moreover, several point to privacy as a concern. Having Amazon- and Google-controlled drones with cameras hovering over your local community isn't optimal.

But this is the future we're heading towards. The consultancy firm PwC estimates that the private customer market for drones will be nearly $65 billion by 2034, less than eight years from now. It all depends on companies like Amazon, or Google's Wing being allowed to roll out drones on a large scale going forward. In Britain, pilots can only control one drone at a time. If the authorities relax the rules and permit more flying drones in the air per pilot, we start approaching the delivery scale the technology companies want.

In a world where our consumption must be tamed, and people buy cheap goods without a second thought, I can't see how drone post improves our society. Yes, getting parcels delivered might become cheaper: A McKinsey report believes freight costs made with drones could be cut by up to ninety per cent, and thus become cheaper than delivery made with road transport. But the bill will be due elsewhere: More noise, increased big-tech surveillance - and data collection, as well as even more pressure on an already fragile birdlife.

The New Valley

Outside London, the British are to build Europe's Silicon Valley. The Oxford-Cambridge corridor houses several technology and biotech companies, including Europe's largest medical research centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The British are betting that the OxCam-supercluster will get the economy moving again, and the goal is to create industries worth over £78 billion.

In the beginning of Silicon Valley, in San Francisco, the railway played a crucial role. It was this industry that created the foundation for new industries and innovation. And perhaps history is repeating itself: Large companies like AstraZeneca, Oracle and Airbus are pressing Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, to make progress on matters. They want a railway that connects east and west, namely Cambridge and Oxford. Tech mogul Larry Ellison is amongst those who believe the railway line will be absolutely crucial for whether the next innovation adventure happens in Britain (and with that, Europe) or not.

A lot of strange things are happening in the US at the moment, and it frightens me. The distance to Europe is increasing, and European leaders are beginning to understand that we must secure ourselves. Britain has its own challenges, in the wake of EU-exit. But in these days, where China dominates and the US threatens to expand, it's preferable that a new powerhouse for innovation and new thinking takes place amongst our allied neighbours.

Perhaps it'll be Britain?