The French investigation was opened in January last year by the prosecutors' cybercrime unit, the Paris prosecutors' office said in a statement. It's looking into alleged "complicity" in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.
X and Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI also face intensifying scrutiny from Britain's data privacy regulator, which opened formal investigations into how they handled personal data when they developed and deployed Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage last month after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users.
Federal and state governments have outlawed "revenge porn," the nonconsensual online sharing of sexual images of individuals, often by former partners. Last year, South Carolina became the 50th state to enact such a law. The recent rise of easy-to-use generative AI tools, however, has introduced a new wrinkle: What happens when those images look real but have been created by AI? What's lawful in the U.S. and who's responsible is not yet clear.
Humanity is entering a phase of artificial intelligence development that will test who we are as a species, the boss of leading AI startup Anthropic has said, arguing that the world needs to wake up to the risks. Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive of the company behind the hit chatbot Claude, voiced his fears in a 19,000-word essay entitled the adolescence of technology. Describing the arrival of highly powerful AI systems as potentially imminent, he wrote:
Belfast City Council looks set to suspend its use of social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, following recent concerns over its AI tool Grok. The council's strategic and resources committee on Friday decided it should "suspend posting on its account and signpost followers towards the council's other social media channels". The decision is subject to ratification at the next full council meeting on 2 February.
Ring has launched a new tool that can tell you if a video clip captured by its camera has been altered or not. The company says that every video downloaded from Ring starting in December 2025 going forward will come with a digital security seal. "Think of it like the tamper-evident seal on a medicine bottle," it explained. Its new tool, called Ring Verify, can tell you if a video has been altered in any way.
YouTube is just as wary of the rise of AI slop as you, and that's why more AI-generated content is coming to the platform in the near future. In a lengthy outlining YouTube's 2026 plans, CEO Neal Mohan said the company will continue to embrace this new "creative frontier" by soon allowing its creators to throw together Shorts using their AI-generated likeness.
I was born an only child, but now I have a twin. He's an exact duplicate of me -down to my clothing, my home, my facial expressions, and even my voice. I built him with AI, and I can make him say whatever I want. He's so convincing that he could fool my own mother. Here's how I built him-and what AI digital twins mean for the future of people.
In a letter to the leaders of X, Meta, Alphabet, Snap, Reddit and TikTok, several U.S. senators are asking the companies to provide proof that they have "robust protections and policies" in place, and to explain how they plan to curb the rise of sexualized deepfakes on their platforms. The senators also demanded that the companies preserve all documents and information relating to the creation, detection, moderation, and monetization of sexualized, AI-generated images, as well as any related policies.
Twitter, the world's former public stage turned Stormfront alternative and porn site not long after Elon Musk's takeover, is facing new legal trouble over Grok's penchant for turning any photo into goon material at a user's request. Pornographic deepfakes are nothing new, we've covered attempts to regulate it in the past, but Grok's near omnipresence combined with the need for Twitter users to control women's bodies has made it very easy to sexually harass women and children online.
"xAI appears to be facilitating the large-scale production of deepfake nonconsensual intimate images that are being used to harass women and girls across the internet, including via the social media platform X," California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office said in a statement. The statement cited a report that "more than half of the 20,000 images generated by xAI between Christmas and New Years depicted people in minimal clothing," including some that appeared to be children.
Ofcom noted that in its view, CSAM does include "AI-generated imagery, deepfakes and other manipulated media," which "would fall under the category of a 'pseudo-photograph.' As Ofcom explained, "If the impression conveyed by a pseudo-photograph is that the person shown is a child, then the photo should be treated as showing a child." Similarly, "manipulated images and videos such as deepfakes should be considered within the scope" of intimate image abuse, Ofcom said.
