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Calls for Legal Consequences Grow After Musk AI Bot Makes Suggestive Images of Children
"Musk is not cloaked in some federal immunity just because he's off-again/on-again buddies with Trump."
Jan 02, 2026
Elon Musk is facing calls for legal ramifications after Grok, the AI chatbot used on his X social media platform, produced sexually suggestive images of children.
Politico reported on Friday that the Paris prosecutor's office in France is opening an investigation into X after Grok, following prompts from users, created deepfake photographs of both adult women and underage girls that removed their clothes and replaced them with bikinis.
Politico added that the investigation into X over the images will "bolster" an ongoing investigation launched by French prosecutors last year into Grok's dissemination of Holocaust denial propaganda.
France is not the only government putting pressure on Musk, as TechCrunch reported on Friday that India's information technology ministry has given X 72 hours to restrict users' ability to generate content deemed "obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law."
Failure to comply with this order, the ministry warned, could lead to the government ending X's legal immunity from being sued over user-generated content.
In an interview with Indian cable news network CNBC TV18, cybersecurity expert Ritesh Bhatia argued that legal liability for the images generated by Grok should not just lie with the users whose prompts generated them, but with the creators of the chatbot itself.
"When a platform like Grok even allows such prompts to be executed, the responsibility squarely lies with the intermediary," said Bhatia. "Technology is not neutral when it follows harmful commands. If a system can be instructed to violate dignity, the failure is not human behavior alone—it is design, governance, and ethical neglect. Creators of Grok need to take immediate action."
Corey Rayburn Yung, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, argued on Bluesky that it was "unprecedented" for a digital platform to give "users a tool to actively create" child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
"There are no other instances of a major company affirmatively facilitating the production of child pornography," Yung emphasized. "Treating this as the inevitable result of generative AI and social media is a harrowing mistake."
Andy Craig, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, said that US states should use their powers to investigate X over Grok's generation of CSAM, given that it is unlikely the federal government under President Donald Trump will do so.
"Every state has its equivalent laws about this stuff," Craig explained. "Musk is not cloaked in some federal immunity just because he's off-again/on-again buddies with Trump."
Grok first gained the ability to generate sexual content this past summer when Musk introduced a new "spicy mode" for the chatbot that was immediately used to generate deepfake nude photos of celebrities.
Weeks before this, Grok began calling itself "MechaHitler" after Musk ordered his team to make tweaks to the chatbot to make it more "politically incorrect."
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UN Human Rights Chief Rips Israeli Legislation to Execute Palestinians
"When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances," said Volker Türk.
Jan 02, 2026
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Friday forcefully denounced proposed Israeli legislation that would effectively "impose mandatory death sentences exclusively on Palestinians under certain circumstances, both in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel."
The statement from the UN leader, Volker Türk, came after Israel's parliament, the Knesset, advanced three bills in November—votes that drew widespread condemnation, including from Amnesty International, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization. The proposals would have to pass two more readings to take effect.
The bill pushed by the Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power party would require courts to impose the death penalty on "a person who caused the death of an Israeli citizen deliberately or through indifference, from a motive of racism or hostility against a population, and with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land."
As Türk noted: "When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances... It is profoundly difficult to reconcile such punishment with human dignity and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people."
"Such proposals are inconsistent with Israel's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," he explained. "In particular, the introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life."
"The proposal also raises other human rights concerns, including on the basis that it is discriminatory given it will exclusively apply to Palestinians," the high commissioner continued.
He also highlighted that Palestinians are already often convicted after unfair Israeli trials, and denying any Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip a fair trial as outlined in the Fourth Geneva Convention is a war crime.
Türk's comments come after Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, argued last year that "the international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians."
Israeli politicians are pushing for the death penalty legislation over two years into a war on Gaza that has been globally decried as genocide—and led to an ongoing case before the top UN tribunal, the International Court of Justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 71,271 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded another 171,233, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. At least hundreds of those deaths have occurred since Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire agreement nearly three months ago.
Israel has also continued to limit the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including a new ban on dozens of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which Türk sharply criticized on Wednesday.
"Israel's suspension of numerous aid agencies from Gaza is outrageous," he said. "This is the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access, including Israel’s ban on UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, as well as attacks on Israeli and Palestinian NGOs amid broader access issues faced by the UN and other humanitarians."
While Israel has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years and starved many more, Israeli soldiers and settlers have also injured and killed a growing number of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank—which Netanyahu has tried to downplay.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that since the beginning of 2025, "a total of 238 Palestinians, including 56 children (24%), were killed by Israeli forces or settlers," and over the past three years, "settler violence and access restrictions have driven displacement across 85 Palestinian communities and areas in the West Bank, with 33 fully emptied of their residents."
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US Electric Grid Heading Toward 'Crisis' Thanks to AI Data Centers
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you."
Jan 02, 2026
The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026.
CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right.
However, objections to data centers aren't just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
CNBC noted that data centers' energy needs are so great that PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027.
Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he's never seen the grid under such projected strain.
"It’s at a crisis stage right now," Bowring said. "PJM has never been this short."
Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that he expects the debate over data centers to become even more intense this year once Americans start getting socked with even higher utility bills.
"I don't think we’ve seen the end of the political repercussions,” Gramlich said. “And with a lot more elections in 2026 than 2025, we’ll see a lot of implications. Every politician is going to be saying that they have the answer to affordability and their opponents’ policies would raise rates."
Concerns about data centers' impact on electric grids are rising in both red and blue states.
The Austin American-Statesman reported on Thursday that a new analysis written by the office of Austin City Manager TC Broadnax found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city's system given they are projected to need more power than can possibly be delivered with current infrastructure.
"The speed in which AI is trying to be deployed creates tremendous strain on the already tight resources in both design and construction," says the analysis, which noted that some proposed data centers are seeking more than five gigawatts, which is more than the peak load for the entire city.
In New York, local station News 10 reported last year that the New York Independent System Operator is estimating that the state's grid could be 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements by 2030 thanks in large part to data centers.
Anger over proposed data centers has even spread to President Donald Trump's primary residential home of Palm Beach County, Florida, where local residents successfully postponed the construction of a proposed 200-acre data center complex.
According to public news station WLRN, locals opposed to the project cited "expected noise from cooling towers, servers, and diesel generators, along with heavy water use, pollution concerns, and higher utility costs" when petitioning Palm Beach County commissioners to scrap the proposal.
Corey Kanterman, a local opponent of the proposed data center, told WLRN that his goal is to shut the project down entirely.
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you," Kanterman said. "Put them in the location of least impact to the environment and people. This location is not it."
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