Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai Are Cowards ⇥ theverge.com

Elizabeth Lopatto, the Verge:

Less than five years ago, I sat through the interminable Epic v. Apple antitrust trial. Real heads will remember that Apple’s lawyers heavily implied that a naked bananaman called Mr. Peely was somehow inappropriate for court. This came after a week where Apple argued that an indie storefront that users could install via Epic was a problem because it hosted porny games, calling games on Itch.io “offensive and sexualized.”

You know what’s “offensive and sexualized,” you worthless fucking cowards? Nonconsensual AI-generated images of women in bikinis spreading their legs, and of children with so-called “donut glaze” on their faces — which, by the way, were being generated at a rate of one per minute. I’d also call that “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste” and *especially *“just plain creepy”! Do you need a back brace to stand up straight, buddy? Because at this point, I am certain you haven’t got a single vertebra.

Correctly righteous anger. That there has barely been any reckoning with this from Apple, Google, or even xAI despite at least a week of mainstream media coverage shows a callous indifference to the ongoing effects of the victims of this abuse. The best argument I can imagine — and it is a terrible argument — is that Apple’s lawyers advised the company against doing anything that looks anticompetitive since it is currently being sued by xAI. This is why it is a bad idea to rely on private corporations to do the job of regulators and law enforcement — but, still, Apple and Google should not be carrying apps from this company for as long as it continues to be a mass-scale abuse generator.