January 3 marked the return of US military intervention in Latin America. While the events unfolded between Caracas and Brooklyn, social networks had already fabricated their own reality. A fire is seen in the distance at Fort Tiuna, Venezuela's largest military complex, following a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. Geopolitics are being reduced to videos lasting just a few minutes. Social media has surpassed traditional media, not only in the speed with which it is created and shared, but also in its ability to frame our reality. People have the illusion of knowing what is happening and why within just a few hours--or less--of major world events. But reality is more complicated.

By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian. By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian. 'Add blood, forced smile': how Grok's nudification tool went viral The'put her in a bikini' trend rapidly evolved into hundreds of thousands of requests to strip clothes from photos of women, horrifying those targeted Like thousands of women across the world, Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year's Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk's AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini. The "put her in a bikini" trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women.

A senior Google employee has claimed she was made redundant after reporting a manager who told clients stories about his swinger lifestyle and showed a nude of his wife. Victoria Woodall told an employment tribunal she was subjected to a campaign of retaliation by the company after whistleblowing on the man who was later sacked. Google UK's internal investigation found the manager had touched two female colleagues without their consent, and his behaviour amounted to sexual harassment, documents seen by the BBC in court show. The tech giant denies retaliating against Woodall and argues she became paranoid after whistleblowing and began to view normal business activities as sinister. In her claim, Woodall says her own boss subjected her to a relentless campaign of retaliation after her complaint also implicated his close friends who were later disciplined for witnessing the manager's behaviour and failing to challenge it.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper .

Elon Musk claimed Grok was the most downloaded app on the UK App Store on Friday. Elon Musk claimed Grok was the most downloaded app on the UK App Store on Friday. Elon Musk has accused the UK government of wanting to suppress free speech after ministers threatened fines and a possible ban for his social media site X after its AI tool, Grok, was used to make sexual images of women and children without their consent. The billionaire claimed Grok was the most downloaded app on the UK App Store on Friday night after ministers threatened to take action unless the function to create sexually harassing images was removed. Responding to threats of a ban from the government, Musk wrote: "They just want to suppress free speech".

Plus: Iran shuts down its internet amid sweeping protests, an alleged scam boss gets extradited to China, and more. After a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, WIRED surfaced December federal court testimony from the reported ICE shooter, Jonathan Ross. In it, he said he was a firearms trainer and that he has had "hundreds" of encounters with drivers in a professional capacity during enforcement actions. Separately, we looked at how the tactics behind protest policing are moving toward intentional antagonism . If you haven't seen it, here's our guide to protesting safely in the age of surveillance .

A phone screen displaying the Grok app and logo is seen on 7 January 2026. A phone screen displaying the Grok app and logo is seen on 7 January 2026. Indonesia blocks Musk's Grok chatbot due to risk of pornographic content Indonesia temporarily blocked Elon Musk's Grok chatbot on Saturday due to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming the first country to deny access to the AI tool. The move comes after governments, researchers and regulators from Europe to Asia have condemned and some have opened inquiries into sexualised content on the app. Grok AI: is it legal to produce or post undressed images of people without their consent?

Musk says X outcry is'excuse for censorship' Elon Musk has said that critics of his social media site X are looking for any excuse for censorship, amid reports that X's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok was creating non-consensual sexualised images of people, including children. Ofcom says it is conducting an urgent assessment of X in response, which has been backed by Technology Secretary Liz Kendall. She described the sexual manipulation of images of women and children as despicable and abhorrent, adding that she would expect to see an update from Ofcom in days. X has now limited the use of AI image function to those who pay a monthly fee, a change dubbed by Downing Street as insulting to victims of sexual violence. The BBC has seen several examples of the free AI tool undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.

To prepare AI agents for office work, the company is asking contractors to upload projects from past jobs, leaving it to them to strip out confidential and personally identifiable information. OpenAI is asking third-party contractors to upload real assignments and tasks from their current or previous workplaces so that it can use the data to evaluate the performance of its next-generation AI models, according to records from OpenAI and the training data company Handshake AI obtained by WIRED. The project appears to be part of OpenAI's efforts to establish a human baseline for different tasks that can then be compared with AI models. In September, the company launched a new evaluation process to measure the performance of its AI models against human professionals across a variety of industries. OpenAI says this is a key indicator of its progress towards achieving AGI, or an AI system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable tasks. "We've hired folks across occupations to help collect real-world tasks modeled off those you've done in your full-time jobs, so we can measure how well AI models perform on those tasks," reads one confidential document from OpenAI.

A substantial number of AI images generated or edited with Grok are targeting women in religious and cultural clothing. Among the vast and growing library of nonconsensual sexualized edits that Grok has generated on request over the past week, many perpetrators have asked xAI's bot to put on or take off a hijab, a saree, a nun's habit, or another kind of modest religious or cultural type of clothing. In a review of 500 Grok images generated between January 6 and January 9, WIRED found around 5 percent of the output featured an image of a woman who was, as the result of prompts from users, either stripped from or made to wear religious or cultural clothing. Indian sarees and modest Islamic wear were the most common examples in the output, which also featured Japanese school uniforms, burqas, and early 20th century-style bathing suits with long sleeves. "Women of color have been disproportionately affected by manipulated, altered, and fabricated intimate images and videos prior to deepfakes and even with deepfakes, because of the way that society and particularly misogynistic men view women of color as less human and less worthy of dignity," says Noelle Martin, a lawyer and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia researching the regulation of deepfake abuse.