It would be amazing if the power of AI improved the life of the people who need it most. There are a few examples. Better health care for underserved communities, agricultural advice, and access to non-traditional banking. But there are fewer examples than I’d hoped.
Instead, we have Grok.
The ghastly Grok
The Grok scandal broke in late December, when users discovered Grok’s “spicy mode”. This allowed users to digitally undress people in photos. These non-consensual deepfakes were generated and circulated at a tremendous speed and scale. Even more shocking, minors were also targeted.
In less than a month, governments in India, California and Europe took legal action.
Real people were hurt. Real kids were hurt. That is not a joke. That is not “spicy”. That is immoral.
The safety backlash
After Grok, the safety rules tightened in unexpected ways.
I post a schedule update to LinkedIn once a week. It has a list of upcoming courses, with an image. I change the image every few months.
In December 2025 I asked Copilot to generate an image. This was part of the prompt:
“Create a cartoon image of a programmer sitting at a desk. The programmer has a cable plugged into the back of his neck. The other end of the cable is plugged into a wall socket. There is an image of a battery in the programmer’s brain, which shows a charging level.“
Co-pilot created it. In January 2026 I asked for the same image, but with a more futuristic style and different colours. This was the response from Copilot:
“I can’t create that image. The cable plugged into the back of the neck and into a wall socket depicts a scenario that could be interpreted as unsafe or harmful, so I’m not able to generate it.”
(I’ve used last year’s cartoon style plus the new image here so you can see the results.)
How stupid are we?
I can’t imagine how, or why, somebody would try to plug themselves into a wall socket.
But then there are Darwin awards. Wendy Northcutt, a molecular biologist, started these in 1993 as a joke. She runs the official website. The Darwin Awards commemorate people who protect our gene pool by taking themselves out of it. These are true stories of people who die in accidents as a result of stupid decisions.
For example, a man blew up himself and his house. How? He used the dishwasher to clean car parts, but used petrol instead of cleaning liquid. Another man used a loaded gun as a hammer. Easy to guess what happened.
People do stupid things. This is why there are strange warnings on real items:
- “Remove Child Before Folding” on child strollers.
- “Do Not Hold the Wrong End of a Chainsaw” on a Swedish brand of chainsaws.
- “This Product Not Intended for Use as a Dental Drill” on Dremel rotary tools.
- “Do Not Eat the iPod Shuffle” on the Apple iPod.
- “This costume does not enable flight or super strength.” on Frankel’s Superman costumes.
- “Do Not Put in Mouth or Rectum” on a toilet brush.” Eww!
A dangerous combination
I was irritated when Copilot wouldn’t generate my image. But I understand. People can be stupid, selfish, immoral, and greedy. I can’t imagine a more dangerous combination than AI power plus the worst of human nature.
We haven’t manage to improve human nature. So we will have to hope for responsible AI limits.