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."

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."