One advertisement featured a pornographic video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician. Apple removed the app from the App Store after an inquiry from WIRED. Meta platforms recently ran ads for an AI porn-generation tool that seemingly encouraged users to create deepfaked videos resembling female US politicians, despite the company's policies against ads containing sexual material. It's the latest in a series of failures by Meta to keep advertisements for tools that produce nonconsensual intimate imagery off its platforms. The tool, which is called Kromix, bills itself as an "AI image styler."

Donald Trump Jr. (left) and Eric Trump gesture outside the Nasdaq building after ringing the opening bell to celebrate the closing of ALT5's $1.5 billion offering and adoption of its $WLFI Treasury Strategy at the Nasdaq Market, in New York on Aug. 13, 2025. BOSTON - U.S. President Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial is collaborating with a Hong Kong-based venture offering artificial intelligence models developed by Chinese companies the U.S. administration has flagged for national security concerns. WorldClaw, founded earlier this year, offers customers access to a suite of AI models and accepts World Liberty's crypto tokens as payment. The Trump family, through its ownership stake, earns revenue from the use of World Liberty's tokens. A review found that 43 of the 90 models available through WorldClaw's website -- nearly half -- were developed by Alibaba, Baidu, Z.ai and other Chinese technology companies the Trump administration says pose risks to national security and intellectual property. WorldClaw also offers access to dozens of models from U.S. firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Japan's parliament has enacted a controversial law introducing criminal penalties for desecrating the national flag. The passage of the legislation on Friday is part of an ongoing drive by staunchly conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to promote traditional patriotism and correct what her supporters call a "wrong" legal double standard. Under the newly enacted law, violators who publicly damage, remove or defile the national flag in a manner that causes others "extreme discomfort or disgust" face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 200,000 yen ($1,250). According to Japanese broadcaster Kyodo News, the law covers physical acts of vandalism such as stomping, burning, or throwing mud in public spaces, as well as livestreaming such acts. The law drafting committee, led by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, carved out highly specific legal exemptions. The ruling party clarified that the new law completely exempts physical paintings, digital media including anime, manga, video games, and generative AI, and even the miniature paper flags famously used to decorate children's restaurant meals.

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Gotta catch an MP! Players'debate' UK politicians in Pokémon-style game Creator of Politidex hopes free online app will help humanise politics and act as a way of'flipping the narrative' The year is 2016 and Pokémon Go has taken over the world. People are wandering for miles on end, disrupting concerts, and even slamming into poles in their attempts to capture fantastical cartoon creatures. Ten years later, a new generation are flocking to another Pokémon-inspired game. Instead of Pikachu, Charizard and Blastoise, however, players are catching and training up their local politicians in order to build their own political parties. Some MPs are even catching themselves.

OpenAI's President Gave Millions to Trump. He Says It's for Humanity In an interview with WIRED, Greg Brockman says his political donations support OpenAI's mission--even if some employees at the company disagree. OpenAI's president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn't consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump's biggest individual donors of 2025. Greg and his wife, Anna Brockman, gave $25 million to MAGA Inc--a super PAC that supports President Trump--in September of last year. The pair also gave $25 million to a bipartisan AI super PAC, Leading the Future, which says it plans to oppose politicians that jeopardize Americans' "ability to benefit from AI."

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.

This year, the right-to-repair movement got a boost from--surprisingly--big tech, tariffs, and economic downturn. It has been a big year for the right to repair, the movement of advocates pushing for people to be able to fix their own electronics and equipment without manufacturer approval. The issue has gathered broad support from technologists, farmers, military leaders, and politicians on both sides of the aisle. It is popular with just about everyone--except the companies who stand to gain if the parts, instructions, and tools necessary to fix their products remain under lock and key. Three US states passed right-to-repair laws this year, including in heavily Republican states like Texas where the measure received a unanimous vote in both the House and Senate.

'It was extremely pornographic': Cara Hunter on the deepfake video that nearly ended her political career The Irish politician was targeted in 2022, in the final weeks of her run for office. When Cara Hunter, the Irish politician, looks back on the moment she found out she had been deepfaked, she says it is "like watching a horror movie". The setting is her grandmother's rural home in the west of Tyrone on her 90th birthday, April 2022. "Everyone was there," she says. "I was sitting with all my closest family members and family friends when I got a notification through Facebook Messenger." It was from a stranger.

Zohran Mamdani ran an online campaign based on real people and a real message. There are many fair questions following Zohran Mamdani's decisive victory. Will his campaign be a template for others? Will he be able or allowed to follow through on his campaign promises? Will the Democratic establishment accept that its future could look something like this proud 34-year-old democratic socialist?