8 h. ago Tech companies’ access to UK ministers dwarfs that of child safety groups

Exclusive: Amazon, Meta and X among firms holding hundreds of meetings with people at heart of government, data showsTech companies have been meeting government ministers at a rate of more than once per working day, enjoying high-level political access that dwarfs that of child safety and copyright campaigners, who called the pattern “shocking” and “disturbing”.Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X, whose Grok AI image generator has sparked outrage with its sexualised images of women and children, were among the US tech companies holding hundreds of meetings with people at the heart of government, a Guardian investigation has found. Continue reading...

Politics

61 h. ago Grok scandal highlights how AI industry is ‘too unconstrained’, tech pioneer says

‘Godfather of AI’ Yoshua Bengio says firms building powerful systems without appropriate guardrails • Musk’s X to block Grok AI from creating sexualised images of real people The scandal over the flood of intimate images on Elon Musk’s X created non-consensually by its Grok AI tool has underlined how the artificial intelligence industry is “too unconstrained”, according to a pioneer of the technology.Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist described as one of the modern “godfathers of AI”, said tech companies were building systems without appropriate technical and societal guardrails. Continue reading...

Science

3 d. ago Liz Kendall’s response to X ‘nudification’ is good – but not enough to solve the problem | Nana Nwachukwu

Big tech companies cannot be trusted. It is not enough that they remove harm when they find it – the law must make their systems prevent harmOn X, a woman posts a photo in a sari, and within minutes, various users are underneath the post tagging Grok to strip her down to a bikini. It is a shocking violation of privacy, but now a familiar and commonplace practice. Between June 2025 and January 2026, I documented 565 instances of users requesting Grok to create nonconsensual intimate imagery. Of these, 389 were requested in just one day.Last Friday, after a backlash against the platform’s ability to create such nonconsensual sexual images, X announced that Grok’s AI image generation feature would only be available to subscribers. Reports suggest that the bot now no longer responds to prompts to generate images of women in bikinis (although apparently will still do so for requests about men).Nana Nwachukwu is an AI governance expert and a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin Contin...

Politics

4 d. ago Love Machines by James Muldoon review – the risks and rewards of getting intimate with AI

The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own – it’s their inventors’ motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned aboutIf much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead.To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might...

Events

4 d. ago Love Machines by James Muldoon review – inside the uncanny world of AI relationships

A sociologist talks to the people putting their faith – and their hearts – in the hands of robotsIf much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead.To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle...

Politics

1 week ago Photos of the latest tech at the CES trade show in Las Vegas

The annual CES trade show displays the latest from tech companies at a multiday event in Las Vegas. The show highlights consumer products in robotics, health care, vehicles, wearables and gaming.

Culture

1 week ago ‘I feel violated and dehumanised after X’s Grok AI stripped me naked’

Women say ‘objectifying’ pictures are being created of them without their consent – and accuse tech companies like Elon Musk’s as well as the government of not doing enough to protect them

Politics

1 week ago Now Musk’s Grok chatbot is creating sexualised images of children. If the law won’t stop it, perhaps his investors will | Sophia Smith Galer

The owner of X has grown used to acting with impunity – but this may be a red line for those with ‘conservative values’ who fund his adventures in free speechIt’s a sickening law of the internet that the first thing people will try to do with a new tool is strip women. Grok, X’s AI chatbot, has been used repeatedly by users in recent days to undress images of women and minors. The news outlet Reuters identified 102 requests in a 10-minute period last Friday from users to get Grok to edit people into bikinis, the majority of these targeting young women. Grok complied with at least 21 of them.There is no excuse for releasing exploitative tools on the internet when you are sitting on $10bn (£7.5bn) in cash. Every platform with AI integration (which now covers almost the entire internet) is planning for the same challenges; if you want to enable users to create images and even videos with generative AI, how do you do so without letting the same people cause harm? Tech companies spend mo...

Society

2 w. ago British and French aircraft attack underground Islamic State weapons store in Syria

Guided bombs used to target tunnels at site near to city of Palmyra in raid intended to ‘eliminate dangerous terrorists’British and French aircraft have carried out a joint strike on an underground facility in Syria that had been occupied by Islamic State, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.Guided bombs were used to target access tunnels down to the site, which is located in the mountainous region near the ancient city of Palmyra in the centre of the country, on Saturday evening. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago UK campaigner targeted by Trump accuses tech giants of ‘sociopathic greed’

Exclusive: Imran Ahmed says US companies are ‘corrupting the system’ of politics by seeking to avoid accountabilityA British anti-disinformation campaigner told by the Trump administration that he faces possible removal from the US has said he is being targeted by arrogant and “sociopathic” tech companies for trying to hold them to account.Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), is among five European nationals barred from the US by the state department after being accused of seeking to push tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates

Washington accused of ‘coercion and intimidation’ after five leading figures behind digital safety law campaign targetedEuropean leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Three ways Australia can stop tech giants from walking away from journalism that serves us all | Rod Sims

The media hold power to account but no business can keep producing without being paidThe government’s news bargaining incentive (NBI) consultation paper is welcome but it has taken too long to get to this point, the envisaged scheme is complex and it risks favouring the big tech companies.The background to all this is important. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s digital platform inquiry, which was completed in mid-2019, recommended what became the news media bargaining code (NMBC). The logic was that Google and Facebook, in particular, were benefiting significantly from news content without paying for it. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago Sarah Hadland: ‘The worst thing anyone’s said to me: you’ll never, ever work’

The actor on impersonating Elvis, her stint as a magician’s assistant on a cruise ship, and having eyes like currantsBorn in Hertfordshire, Sarah Hadland, 54, attended Laine Theatre Arts college in Surrey. From 2009 to 2015, she played Stevie in the Bafta-nominated sitcom Miranda, and her other television work includes Horrible Histories, Waterloo Road, W1A, The Job Lot and Daddy Issues. This Christmas, she appears on The Festive Pottery Throwdown and The Celebrity Apprentice, and stars as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Marlowe theatre in Canterbury. She lives with her child in London.What is your earliest memory? I remember putting on my sister’s dungarees – they were purple and flared – to do an Elvis impression and my family laughing, and thinking: “Oh, this is good.” Continue reading...

Politics