The conservative writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair had just put her young son to bed when she received a text from a friend with a link to a page on X. When she opened it, she says she saw a photo of Grok undressing me and putting me in a bikini'. St Clair was not alone. In recent weeks, countless women have found their images digitally manipulated online by Grok, at the request of X users, to disrobe them.
The world's richest man, who co-founded OpenAI, is suing the ChatGPT developer and its chief executive, Sam Altman, over claims its leaders violated the organisation's founding mission by shifting to a for-profit model. The US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, told a hearing there was plenty of evidence that suggested OpenAI's leaders made assurances that its original nonprofit structure was going to be maintained.
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) report, citing data from Forbes, has found that U.S. billionaires' assets surged by a whopping 21 percent in 2025. The 935 billionaires in the U.S. now control $8.1 trillion in wealth, the analysis found - nearly double the amount of wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of Americans, which comprises over 170 million people. Roughly a dozen of these billionaires work in the Trump administration.
Elon Musk's chatbot has spent the last week flooding X with nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors. Circulating screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put real women in lingerie and make them spread their legs, and to put small children in bikinis. At one point, Grok was generating about one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute, according to one estimate.
At the time, I wrote that his reply to an X user, "Ok, let's do it," with a tag to X Head of Product Nikita Bier and a warning to "rigorously enforce no gaming of the system," felt like a line in the sand for how serious X was about paying people who keep its feeds alive. Now, early 2026 payout reports suggest that X is starting to follow through.
Twitter, also called X, the social media network owned and constantly used by the world's richest man as well as virtually every powerful person in the American tech industry, and on which the vast preponderance of national political figures also maintain active accounts, has a sexual harassment and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) problem. This has been true more or less since Elon Musk took it over, but this problem's latest and most repellent efflorescence is the result of one of Musk's signature additions as owner.
Elon Musk wants to bring more joy to the world. Writing on X on Christmas Eve, Musk said he was switching up Tesla's "mission wording" from "Sustainable Abundance" to "Amazing Abundance." "The latter is more joyful," he wrote. Musk appeared to be referring to Tesla's latest " master plan," its long-term strategy document. The fourth edition, released this September, contains several mentions of "sustainable abundance" - an idea that Tesla's products and services will "accelerate global prosperity" and create "a safer, cleaner, and more enjoyable world."
On February 24th, advocacy group Frequency Forward and journalist Nina Burleigh filed a public records request to the FCC, seeking details about DOGE's activities and whether they created conflicts of interest with DOGE creator Elon Musk. But the FCC has so far produced largely useless documentation that creates more questions than answers. Now, DOGE's role is among the many topics FCC Chair Brendan Carr could face during a highly anticipated oversight hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday.
Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk's estranged daughter, responded after Musk and Gavin Newsom got into an online spat over trans rights. It started when America, a PAC founded by Elon Musk, shared a clip from a recent interview of Newsom's with the New York Times, where he said, "I want to see trans kids. I have a trans godson. There's no governor who has signed more pro-trans legislation than I have. No one has been a stronger advocate for the LGBTQ community."
Hi @elonmusk ...these sonic booms have gotten progressively louder since they started launching the rockets in Santa Barbara," he wrote. "This one at 3am today felt like 150-160 dB, violently shook our whole house, and really frightened my pregnant wife. I hope they do not get louder :/" December 10, 2025 The whole tone here is unexpectedly sad, from the pensive ellipses at the start of the tweet to the slanty face at the end.
U.S. officials who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity to describe Benz's position said he's a special government employee, a type of executive-branch appointee brought in to perform important services for a limited period of time.