'It is going to get much worse': Concern over fake racist images targeting football players

There have been several reports of the newest Grok update being used to create photo realistic racist imagery of several football players and managers.

A rise in online racism driven by fake images is “just the start of a coming problem” after the latest release of X’s AI software, online abuse experts have warned.

Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year.

Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it had seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok’s latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent.

“It is a problem now, but it’s really just the start of a coming problem. It is going to get so much worse and we’re just at the start, I expect over the next 12 months it will become incredibly serious," it said.

Grok was launched in 2023 by Elon Musk, and recently gained a new text to image feature named Aurora, which created photorealistic AI images based on simple prompts written by the user.

A previous, less advanced version, called Flux, drew controversy as it was found to do things many other similar software would not, such as depict copyrighted characters and public figures in compromising positions, taking drugs or committing acts of violence.

There have been several reports of the newest Grok update being used to create photo realistic racist imagery of several football players and managers. One image depicts a player, who is black, picking cotton, while another shows that same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest. 

A separate image depicts two different players as pilots in a plane’s cockpit, with the Twin Towers in the background. More images depict a variety of players and managers meeting and conversing with controversial historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

A key concern outlined by many is not only the relative lack of restrictions on what users can ask for, but also the ease with which prompts given to Grok can circumvent the AI’s guidelines by “jailbreaking”, which includes describing the physical features of whoever the prompter wants in the image, rather than just naming them.

The Premier League has said it is aware of the images and has a dedicated team assigned to help find and report racist abuse directed towards athletes, which can lead to legal action. It is believed the Premier League received more than 1,500 such reports last year, and that it has introduced filters for players to use on their social media accounts to help block out large amounts of abuse.

Guardian