The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own - it's their inventors' motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned about I f much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren't merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead. To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle those seeking intimacy in "synthetic personas".

Two of these images were generated using the artificial intelligence tool Grok, which is free to use and belongs to Elon Musk. I've never worn the rather fetching yellow ski suit, or the red and blue jacket - the middle photo is the original - but I don't know how I could prove that if I needed to, because of those pictures. Of course, Grok is under fire for undressing rather than redressing women. It made pictures of people in bikinis, or worse, when prompted by others. And shared the results in public on the social network X.

The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot. The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images. Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person's consent, were not harmless images but weapons of abuse. The BBC has approached X for comment. It previously said: Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content..

Google's parent company hit a major financial milestone on Monday, reaching a $4tn valuation for the first time and surpassing Apple to become the second-most valuable company in the world. Alphabet is the fourth company to hit the $4tn milestone after Nvidia, which later hit $5tn, Microsoft and Apple . The spike in share price comes after Apple announced it had chosen Google's Gemini AI model to power a major overhaul of the iPhone maker's digital assistant Siri, which comes installed in every iPhone. Neither company disclosed how much the deal was worth. "After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models," Apple said in a statement to CNBC . As tech stocks continue a years-long meteoric rise, fears of a bubble in the stock market persist; however, Wall Street's excitement for new avenues of investment in AI does as well.

It is extraordinary enough to see the world's top central banker make an unscheduled video statement on social media. My first thought upon seeing the post from the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell was: Is this an AI deepfake? That sense did not go away as I listened to what were indeed the real words of the world's most important financial official. The background here is a long-running spat between President Trump and the man responsible for setting interest rates in the US and indirectly much of the rest of the world. In theory, this has officially been about the cost of a renovation project at the Federal Reserve, the US equivalent of the Bank of England.

A deluge of sexual images created by Musk's Grok AI tool has prompted a public and political outcry. A deluge of sexual images created by Musk's Grok AI tool has prompted a public and political outcry. Mon 12 Jan 2026 07.23 ESTFirst published on Mon 12 Jan 2026 06.02 EST The UK media watchdog has opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk's X over the use of the Grok AI tool to manipulate images of women and children by removing their clothes. Ofcom has acted following a public and political outcry over a deluge of sexual images appearing on the platform, created by Musk's Grok, which is integrated with X. The regulator is investigating X under the Online Safety Act (OSA), which carries a range of possible punishments for breaches, including a UK ban of apps and websites for the most serious abuses.

Ofcom has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's X over concerns its AI tool Grok is being used to create sexualised images. In a statement, the UK watchdog said there had been deeply concerning reports of the chatbot being used to create and share undressed images of people, as well as sexualised images of children. If found to have broken the law, Ofcom can potentially issue X with a fine of up to 10% of its worldwide revenue or £18 million, whichever is greater. The BBC has approached X for comment. Elon Musk previously said the UK government wanted any excuse for censorship in response to a post questioning why other AI platforms were not being looked at.

When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out last summer I was in so much pain that I didn't know if I'd be able to play it. Could a video game teach me anything new about suffering? L ast year I became uncomfortably well acquainted with suffering. In March I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder - burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but was painful; even at rest it was horrible.

Malaysia has blocked access to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence model Grok amid a global uproar over the chatbot's ability to create sexually explicit images of people without their consent. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Sunday it had temporarily banned Grok after ordering the chatbot's developer xAI and the social media platform X to introduce safeguards to ensure compliance with the law. "MCMC considers this insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance." The Malaysian watchdog's announcement came a day after Indonesia became the world's first country to formally ban the chatbot, which is offered as both a standalone platform and an in-built feature on X. Grok has been mired in controversy in recent days over the use of its image-generation tool to depict real people in minimal clothing and sexualised poses without their consent. The spread of the sexualised deepfakes, some of them including minors, has prompted condemnation and calls to action from officials in numerous countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia.

The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. Government signals support for possible Ofcom intervention on Grok as scrutiny of X's AI tool intensifies Elon Musk's X "is not doing enough to keep its customers safe online", a minister has said, as the UK government prepares to outline possible action against the platform over the mass production of sexualised images of woman and children. Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said the government would fully support any action taken by Ofcom, the media regulator, against X - including the possibility that the platform could be blocked in the UK. Kyle said Ofcom had received information it had requested from X as part of a fast-tracked investigation into the use of platform's built-in AI tool, Grok, to generate large numbers of manipulated images of people, often depicting them in minimal clothing or sexualised poses.