‘Pretend you’re being tortured’ as an instruction to the text generator is way less concerning in isolation than, say, decapitating and hanging a Barbie doll. And even that isn’t wildly concerning in itself. Do you freak out when kids smash their toys together to make them fight?

I could call that tortured reasoning, just to make a point. Me making my point to be clear.

Yet you're just arguing the metaphor is the definition provided the definition is the intent, are you not? Someone who intends to torture a rock, regardless of that intent, isn't going to succeed in their task. Their own psychology might be such that they are genuinely trying to torture it but, from the rock's perspective, the rock has no perspective. It's a fucking rock. It can't experience torture. It can't experience anything. Ergo the torturer cannot torture it.

We can say the person who intends to literally torture something which is unexperiencing, achieving only metaphorical torture, is mentally unwell but to call the act literal torture because it was their intent is just sharing in their delusion.