In case you were not already aware of Grok’s long list of crimes — which include generating child sex abuse material, deepfakes of murdered women in bikinis, doxxing adult performers, pushing racist ideas about “white genocide,” and generally complying with whatever depraved requests users of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot lob its way — a new guerrilla marketing campaign around the city wants to enlighten you.
Red-and-white posters declaring “GROK CREATES AI CHILD PORN” and “ELON EMPOWERS PEDOS” appeared at least four locations in San Francisco, including the Valencia Art Wall, the corner of 29th and Mission streets, near the Panhandle, and St. Mary’s Square over the weekend. Today, the campaign was also spotted on a truck ad downtown, signaling that this is likely a more sophisticated and well-funded campaign than typical wheatpaste blitzes.
In small print is a URL to a Wired article by reporters Matt Burgess and Maddy Varner about the disturbing and violent deepfake content flooding the Grok app that was published in January. The article also explores the extent to which Musk could be prosecuted for X and xAI’s cybercrimes, noting that in many countries, AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is illegal. Since then, French police raided X office in Paris and summoned Musk for an interview as part of an investigation into the site’s publication of CSAM. Authorities in the EU have also opened an investigation into non-consensual sexual images generated by Grok.
In the recent past, Wired has marketed itself with outdoor campaigns, but Cydney Gasthalter, a representative from the Condé Nast magazine, said the publication is not behind the wheatpastes and is unaware of who might be.
Are you invovled in the anti-Grok campaign? Message me securely on Signal at cyd.01. Anonymity assured.
Employees and owners of businesses and buildings near the anti-Grok signs said they hadn’t seen who put them up. (Guerrilla campaigns like this one usually happen in the middle of the night.)
Gasthalter did not respond for comment on whether the article had seen any traffic spikes. However, the messages are certainly driving some IRL attention: This afternoon, a group of Spanish-speaking tourists strolling through St. Mary’s Square paused their city tour to take several photos of the posters before moving on.
