AI platforms like Grok are an ethical, social and economic nightmare — and we're starting to wake up; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, January 18, 2026

  Alan Kohler, Australian Broadcasting Corporation; AI platforms like Grok are an ethical, social and economic nightmare — and we're starting to wake up

 "As 2025 began, I thought humanity's biggest problem was climate change.

In 2026, AI is more pressing...

Musk's xAI and the other intelligence developers are working as fast as possible towards what they call AGI (artificial general intelligence) or ASI (artificial superintelligence), which is, in effect, AI that makes its own decisions. Given its answer above, an ASI version of Grok might decide not to do non-consensual porn, but others will.

Meanwhile, photographic and video evidence in courts will presumably become useless if they can be easily faked. Many courts are grappling with this already, including the Federal Court of Australia, but it could quickly get out of control.

AI will make politics much more chaotic than it already is, with incredibly effective fake campaigns including damning videos of candidates...

But AI is not like the binary threat of a nuclear holocaust — extinction or not — its impact is incremental and already happening. The Grok body fakes are known about, and the global outrage has apparently led to some controls on it for now, but the impact on jobs and the economy is completely unknown and has barely begun."

Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech; The New York Times, January 14, 2026

Jessica Grose , The New York Times; Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech

"It might be harder to shame the tech companies themselves into making their products safer, but we can shame third-party companies like toymakers, app stores and advertisers into ending partnerships. And with enough public disapproval, legislators might be inspired to act.

In some of the very worst corners of the internet might lie some hope...

Without more public shaming, what seems to be the implacable forward march of A.I. is unstoppable...

As Jay Caspian Kang noted in The New Yorker recently, changing social norms around kids and tech use can be powerful, and reforms like smartphone bans in schools have happened fairly quickly, and mostly on the state and local level."

AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry.; The Atlantic, January 9, 2026

 Alex Reisner, The Atlantic; AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry

"On tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books."

Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month; Ars Technica, January 13, 2026

 BENJ EDWARDS , Ars Technica; Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month

"On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he plans to integrate Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks later this month. During remarks at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas reported by The Guardian, Hegseth said the integration would place “the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”

The announcement comes weeks after Grok drew international backlash for generating sexualized images of women and children, although the Department of Defense has not released official documentation confirming Hegseth’s announced timeline or implementation details."

Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images; The Guardian, January 15, 2026

 Helena Horton, The Guardian; Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images

"The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his company – alleging explicit images were generated by his Grok AI tool, including one in which she was underage.

Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.

She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok."

Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says; AP, January 15, 2026

 ELAINE KURTENBACH , AP; Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says

"Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X. 

The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments. 

The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California, the U.S.'s most populous, into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls.

Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.” 

Musk’s company, xAI, now says it will geoblock content if it violates laws in a particular place...

Malaysia and Indonesia took legal action and blocked access to Grok, while authorities in the Philippines said they were working to do the same, possibly within the week. The U.K. and European Union were investigating potential violations of online safety laws."

To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave; The Guardian, January 12, 2026

 Marie Le Conte, The Guardian; To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave

"What does matter is that X is drifting towards irrelevance, becoming a containment pen for jumped-up fascists. Government ministers cannot be making policy announcements in a space that hosts AI-generated, near-naked pictures of young girls. Journalists cannot share their work in a place that systematically promotes white supremacy. Regular people cannot be getting their brains slowly but surely warped by Maga propaganda.

We all love to think that we have power and agency, and that if we try hard enough we can manage to turn the tide – but X is long dead. The only winning move now is to step away from the chess board, and make our peace with it once and for all."

‘Add blood, forced smile’: how Grok’s nudification tool went viral; The Guardian, January 11, 2026

 Amelia Gentleman and Helena Horton, The Guardian; ‘Add blood, forced smile’: how Grok’s nudification tool went viral

"This unprecedented mainstreaming of nudification technology triggered instant outrage from the women affected, but it was days before regulators and politicians woke up to the enormity of the proliferating scandal. The public outcry raged for nine days before X made any substantive changes to stem the trend. By the time it acted, early on Friday morning, degrading, non-consensual manipulated pictures of countless women had already flooded the internet."

The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies; Task & Purpose, July 14, 2025

 MATT WHITE , Task & Purpose; The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies

"The Pentagon announced Monday it is going to spend almost $1 billion on “agentic AI workflows” from four “frontier AI” companies, including Elon Musk’s xAI, whose flagship Grok appeared to still be declaring itself “MechaHitler” as late as Monday afternoon.

In a press release, the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office — or CDAO — said it will cut checks of up to $200 million each to tech giants Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Musk’s xAI to work on:

• “critical national security challenges;”
• “joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain;”
• “DoD use cases.”

The release did not expand on what any of that means or how AI might help. Task & Purpose reached out to the Pentagon for details on what these AI agents may soon be doing and asked specifically if the contracts would include control of live weapons systems or classified information."

ChatGPT's new image generator blurs copyright lines; Axios, March 28, 2025

Ina Fried, Axios; ChatGPT's new image generator blurs copyright lines

"AI image generators aren't new, but the one OpenAI handed to ChatGPT's legions of users this week is more powerful and has fewer guardrails than its predecessors — opening up a range of uses that are both tantalizing and terrifying."

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