Elon Musk's statement on Grok 'does not convince me', former Labour leader says
Vivienne Clarke
Former Labour leader and chair of the Oireachtas committee on Arts, Media, and Communications, Alan Kelly, has said the statement from Elon Musk about Grok AI “doesn’t convince me.”
Moderation was not enough, he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland. There needed to be “robust” ways of dealing with the issue, he added.
“The real issue here is, is if it's not X today, it could be a company called Y tomorrow. So this can't be continuous. So we need to have robust ways of dealing with this, both at European and national level.
“If Europe is going to be too slow in relation to dealing with these AI issues, well then we as a country are going to have to lead and deal with it ourselves.
"We have robust laws to be fair, Coco's law, which my own party was instrumental in bringing in, and obviously in relation to the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998. We need to ensure that those laws, which are quite good and strong, are complete in relation to how we can deal with this.
“We need to protect our citizens, protect our children. The issue here is expanded to how these AI tools are actually sexualising and nudalising not just children, but also adults and make sure that everybody is protected across the platform.
"This statement doesn't convince me, to be honest with you, I mean the very ending of it saying where it is illegal is a bit of a ghetto. And also remember at the end of the day many people will have access to VPNs and possibly bypass some of this as well. So the platforms themselves need to deal with it.”
Mr Kelly said he expected representatives from X to attend the Oireachtas Committee meeting with social media platforms on February 4th.
“There's an invitation out to them. I expect them to turn up. I expect them to address these issues. I think it would be unacceptable if they don't.
"And collectively, and this goes beyond any politics inside here in Leinster House, collectively, we as a parliament, this government and everybody else needs to put in place the legislative basis to ensure that platforms cannot in any way shape or form, whether it's X using Grok or others cannot continue to sexualise children obviously, but also adults because we need to protect our people. It's as simple as that. There is no debate.”
