Musk praises Naroski's veto of the digital law. Gawkowski replies: This is not a victory, but a disgrace
A veto is not a victory, but a disgrace – wrote Krzysztof Gawkowski, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs on website digital act by President Karol Nawrocki.
This concerns an amendment to the Act on the provision of electronic services, which President Karol Nawrocki vetoed on Friday. The amendment was intended to ensure the effective application of the provisions of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) in Poland, regarding, among others, blocking illegal content on the Internet.
Reaction to Eric Daugherty's post
On Tuesday, conservative American journalist Eric Daugherty published a video on X regarding the veto. “A while ago: Polish right-wing president Karol Nawrocki has just vetoed a bill that was supposed to implement the European censorship act on digital services,” the journalist commented in English.
A few hours later, the entry was retweeted by the owner of the X portal and the xAI company, billionaire Elon Musk. “Bravo!” – Musk wrote, adding a Polish flag emoticon.
“Mr. Musk, this veto is not a victory, but a disgrace,” replied Deputy Prime Minister Gawkowski on Tuesday evening, also in English.
“We should protect our citizens from digital wasteand not defend the interests of those who pump them on an industrial scale,” he wrote. “Congratulations to all those who value the toxic “freedom” of platforms more than the safety of their own society”- added the deputy prime minister.
The president's arguments and public consultations
On Friday, President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the amendment to the Act on the provision of electronic services. It was intended to enable the presidents of UKE and the National Broadcasting Council to order online platforms to remove illegal content regarding 27 prohibited acts. Under the law, content could only be removed after a court decision, if the user challenged the officials' decision. According to the president, the vetoed bill would introduce “administrative censorship” in Poland.
Since Monday, the Ministry of Digitization has been conducting public consultations on the vetoed bill. That day, Deputy Minister of Digitization Dariusz Standerski said that the ministry would decide on further actions in this matter within a dozen or so days. According to Gawkowski and Standerski, the president did not read the act and the veto was politically motivated.
Musk's war with Brussels and a high penalty
On December 8 last year, the European Commission imposed a fine of EUR 120 million on Platform X for failing to comply with the Digital Services Act in terms of transparency. As part of the two-year-long proceedings against
In response to the decision, the platform suspended the Commission's advertising account, and the billionaire wrote on the website, among other things, that the European Union should be liquidated.
Elon Musk is, of course, a billionaire and an innovator, but I also think he is a crazy eccentric who decided to throw the world into chaos. His entries, including that the European Union should disintegrate or juxtaposing the fascist flag with the EU flag, are nothing more than the Kremlin's narrative, which must be clearly discussed – said Krzysztof Gawkowski on TVN24.
The deputy prime minister added that when reading Musk's entries, he had the impression that “there reality has become detached from normality and that it no longer has anything to do with the real world“.
Scandals around AI and the Grok model
Last July Grok, an artificial intelligence model from xAI, generated offensive and disinformation posts on the X website. The entries appeared in response to users' questions and concerned, among others: Prime Minister Donald Tusk, MP and patron Roman Giertych, PiS president Jarosław Kaczyński and John Paul II. In English, the AI also generated anti-Semitic and Nazi posts. After several hours, Grok was muted by xAI and the controversial entries began to disappear.
In turn, at the beginning of January this year, Grok began to enable the generation of sexual content, including minors. The photos generated by Grok and posted on the X platform depict scantily clad or fully undressed people, both public and private. Some of these photos are of children. The people in the photos did not consent to this and were often not even aware that their images had been altered in this way. Actions in this matter were taken, among others, by: the French authorities, who reported her to the prosecutor's office.
A message appeared on Grok's profile on X, indicating that security vulnerabilities caused such photos to appear on X. “There are isolated cases where users have requested and received AI-generated images of minors in skimpy clothing. xAI has safeguards in place, but improvements are in progress that will completely block such requests,” reads a statement posted on the chatbot's profile.
Deputy Prime Minister Gawkowski pointed out in January on X that uncontrolled artificial intelligence is “going crazy and causing more and more damage,” and Grok is again, inspired by Elon Musk, “testing what limits it can cross.”
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the world's first digital regulation to hold companies across the EU responsible for the content they post on their platforms. It has been in full force in EU countries since February 17, 2024. Poland may face a fine from the CJEU for failure to implement the regulations. (PAP)
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