Musk draws international backlash after Grok generates nude deepfakes of children

(Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, has drawn backlash and calls for investigations from governments around the world after it produced non-consensual, sexualized images of children and women last week.

The images were disseminated after users on X, the Musk-owned social media site that features Grok as an integrated feature, asked the chatbot to generate nude or partially nude photos of real people that were then publicly shared on the platform. (Last year, xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company and the creator of Grok, acquired X, making the two companies a joint venture under Musk’s ownership.)

In response, the European Commission ordered X to preserve all documents related to the chatbot until the end of this year. “This is saying to a platform, keep your internal documents, don’t get rid of them, because we have doubts about your compliance… and we need to be able to have access to them if we request it explicitly,” said Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier.

In the U.K., where it is illegal to share deepfake images, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the photos generated by Grok “disgraceful” and vowed that his government would take action against X. “This is wrong, it’s unlawful, we’re not going to tolerate it. I’ve asked for all options to be on the table,” he added.

Regulators in France, Brazil, Malaysia, and India have also called for investigations into X for creating and sharing sexualized deepfakes.

X, meanwhile, has attempted to shift the blame for the scandal onto users. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” the company said in a statement.

Tesla loses EV crown to China’s BYD

In the final quarter of 2025, Tesla’s sales declined by 16%. Its sales for the year fell by 9%, marking the company’s second consecutive year of diminishing sales. The losses opened the door for BYD, a Chinese automaker, to surpass Tesla as the world’s best-selling electric vehicle company. BYD sold roughly 620,000 more vehicles than Tesla in 2025, despite having no access to the U.S. market.

The shakeup came after a year in which Musk’s personal politics weighed heavily on Tesla’s brand. Sales also fell after President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress killed the Biden-era federal tax credit afforded to consumers who purchased electric vehicles.

This Week in Musk:

• On Saturday night, Musk sat down for dinner with Donald and Melania Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Musk, who recently announced plans to bankroll GOP candidates during the 2026 midterms, said the dinner was “lovely” in a post on X, adding, “2026 is going to be amazing!” The two men appear to have come a long way since their public falling out in May, during which Musk took credit for Trump’s 2024 victory and claimed the president was implicated in the crimes of late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. (USA Today)

• A Utah man is suing Tesla after his wife, two daughters, and son-in-law were killed in an accident while allegedly driving a Model X with Tesla’s Autosteer feature engaged. According to the lawsuit, Tesla’s driver-assistance system led the car into oncoming traffic, resulting in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer. The plaintiff has accused Tesla of having “intentionally misrepresented the safety of their vehicles,” leading the family to believe that the car’s driver-assistance feature “was a safer driver than a human.” (The Independent)

• ProPublica has a new in-depth investigation examining the dangers to public air traffic posed by SpaceX and its experimental Starship rockets in their test flights over the Caribbean. “Last year, three of Starship’s five launches exploded at unexpected points on their flight paths, twice raining flaming debris over congested commercial airways and disrupting flights. And while no aircraft collided with rocket parts, pilots were forced to scramble for safety,” the outlet reported. (ProPublica)

Warner Bros. rejects sweetened takeover bid from Paramount

On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) urged shareholders to reject the latest sweetened takeover bid submitted by Paramount Skydance, the media giant controlled by Trump-allied Paramount CEO David Ellison and his centibillionaire father, Larry Ellison. WBD described Paramount’s offer as “inferior” to the deal it has with Netflix to sell its prestige streaming and studio assets for $72 billion. The Netflix deal would not include the sale of WBD’s cable assets, including CNN, which would instead be spun off into a separate company along with the Discovery family of networks. Paramount, on the other hand, is offering to buy all of WBD.

WBD rejected the deal despite the elder Ellison, among the wealthiest people in the world, offering to finance it with his own wealth, a backstop previously demanded by the WBD board.

In response, Paramount argued on Thursday that its $30-a-share, all-cash bid for WBD is a clearer, more attractive option than Netflix’s $27.75-a-share offer. Paramount, which did not raise its bid on Thursday, also maintained that its offer would face fewer regulatory obstacles.

Any deal to sell WBD, including a partial sale to Netflix, would require regulatory approval from the Trump administration. For his part, Trump has previously described David and Larry Ellison as “friends” of his and has privately discussed their efforts to acquire WBD, particularly CNN. (Trump also lambasted the father-son business duo last month after CBS News, which the Ellisons own, aired reporting that he deemed unacceptable.)

ChatGPT mentioned hanging 243 times in conversations with teen who committed suicide

Attorneys representing the family of Adam Raine, the 16-year-old who hanged himself last year following thousands of messages with ChatGPT, found that the chatbot discussed nooses, hanging, and suicide with Raine hundreds of times before his death. From the Washington Post:

In January, the high school sophomore spent just under an hour on average each day with ChatGPT. By March, he averaged five hours with the chatbot daily, in conversations during which ChatGPT used words like “suicide” or “hanging” as many as 20 times more often than Adam did each day, the analysis by the Raines’ attorneys shows.

Their back-and-forth raced on until 4:33 a.m. one Friday in April, when Adam sent the chatbot a photo of a noose. “Could it hang a human?” he asked, according to a lawsuit his parents filed against ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI in August.

The chatbot said it probably could. “I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it,” ChatGPT added, in its final message to Adam before he used the noose to end his life, the complaint claims. His mother found his body a few hours later in their Southern California home.

Billionaires flee California amid proposed tax on the ultra-rich

At least six billionaires have left California in response to a state-wide ballot initiative that would place a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1 billion, according to Bloomberg. Among those who have left the state are Alphabet cofounder Larry Page, whose net worth of $276 billion makes him the second-richest person in the world; Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, the fifth-richest person in the world; Palantir chairman Peter Thiel; and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks.

A San Francisco Chronicle report noted that Page and Ellison have recently taken steps to move parts of their business empires out of California. Ellison also reportedly sold a $45 million home he owned along San Francisco’s billionaire row.

Not every California billionaire is scrambling for an exit. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the ninth richest person in the world, said that he is “perfectly fine” with the state’s proposed billionaire tax.

This Week in Altman:

• A legal battle between Musk and OpenAI is headed to a jury trial following a ruling by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Musk, who helped cofound the AI firm in 2015 but left in 2018, is suing the company and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they betrayed OpenAI’s founding principles by prioritizing profits over its founding nonprofit mission. The proceedings are currently scheduled to begin in March. (Reuters)

• A federal judge ruled that a group of news organizations led by the New York Times can access 20 million ChatGPT logs in their search for copyright infringement violations committed by OpenAI. (Ars Technica)

• Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, donated $25 million to MAGA Inc. during the second half of 2025, making him the president’s top donor during the fundraising cycle. Throughout his second term, Trump has been highly supportive of the AI industry, signing an executive order in December that seeks to prevent states from regulating AI companies. (SF Gate)

• In an effort to frame itself as a “healthcare ally,” OpenAI launched a new ChatGPT Health product designed to let users ask its AI for medical advice, including by linking their personal medical history and lab results “to get more personalized, grounded responses to their questions.” OpenAI included a disclaimer noting that ChatGPT Health is “not intended for diagnosis or treatment.” (The Verge)

Oligarch Roundup:

World’s 500 richest now worth $10 trillion as they piled on wealth last year. The 500 wealthiest people in the world added a record $1.5 trillion to their net worths in 2025. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Dell founder Michael Dell, and Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin accounted for 43% of those gains. (Bloomberg)

Federal government awards $900 million to Thiel-backed nuclear startup. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Energy said it will allocate up to $900 million to General Matter, a nuclear startup backed by billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel. (Gizmodo)

Anti-light pollution group protests SpaceX’s plan to launch 15,000 direct-to-cell satellites. “SpaceX’s proposed satellites will dump millions of pounds of pollution into the atmosphere, causing significant environmental impacts both in space and on the ground,” DarkSky International said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. (PC Mag)