https://www.axios.com/2026/01/14/grok-deepfakes-hill-action
David‘s finds: “Nvidia EDEN eyes thousands of incurable diseases,” “AI May Be ‘Coming For Our Jobs,’ But It Really Sucks At Doing Them,” “Pentagon Is Embracing Musk’s Grok AI Chatbot,” “Can AI Fall in Love?” and much more.
News from Stateline
AI therapy chatbots draw new oversight as suicides raise alarm
Despite Trump efforts to override state laws, legislators press ahead.
States are passing laws to prevent artificially intelligent chatbots, such as ChatGPT, from being able to offer mental health advice to young users, following a trend of people harming themselves after seeking therapy from the AI programs. Chatbots might be able to offer resources, direct users to mental health practitioners or suggest coping strategies. But ….“I have met some of the families who have really tragically lost their children following interactions that their kids had with chatbots that were designed, in some cases, to be extremely deceptive, if not manipulative, in encouraging kids to end their lives,” said Mitch Prinstein, senior science adviser at the American Psychological Association
More here —>
January 15, 2026
____________________________
News from The Deep View
Nvidia EDEN eyes thousands of incurable diseases
Nvidia has teamed up with UK startup Basecamp Research, a frontier AI lab in life sciences, to announce “programmable gene insertion,” a new form of therapy that could reprogram cells and replace genes to treat incurable diseases.
Basecamp Research claims that its breakthrough has achieved one of the key goals of genetic medicine over the past several decades: replacing DNA sequences at precise locations in a person’s genome. Comparatively, therapies based on the popular CRISPR technology make small edits that damage DNA, which limits their use.
More here —>
January 15, 2026
____________________________
News from AP News
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal,...The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children….The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California,… into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls.
Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.” Musk’s company, xAI, now says it will geoblock content if it violates laws in a particular place.
More here —>
January 15, 2026
____________________________
News from Popular Information
These companies advertised on X as Grok produced sexualized images of kids
At least 37 major companies were advertising on the platform this week, a Popular Information investigation reveals. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, is facing scrutiny and international investigations for allowing users to create nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children in recent weeks. Beginning in late December, Grok’s X account, upon user request, generated images that removed or altered the clothing of real people.
More here —>
January 15, 2026
____________________________
News from Engadget
Bandcamp prohibits music made ‘wholly or in substantial part’ by AI
It added that impersonating other artists or styles using AI is ‘strictly prohibited.’
Bandcamp has addressed the AI slop problem vexing musicians and their fans of late. The company is banning any music or audio on its platform that is “wholly or in substantial part” made by generative AI, according to its blog. It also clarified that the use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is “strictly prohibited” by policies already in place.
More here —>
January 14, 2026
____________________________
News from Axios
Grok deepfakes accelerate Hill action
Backlash over deepfakes made with Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is fueling a push on Capitol Hill to give victims the right to sue….The Senate on Tuesday passed the bipartisan DEFIANCE Act — which would create a federal civil right of action for people who are victims of intimate digital forgeries — by unanimous consent.
More here —>
January 14, 2026
____________________________
News from Wonkette
AI May Be ‘Coming For Our Jobs,’ But It Really Sucks At Doing Them
We definitely don’t have to worry yet.
… the parade of tech bros excitedly talking about how AI is going to take all of our jobs…. the rest of us will just live in abject poverty…. Elon Musk just announced the other day that it is “pointless” to go to medical school (or get any other kind of education) because “in three years time” his Optimus robots will have replaced all of the surgeons….But, as we seem to keep finding out … the AI revolution isn’t working out quite like they thought it would…. The Remote Labor Study, a project of both Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety, found that while AI can technically “do” some jobs, it cannot do them very well.
More here —>
January 14, 2026
____________________________
News from Axios
AI might one day replace us all — for now though, humans still spend a lot of time cleaning up its mess, according to a Workday survey, released today.
Why it matters: The promise of AI is productivity. The reality is often more work, not less.
Zoom in: For employees, AI is both speeding up work and creating more of it,per a report by HR software company Workday.
More here —>
January 14, 2026
____________________________
News from The Deep View
Apple’s Google-powered Siri will reshape AI
Apple users …are finally one step away from your long-awaited Siri upgrade. Apple has officially signed a multi-year agreement with Google to use Gemini’s AI models to power its next-gen version of Siri, according to a joint statement the companies released on X. While Google’s technology will make Siri much more capable and usable, Apple’s own foundation models will do some of the heavy lifting, and its Private Cloud Compute will still keep things secure.
More here —>
January 13, 2026
____________________________
News from Reader Supported News
Pentagon Is Embracing Musk’s Grok AI Chatbot as It Draws Global Outcry
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network….”Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said. The announcement comes just days after Grok… drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.
More here —>
January 13, 2026
____________________________
News from The Intercept
Data centers present sprawling engineering and political problems, with ravenous appetites for land and resources. Building them on Earth has proven problematic enough — so why is everyone suddenly talking about launching them into space?….The data center surge has spawned a backlash, as communities grow skeptical
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Jeff Bezos’s space launch firm Blue Origin has been working on an orbital data center project for over a year. Elon Musk, not known for accurate predictions, has publicly committed SpaceX to putting AI data centers in orbit.
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from Cryptopolitan
Qwen becomes world’s most downloaded AI system with 700 million users
Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen artificial intelligence models have reached 700 million downloads on Hugging Face as of January, making them the most popular open-source AI system worldwide.
Research from consultancy AIBase, released Friday, showed that Qwen’s downloads in December alone were more than the combined downloads of the next eight leading models on the platform. These competing models come from companies like Meta Platforms and OpenAI, along with Chinese companies Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and MiniMax.
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from What’s in AI
Can AI Fall in Love? The Answer Might Surprise You
Can artificial intelligence (AI) experience love like humans do? In this article, we’ll explore the fascinating world of AI, its capabilities, and whether or not it can truly fall in love….To understand if AI can experience love, we first need to grasp what AI actually is.
,,,The truth is, AI lacks…
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from DefenseScoop
Army moves to assess AI’s ‘unpredictable behaviors’ and safeguard autonomous systems
The new deal is for the Generative Unwanted Activity Recognition and Defense (GUARD) prototype project, which intends to detect unpredictable AI behavior, “ultimately ensuring that these next generation autonomous capabilities are trustworthy and effective for future military operations,” …The Army tapped a research and development company to create software that can identify and analyze “unpredictable” artificial intelligence behavior to ensure its AI-enabled systems are trustworthy…
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from The Deep View
DeepSeek readies its next AI disruption
DeepSeek is preparing to rattle the AI world once again. The Chinese AI firm is reportedly preparing to launch its next-generation model, V4, featuring code-generation capabilities that could surpass competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to The Information. The release would mark another major competitor in the open-source market as open-source models continue to catch up with their closed-source counterparts. But it’s not the only one….
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from The AI Report
Google pulls AI overviews for certain searches
….the feature was providing misleading and false health information … “alarming” and “dangerous.”
- In one case, Google’s AI overview wrongly advised pancreatic cancer patients to get rid of high-fat foods, the exact opposite of what should be recommended, a mistake experts warned could increase the risk of death.
- Another AI overview provided incorrect information about function tests, which could lead people with major liver disease to wrongly believe they are healthy based on faulty guidance.
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from the US Department of War
War Department ‘SWAT Team’ Removes Barriers to Efficient AI Development
“We will take a wartime approach to people and policies that block this progress,” he [Secretary of War Pete Hegseth] said. “Barriers to data sharing, authority to operate … test and evaluation and contracting are now treated as operational risks, not simply bureaucratic inconveniences; we are blowing up these barriers.” The secretary said he’s established a “barrier removal SWAT team”
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from Quartz
Nvidia and Eli Lilly are launching an AI drug discovery lab
A multiyear co-innovation lab ties Eli Lilly’s drug pipeline to Nvidia’s next hardware cycle, betting faster discovery comes from tighter loops
Nvidia and Eli Lilly announced Monday that they’re launching a co-innovation AI lab aimed at speeding up drug discovery — a five-year commitment of up to $1 billion, built around accelerated, closed-loop discovery that’s meant to “industrialize” AI models and accelerate clinical development. The companies will co-locate at a new Bay Area site so teams can work together in real time, with the opening targeted for the end of March.
More here —>
January 12, 2026
____________________________
News from Simon Willison’s Weblog
Don’t fall into the anti-AI hype.
I’m glad someone was brave enough to say this. There is a lot of anti-AI sentiment in the software development community these days. Much of it is justified, but if you let people convince you that AI isn’t genuinely useful for software developers or that this whole thing will blow over soon it’s becoming clear that you’re taking on a very real risk to your future career.
More here —>
January 11, 2026
____________________________
News from Oligarch Watch
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…. In response, the European Commission ordered X to preserve all documents related to the chatbot until the end of this year. …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.
More here —>
January 9, 2026
____________________________
News from The AI Report
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health
…a dedicated health and wellness experience within ChatGPT that allows users to securely connect health records and wellness apps (like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal) to receive personalized responses grounded in their own health information….Over 230M people globally ask health and wellness questions on ChatGPT every week, prompting OpenAI to create a separate space with purpose-built encryption and isolation that keeps health conversations protected and compartmentalized from other chats.
More here —>
January 8, 2026
# # #
About The Author
