The US Government Is Trying To Make Coal Cute. Trump complained that coal needed better PR. The original Coalie was just a lump of coal with eyes and nothing more. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Can a lump of coal ever be cute?

The Morning After: Elon Musk's SpaceX is buying his AI company, xAI Like some sort of corporate Russian doll, SpaceX has announced its acquisition of xAI. The merger will "form the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth," according to, well, owner Elon Musk. The AI company, arguably best known for its ongoing CSAM-generating chatbot controversy, might seem like a strange fit for a rocket company. But SpaceX is apparently key to Musk's latest scheme to build AI data centers in space. There might be an argument for moving the resource-intensive operations to space -- but Musk continued.

Using LLMs to talk with your friends is efficient. My friend recently attended a funeral, and midway through the eulogy, he became convinced that it had been written by AI. There was the telltale proliferation of abstract nouns, a surfeit of assertions that the deceased was "not just --he was " coupled with a lack of concrete anecdotes, and more appearances of the word than you would expect from a rec-league hockey teammate. It was both too good, in terms of being grammatically correct, and not good enough, in terms of being particular. My friend had no definitive proof that he was listening to AI, but his position--and I agree with him--is that when you know, you know. His sense was that he had just heard a computer save a man from thinking about his dead friend.

The showrunner thinks AI will be good for burgeoning filmmakers, but not for Hollywood blockbusters. Jonathan Nolan saw this coming. As a screenwriter, he's worked on several of his brother Christopher Nolan's films, from to the movies. Partnered with his wife Lisa Joy, he created HBO's and executive produced Amazon Prime's . But before that, he cut his TV teeth creating, a CBS procedural about a solitary tech billionaire who creates a piece of surveillance software aimed at stopping crime before it happens. It was fiction, but it's hard not to feel its prescience. With, now in its second season, Nolan also has his sights on the future. Based on the video game series of the same name, it's about a postapocalyptic America where everyone must survive in any way they can. So, what does Nolan see happening in the coming decades? For one, he doesn't think AI is going to replace human filmmakers. In fact, he thinks it could help aspiring directors get a foot in the door. He'd also like to see the demise of (most) social media--but understands that may never happen. For this week's episode of The Big Interview podcast, I asked Nolan about all of those things and more. Below you'll find his thoughts on writing Batman movies, classic cars, and what he'd actually bring to his own doomsday bunker. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to have you here in person in New York. I'm from Canada so my barometer is a little off, but I tend to think of New York as wimpy cold. No, no, this is real. The older I get the weaker and more frail. So I can't tolerate [it]. I've been in LA for 25 years.

Russia has launched its most powerful blow against Ukraine's energy sector so far this year, according to the private energy company, DTEK. The combined missile and drone strikes which targeted power plants and infrastructure in Kyiv and multiple locations left the system operating with serious restrictions, it said. The strikes were launched as temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F) and left more than 1,000 tower blocks in the capital without heating once again and damaged a power plant in the eastern city of Kharkiv beyond repair. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was choosing terror and escalation rather than diplomacy to end this war and called for maximum pressure on Moscow from Ukraine's allies. The attack comes after a so-called energy truce agreed by Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin expired at the weekend.

The French investigation into alleged algorithm manipulation by X has expanded to examine the spread of sexually explicit deepfakes. The French investigation into alleged algorithm manipulation by X has expanded to examine the spread of sexually explicit deepfakes. French headquarters of Elon Musk's X raided by Paris cybercrime unit Tue 3 Feb 2026 09.25 ESTFirst published on Tue 3 Feb 2026 06.42 EST Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk's social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company's former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime. "A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office, the national police cyber unit and Europol," the Paris prosecutors' office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network. It said in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for "voluntary questioning" in their capacity as "de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events".

Despite new curbs, Elon Musk's Grok at times produces sexualized images A photorealistic image generated by the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok of a journalist is shown on a phone's screen on Jan. 22 | REUTERS NEW YORK - Elon Musk's flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, continues to generate sexualized images of people even when users explicitly warn that the subjects do not consent. After Musk's social media company X announced new curbs on Grok's public output, nine reporters gave it a series of prompts to determine whether and under what circumstances the chatbot would generate nonconsensual sexualized images. While Grok's public X account is no longer producing the same flood of sexualized imagery, the Grok chatbot continues to do so when prompted, even after being warned that the subjects were vulnerable or would be humiliated by the pictures, the reporters found. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories.

History is already being made at the Milano Cortina Games--and they haven't even started. Typically, it's a cool costume at the opening ceremony, or a new cauldron for the Olympic flame, or maybe a new fancy stadium the host city will have no use for in 10 years. Then there are the brand-new records set during each Games, jaw-dropping examples of human strength, talent, and mind-melting perseverance. But for the 2026 Winter Olympics, some of the most notable firsts are coming out of the Olympic Village rather than the individual venues. They are the ones pushing their sports forward and making history in the process.

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Moltbook Is a Social Network for AI Bots. Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. In this photo illustration, a smartphone displays the Moltbook website homepage. In this photo illustration, a smartphone displays the Moltbook website homepage. Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.