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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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'Solidarity as a Crime': Report Details Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protests Across West
"This trend," said one leader at the International Federation for Human Rights, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
Oct 14, 2025
A report released Tuesday by one of the world's oldest human rights groups lays out how, "from Paris to Washington, Berlin to London, support for Palestinian rights has been censored, criminalized, or violently repressed under the pretexts of combating antisemitism and protecting national security."
The International Federation for Human Rights, also known by its French abbreviation FIDH, published Solidarity as a Crime: Voices for Palestine Under Fire just days after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip, following over two years of an Israeli assault widely condemned as genocide against Palestinians.
FIDH focused on "violations of the rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression in the context of the repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement" in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
"This trend," said Yosra Frawers, head of the Maghreb and Middle East Desk at FIDH, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
The publication explains each country's history with Israel and other notable background, such as anti-protest laws, along with recent violations of the rights of academics, activists, advocacy groups, journalists, and elected officials.
For example, it points out that the US government has given Israel tens of billions of dollars in military aid since the war began two years ago, and "pro-Palestine solidarity activism in the United States has been met with repression, sanctions, and censorship for many decades."
"Since 2014, US federal and state lawmakers have proposed nearly 300 pieces of legislation aimed at repressing expressions of solidarity with Palestine, with over a quarter of the bills passing into law in 38 states and the federal government," the document details. "Over 80 bills were proposed in 2023 alone, with some as extreme as a federal bill proposing to expel all Palestinians from the US."
The report spotlights how US demonstrations against the genocide "have been met with significant suppression at the hands of the state," particularly the protests at universities. The Trump administration is still trying to deport foreign students who criticized the Israeli assault and the US government's support for it, and threatening higher education institutions' access to federal funding.
The section on the United Kingdom acknowledges that Palestine was previously "occupied by Britain under the mandate system," and the UK "has had a close relationship with Israel from the very beginning of the creation of the Israeli state" in the 1940s.
Over the past two years, the British government "has repeatedly minimized and legitimized Israel's atrocities in Gaza," and carried out a "sustained attack" on the right to protest, the publication continues. "Protests in solidarity with Gaza and against Israel's genocidal violence have been met with high levels of police surveillance and police violence."
Germany's relationship with Israel "is shaped profoundly by the history of the Holocaust," and the European powerhouse is now the Israeli government's "second-most important strategic partner in the world," behind only the United States, the document notes. It calls out "widespread bans on protests" and highlights how "Pro-Palestinian civil society organizations have been hit particularly hard by repressive measures."
France—which is enduring a broader political crisis—is also "a long-standing ally to Israel" with "a history of repression of expressions of solidarity with Palestine," according to Paris-based FIDH. "On October 12, 2023 the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin called for a complete ban on all assemblies expressing solidarity with Palestine."
"Despite the ban, mass protests went ahead in cities across France... These protests were met with police violence, including the use of tear gas and water cannons. Many protestors were arrested, often using disproportionate force," the group wrote. "Immigrants and foreigners have often borne the brunt of repressive measures."
FIDH's report—which features "vital" contributions from the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States, Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland, and Ligue des droits de l'Homme in France—concludes with recommendations, including specific suggestions for each country examined as well as civil society groups, media platforms, and academic, regional, international, and philanthropic institutions.
"States must guarantee everyone the right to express themselves and to mobilize peacefully, on all causes," said FIDH president Alice Mogwe. "The defense of human rights ought not to be constrained by political sensibilities."
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Top French Economist Says Ex-Prime Ministers Should Have Embraced Wealth Tax
"This blocking attitude is at the heart of the budget crisis and also, as a result, of the current political crisis," said Gabriel Zucman after another French prime minister resigned.
Oct 07, 2025
On the heels of France losing yet another prime minister, Politico on Tuesday published an interview in which world-renowned French economist Gabriel Zucman argued that the recently departed leaders should have supported his proposed wealth tax.
Zucman, who leads the EU Tax Observatory and teaches at French and US universities, has advocated for imposing a wealth tax of at least 2% for the ultrarich in France and around the world. However, Sébastien Lecornu, who resigned as prime minister on Monday, after less than a month in office, did not embrace that approach, the economist noted.
Former Prime Minister François Bayrou also didn't support the "Zucman tax." He was in the post when the French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—and when the Senate ultimately rejected the policy in June. He resigned in early September, after losing a no-confidence vote.
Before both of them, Michel Barnier was prime minister. He resigned last December, also after losing a no-confidence vote. He, too, didn't embrace the tax policy, despite polling that shows, as Zucman put it, "there is a very strong demand among the population for greater tax fairness and better taxation of the ultrarich."
"The executive has so far remained completely deaf to both parliamentary work and popular democratic demands," Zucman told Politico's Giorgio Leali. "They didn't try to have a real dialogue with the opposition on this."
"The very wealthy individuals affected by this measure, and the media outlets they own, have spoken out very vehemently on the subject in an attempt to discourage the government from engaging in any form of reflection or discussion," he added.
On social media, Leali shared a quote from Zucman tying the former prime ministers' attitudes on the tax proposal and broader budget fight to the country's current political crisis—in which "increasingly isolated" President Emmanuel Macron faces pressure from across France's political spectrum to hold a snap parliamentary election or resign.
As Reuters reported Tuesday, "Resignation calls, long confined to the fringes, have entered the mainstream during one of the worst political crises since the 1958 creation of the Fifth Republic, France's current system of government."
Even Édouard Philippe—who, as France 24 noted, was "Macron's longest-serving prime minister from 2017 to 2020"—is urging him to step down, saying that the president must help France "emerge in an orderly and dignified manner from a political crisis that is harming the country."
After the anti-austerity "Block Everything" protests across France on September 10, Mathilde Panot of the leftist party La France Insoumise (LFI) announced that 100 members of Parliament endorsed a motion to impeach Macron.
LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon said Monday that "following the resignation of Sébastien Lecornu, we call for the immediate consideration of the motion tabled by 104 MPs for the impeachment of Emmanuel Macron."
"Emmanuel Macron is responsible for the political chaos," he said, calling out "those in power" for failing to respond to not only the demonstrations on September 10 but also the union mobilizations on September 18 and October 2.
"The president is rejected by public opinion, which desires his departure, and he has lost the support of ALL the parties in his political coalition," Mélenchon added Tuesday. "Why does he remain? A return to coherence for the country requires his departure and a return to the voice of the people."
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