Support journalism that doesn't flinch . Support journalism that doesn't flinch . Elon Musk leaves a meeting with House Republicans in the basement of the US Capitol building on March 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk's company xAI over allegations that its artificial intelligence tool Grok undressed photos of them as minors--the latest challenge against the wealthiest living person's chatbot .

In 2025, when Elon Musk joined the government as the de facto head of something called the "department of government efficiency", he declared that governments were poorly configured "big dumb machines". To the senator Ted Cruz, he explained that "the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to actually look at the computers". Muskism came to Washington soaked in memes, adolescent boasts and sadistic victory dances over mass firings. Leading a team of teenage coders and mid-level managers drawn from his suite of companies, Musk aimed to enter the codebase and rewrite regulations and budget lines from within. He would drag the paper-pushing bureaucracy kicking and screaming into the digital 21st century, scanning the contents of cavernous rooms of filing cabinets and feeding the data into a single interoperable system. The undertaking combined features of private equity-led restructuring with startup management, shot through with the sensibility of gaming and rightwing culture war. To succeed, he would need "God mode", an overview of the whole. If the mandate of Doge was to "[modernise] federal technology and software to maximise governmental efficiency and productivity", in the words of the executive order that launched the initiative on 20 January 2025, the reality was a strengthening of the state's surveillance capacities. Over time, Musk had become convinced that the real bugs in the code were people, especially the non-white illegal immigrants whom he saw as pawns in a liberal scheme to corrupt democracy and beneficiaries of what he called "suicidal empathy". He understood empathy itself in coding terms.

Tennessee minors sue Musk's xAI, alleging Grok generated sexual images of them Governments and regulators around the world have launched probes into xAI, imposed bans and demanded safeguards in a growing push to curb illegal and offensive material. Three Tennessee plaintiffs, including two minors, sued Elon Musk's xAI on Monday, alleging that it knowingly designed its Grok image generator to let people create sexually explicit content by using real photos of others. The lawsuit, filed in the San Jose, California federal court, is seeking class-action status for people in the United States who were reasonably identifiable in sexualized images or videos generated by Grok based on real images of themselves. The artificial intelligence company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After an outcry over sexually explicit content generated by the chatbot, xAI said in January that it had blocked all users from editing images of real people in revealing clothing and from generating images of people in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it's illegal. Governments and regulators around the world have also since launched probes, imposed bans and demanded safeguards in a growing push to curb illegal and offensive material.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives a speech during the World Governments Summit in Dubai on February 3, 2026. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives a speech during the World Governments Summit in Dubai on February 3, 2026. The Spanish government has called for an investigation into social media giants X, Meta, and TikTok over their alleged role in producing and spreading AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The Council of Ministers will invoke Article 8 of the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecution Service to request that it investigate the crimes that X, Meta and TikTok may be committing through the creation and dissemination of child pornography by means of their AI, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X on Tuesday. Sánchez accused the platforms of "attacking the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters," saying that "the impunity of the giants must end."

Australia's eSafety commissioner has welcomed the global regulatory focus on Elon Musk's X after this week's raid in France. Australia's eSafety commissioner has welcomed the global regulatory focus on Elon Musk's X after this week's raid in France. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, says global regulatory focus on Elon Musk's X has reached a "tipping point" after a raid of the company's offices in France this week. The raid on Tuesday was part of an investigation that included alleged offences of complicity in the possession and organised distribution of child abuse images, violation of image rights through sexualised deepfakes, and denial of crimes against humanity. A number of other countries - including the UK and Australia - and the EU have launched investigations in the past few weeks into X after its AI chatbot, Grok, was used to mass-produce sexualised images of women and children in response to user requests.

While SpaceX is routinely described as being owned by Elon Musk, he is not the only person in the capsule. While SpaceX is routinely described as being owned by Elon Musk, he is not the only person in the capsule. Elon Musk is taking SpaceX's minority shareholders for a ride T o Elon Musk's fanclub, there is nothing to see apart from more evidence of the great man's visionary genius. SpaceX, the rocket firm, is buying xAI, the artificial intelligence developer, and the combination of these two Musk-controlled entities is being valued at $1.25tn (£910bn). Or, as Musk described it, he is creating "the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world's foremost real-time information and free-speech platform".

French prosecutors carried out a search on the offices of Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday morning and summoned the billionaire owner to attend a hearing in April. Conducted by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office, along with the French national cyber unit and European Union police agency Europol, the search marks an escalation of the ongoing investigation into X over suspected abuse of algorithms, plus allegations related to deepfake images and wider concerns over posts generated by the platform's AI chatbot, Grok. The office said the search was carried out with "the objective of ultimately ensuring the compliance of the X platform with French law" and in particular, a focus on X's Grok, designed by xAI, which chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau says has led "to the dissemination of Holocaust denial content and sexually explicit deepfakes." Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth is quoted as telling Associated Press that the police agency "is supporting the French authorities in this." Musk and former CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, have both been summoned for "voluntary interviews" with French prosecutors on April 20.

French police have raided the Paris offices of X and summoned its owner, Elon Musk, to appear at a hearing, amid an ongoing investigation into the social media giant, the prosecution has said. The search on Tuesday related to an investigation launched in January last year into allegations of biased algorithms and fraudulent data extraction by the platform, the Paris Prosecutor's Office said in a post on X. These included possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, defamation of personal image related to the creation of sexually explicit "deepfakes", Holocaust denial, and manipulation of an automated data processing system. Prosecutors have also filed requests for "voluntary interviews" of Musk - the billionaire CEO of X's parent company xAI, as well as SpaceX and Tesla - and the platform's former CEO, Linda Yaccarino, on April 20. Other staff at X - known as Twitter before Musk's 2022 purchase of the platform - have been summoned to appear the same week as witnesses, the office said.

In a pine forest on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the only active nickel mine in the US is nearing the end of its life. At a time when carmakers want the metal for electric-vehicle batteries, nickel concentration at Eagle Mine is falling and could soon drop too low to warrant digging. Demand for nickel, copper, and rare earth elements is rapidly increasing amid the explosive growth of metal-intensive data centers, electric cars, and renewable energy projects. But producing these metals is becoming harder and more expensive because miners have already exploited the best resources. Here's how biotechnology could help . What we've been getting wrong about AI's truth crisis What would it take to convince you that the era of truth decay we were long warned about--where AI content dupes us, shapes our beliefs even when we catch the lie, and erodes societal trust in the process--is now here?

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.