Carmi Levy: Grok Doesn't Grok It - January 16, 2026
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What is the Defiance Act and why was it passed?
your nightly rebellion against predictable radio and podcasts the last show It is time for Technology Time. We are joined by tech analyst, tech expert, and friend of mine, Carmi Levy. Some people call him Random Access Carmi.
Does anyone call you that, Carmi? No, because that shortens to Ram Carmi, which quite frankly has some implications I really don't want to get into or have to explain to my wife. So maybe Random Access Carmi would work on its own.
All right. Rack, I think. Random access. Never mind. Let's talk about this act that has been passed by the U.S. Senate. It's not signed to law yet, but it's basically trying to protect people with whom deep fakes create fake images of them, fake videos of them that are awful. We're talking like dark stuff, like pornographic, things like this, which I would want myself... protected from that even though i don't really care if anyone sees me naked i don't want anyone to generate images of me and then i don't know blackmail my employer with them or if i'm a young person send them to all my college peers or just people can do really awful stuff with this tech and i do think there needs to be some protection
Yeah, I mean, it's an ultimate nightmare scenario, and certainly we've seen it over the past couple of weeks, specifically with Grok, where regular unsuspecting people are posting images of themselves, as people often do, to their ex-account, and then complete strangers are grabbing those images, running them through Grok, nudifying them, sexualizing them, putting them in bikinis, or taking off their clothes, and then distributing them to their followers, at which point they go viral. So imagine that level of digital victimization. I mean, it's a form of virtual sexual assault, and you have no control over it as a victim. And so it's called the Defiance Act, and it's probably the best acronym ever coined.
It stands for disrupt explicit forged images and non-consensual edits for defiance. And it was sponsored by a Democratic senator and the Senate has now passed it unanimously. So everybody agreed this is necessary. It ensures that anybody who's been victimized by non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes of themselves, that they can take civil action against the people who have done so. So it at least gives victims an opportunity to level the playing field to seek some kind of justice against these cretins who are doing this online, using AI image generators like Grok to persecute this kind of crime.
It's weird. They're being kind of technical about it.
How is Grok AI being integrated into U.S. military networks?
They're not saying the very generation of it is the problem. It's like the hosting of it. Could I use this act? Suppose someone did something awful like this to me. Could I use some mechanism on X or Twitter? I'm still calling it Twitter. I don't care. Twitter forever. To like cause them to then immediately take down the post? Like what would the mechanism be for me? Can I just sue? Because that seems really difficult. The average person doesn't have access to a lawyer and a lawsuit. Is it sort of like a digital millennium copyright act takedown? Which for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, that's like if a pirated video gets posted to the internet or some copyrighted content gets stolen, I can just submit to YouTube and say, hey, that song that someone added to their video is mine.
Please take it down. I don't have to go to the courts to do it necessarily. Is it more like that?
It's kind of like it. And what it does is it works in concert with legislation that was already on the book. So that piece of legislation was known as the Take It Down Act, and that was passed earlier last year. And that requires the platforms to remove the content when asked to do so. So it doesn't stop the content from showing up in the first place. And I think that's the it'll still occur. Tools like GROK can continue to exist. They will have no guardrails preventing this kind of thing. The law doesn't compel them to put those guardrails in place, but it at least gives options both to victims to have it to go after perpetrators with civil action, and it also, in concert with the Take It Down Act, requires the platforms like X, like GROK, like OpenAI, like anyone, to remove the content once they become aware that it's there.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Defiance Act and why was it passed?
0:04–2:40
2
How is Grok AI being integrated into U.S. military networks?
2:40–4:19
3
What are the implications of breaking up Apple's App Store?
4:19–6:27
4
How are big streamers responding to new financial disclosure rules?
6:27–8:27
5
What is the current situation regarding Iran's internet shutdown?
8:27–10:37
6
How does the Iranian government manage telecommunications during protests?
10:37–12:29
7
What technological advancements are being used for internet censorship?
12:29–14:46
8
How can individuals prepare for potential internet outages?
14:46–27:29
Speakers
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FULL EPISODE: It's Not a Lie If You Believe It - April 10, 2026