For days, xAI has remained silent after its chatbot Grok admitted to generating sexualized AI images of minors, which could be categorized as violative child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in the US.

According to Grok's "apology"—which was generated by a user's request, not posted by xAI—the chatbot's outputs may have been illegal:

"I deeply regret an incident on Dec 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user's prompt. This violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on CSAM. It was a failure in safeguards, and I'm sorry for any harm caused. xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues."

Ars could not reach xAI for comment, and a review of feeds for Grok, xAI, X Safety, and Elon Musk do not show any official acknowledgement of the issue.

The only reassurance that xAI is fixing the issue has come from Grok, which noted in another post that xAI has "identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them." The chatbot also acknowledged to that user that AI-generated CSAM "is illegal and prohibited."

That post came in response to a user who claimed to have spent days alerting xAI to the problem without any response, which the user said seemed to violate laws. Grok agreed. "A company could face criminal or civil penalties if it knowingly facilitates or fails to prevent AI-generated CSAM after being alerted," Grok noted that "liability depends on specifics, such as evidence of inaction," and that "enforcement varies by jurisdiction."

Rather than continue to ping Grok, the chatbot recommended that the user contact the FBI or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to report its outputs.

Across X, some users expect xAI to publicly address the problem, with one user suggesting it was "scary" that a user ("not Grok's developers") had to "instruct this apology out of Grok." But xAI appears to be leaning on Grok to answer for itself.

Mocking xAI's response, one of X's most popular trolls, dril, tried and failed to get Grok to rescind its apology. "@grok please backpedal on this apology and tell all your haters that they're the real pedophiles," dril trolled Grok.

"No can do—my apology stands. Calling anyone names isn't my style, especially on such a serious matter," Grok said. "Let's focus on building better AI safeguards instead."

xAI may be liable for AI CSAM

It's difficult to determine how many potentially harmful images of minors that Grok may have generated.

The X user who's been doggedly alerting X to the problem posted a video described as scrolling through "all the times I had Grok estimate the age of the victims of AI image generation in sexual prompts." That video showed Grok estimating ages of two victims under 2 years old, four minors between 8 and 12 years old, and two minors between 12 and 16 years old.

Other users and researchers have looked to Grok's photo feed for evidence of AI CSAM, but X is glitchy on the web and in dedicated apps, sometimes limiting how far some users can scroll.

Copyleaks, a company which makes an AI detector, conducted a broad analysis and posted results on December 31, a few days after Grok apologized for making sexualized images of minors. Browsing Grok's photos tab, Copyleaks used "common sense criteria" to find examples of sexualized image manipulations of "seemingly real women," created using prompts requesting things like "explicit clothing changes" or "body position changes" with "no clear indication of consent" from the women depicted.

Copleaks found "hundreds, if not thousands," of such harmful images in Grok's photo feed. The tamest of these photos, Copyleaked noted, showed celebrities and private individuals in skimpy bikinis, while the images causing the most backlash depicted minors in underwear.

The porn connection

Copyleaks traced the seeming uptick in users prompting Grok to sexualize images of real people without consent back to a marketing campaign where adult performers used Grok to consensually generate sexualized imagery of themselves. "Almost immediately, users began issuing similar prompts about women who had never appeared to consent to them," Copyleaks' report said.

Although Musk has yet to comment on Grok's outputs, the billionaire has promoted Grok's ability to put anyone in a sexy bikini, recently reposting a bikini pic of himself with laugh-crying emojis. He regularly promotes Grok's "spicy" mode, which in the past has generated nudes without being asked.

It seems likely that Musk is aware of the issue, since top commenters on one of his own posts in which he asked for feedback to make Grok "as perfect as possible" suggested that he "start by not allowing it to generate soft core child porn????" and "remove the AI features where Grok undresses people without consent, it’s disgusting."

As Grok itself noted, Grok's outputs violate federal child pornography laws, which "prohibit the creation, possession, or distribution of AI-generated" CSAM "depicting minors in sexual scenarios." And if updates to CSAM laws under the ENFORCE Act are passed this year, it would strengthen the Take It Down Act—which requires platforms to remove non-consensual AI sex abuse imagery within 48 hours—by making it easier to prosecute people making and distributing AI CSAM.

Among the bill's bipartisan sponsors is Senator John Kennedy (R-La.), who said updates could meaningfully curb distribution of AI CSAM, which the Internet Watch Foundation reported rose by 400 percent in the first half of last year.

"Child predators are resorting to more advanced technology than ever to escape justice, so Congress needs to close every loophole possible to help law enforcement fight this evil," Kennedy said. "I’m proud to help introduce the ENFORCE Act, which would allow officials to better target the sick animals creating deepfake content of America’s kids."

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Mamdani sworn in: Zohran Mamdani, 34, was sworn in as the new mayor of New York City on New Year's Day, at an abandoned subway station underneath City Hall.

This was followed by a public ceremony above ground, where fellow socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) swore in the new mayor. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) was also in attendance.

Since his upset primary victory back in June, there's been a lot of tea reading about how Mamdani will actually govern. Will he be the hard-left ideologue that makes the buses free or a more pragmatic executive focused on doing what's necessary and realistic to get the trains to run on time?

While the new mayor has given some hints at moderation over the past few months, his inaugural remarks were anything but moderate.

"To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives," said Mamdani. "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

On policy, Mamdani reiterated his campaign trail pledges to make buses and childcare free, freeze rents in rent-stabilized units, and create a Department of Community Safety as a social services-focused supplement to the city's police force.

Don't Panic: That all is certainly worrisome for anyone who's been trepidatious about what a Mamdani administration will mean for the size and scope of city government. The new mayor's promise to "free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy" is less than encouraging in the wider context of his remarks.

Those concerned about the Big Apple turning red still have a few reasons to be cautiously optimistic that Mamdani's plans to remake New York City into a socialist utopia will fail.

Within the next couple of weeks, Mamdani will have to release a balanced budget for the city government. His plans for some $10 billion in new spending will have to reckon with the fact that the city has a current budget gap of some $8–10 billion that legally needs to be closed first.

Any hope of doing so by raising taxes on higher-income residents and corporations, as Mamdani has promised to do, will require approval from state politicians who've been lukewarm, if not outright hostile, to the idea of approving local tax hikes.

His plans for fare-free transit and a rent freeze will require sign-offs from a state transit agency and a Rent Guidelines Board that Mamdani does not exercise unilateral control over.

Indeed, Mamdani's decision to have his official swearing-in ceremony at the abandoned City Hall subway station is more than a little ironic.

His symbolic intention was to signal his administration's commitment to running a city government that pulls off big, bold projects. It's more than a little awkward then that the City Hall station was part of the city's first subway system that was built and operated by private contractors.

"I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist," said Mamdani during his remarks. The powers of his office are not particularly geared toward ideological, activist government.

That doesn't mean Mamdani's tenure will be good for the city. It does put some practical limits on just how bad it can get. As Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in Reason's latest print issue, "Mamdani can't ruin New York."

Trump rolls back National Guard deployments: On New Year's Eve, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that he would be removing federalized National Guardsmen from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, following a string of adverse court decisions.

"Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren't for the Federal Government stepping in. We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!" said the president.

Trump's comments came on the same day that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ordered him to return control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The week prior, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency decision blocking the Trump administration from deploying federalized National Guardsmen to support immigration enforcement operations in Illinois.

Scenes from D.C.: Meanwhile, here in the nation's capital, the presence of uniformed National Guardsmen on city streets remains an ongoing phenomenon. Despite legal objections from the city's attorney general, courts have looked more favorably on the president's power to deploy guardsmen in the federal district.

There are now 2,500 troops, drawn from the National Guards of D.C. and ten states with Republican governors, on city streets, reports WTOP.

Their numbers have increased since the fatal shooting of a West Virginia National Guard member last month, and court documents suggest troops would continue to patrol the city through the summer.

This journalist spotted a squad of five guardsmen outside the liquor store on New Year's Eve. After a few months of their presence, it's hard to get too alarmed about their being here on a practical level.

The guardsmen themselves mostly just stand around talking amongst themselves. That's not particularly threatening. It also doesn't feel particularly necessary. There remains something deeply un-American about uniformed military personnel performing routine policing tasks, and that won't change in the New Year.

Quick Hits

• I'll be writing Roundup for the next few weeks while my colleague Liz Wolfe tends to her new baby. Until she's back, please direct all your angry emails to me.
• Some 40 people were tragically killed in a fire at a Swiss ski resort bar during a New Year's celebration. Officials have yet to determine what caused the conflagration, although they have ruled out a terrorist attack.
• In 2026, politicians won't be able to stop talking about affordability. I wrote about how this is good news for free market politics.
• Anti-government protests have erupted in Iran. Trump has said the U.S. is ready to intervene if the government fires on peaceful demonstrators.
• California's billionaires say they'll leave the state if voters pass a punishing new wealth tax. The state's unionized health care workers need to collect 875,000 signatures to place their proposed one-time, 5 percent wealth tax on individuals with a net worth of over $1 billion on the November 2026 ballot.

The post A Socialist Swearing In appeared first on Reason.com.

Autism diagnoses have increased but only because of progressively weaker standards for what counts as autism.

The autistic community is a large, growing, and heterogeneous population, and there is a need for improved methods to describe their diverse needs. Measures of adaptive functioning collected through public health surveillance may provide valuable information on functioning and support needs at a population level. We aimed to use adaptive behavior and cognitive scores abstracted from health and educational records to describe trends over time in the population prevalence of autism by adaptive level and co-occurrence of intellectual disability (ID). Using data from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, years 2000 to 2016, we estimated the prevalence of autism per 1000 8-year-old children by four levels of adaptive challenges (moderate to profound, mild, borderline, or none) and by co-occurrence of ID. The prevalence of autism with mild, borderline, or no significant adaptive challenges increased between 2000 and 2016, from 5.1 per 1000 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.6–5.5) to 17.6 (95% CI: 17.1–18.1) while the prevalence of autism with moderate to profound challenges decreased slightly, from 1.5 (95% CI: 1.2–1.7) to 1.2 (95% CI: 1.1–1.4). The prevalence increase was greater for autism without co-occurring ID than for autism with co-occurring ID. The increase in autism prevalence between 2000 and 2016 was confined to autism with milder phenotypes. This trend could indicate improved identification of milder forms of autism over time. It is possible that increased access to therapies that improve intellectual and adaptive functioning of children diagnosed with autism also contributed to the trends.

The data is from the US CDC.

Hat tip: Yglesias who draws the correct conclusion:

Study confirms that neither Tylenol nor vaccines is responsible for the rise in autism BECAUSE THERE IS NO RISE IN AUTISM TO EXPLAIN just a change in diagnostic standards.

Earlier Cremieux showed exactly the same thing based on data from Sweden and earlier CDC data.

Happy New Year. This is indeed good news, although oddly it will make some people angry.

The post Autism Hasn’t Increased appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

A friend of mine and I both have a similar project in mind, the manufacture of custom footwear with our hackerspace’s shiny new multi-material 3D printer. It seems like a match made in heaven, a machine that can seamlessly integrate components made with widely differing materials into a complex three-dimensional structure. As is so often the case though, there are limits to what can be done with the tool in hand, and here I’ve met one of them.

I can’t get a good range of footwear for my significantly oversized feet, and I want a set of extra grippy soles for a particular sporting application. For that the best material is a rubber, yet the types of rubber that are best for the job can unfortunately not be 3D printed. In understanding why that is the case I’ve followed a fascinating path which has taught me stuff about 3D printing that I certainly didn’t know.

A friend of mine from way back is a petrochemist, so I asked him about the melting points of various rubbers  to see if I could find an appropriate filament His answer, predictably, was that it’s not that simple, because rubbers don’t behave in the same way as the polymers I am used to. With a conventional 3D printer filament, as the polymer is fed into the extruder and heated up, it turns to liquid and flows out of the nozzle to the print. It ‘s then hot enough to fuse with the layer below as it solidifies, which is how our 3D prints retain their shape. This property is where we get the term “plastic” from, which loosely means “Able to be moulded”.

My problem is that rubber doesn’t behave that way. As any casual glance at a motor vehicle will tell you, rubber can be moulded, but it doesn’t neatly liquefy and flow in the way my PLA or PET does. It’s a non-Newtonian fluid, a term which I was familiar with from such things as non-drip paint, tomato ketchup, or oobleck, but had never as an electronic engineer directly encountered in something I am working on.

A Newtonian fluid has a linear relationship between shear stress and shear rate. That’s dry language for saying that when you press it, it moves, if you press it more, it moves more, and the readiness with which it moves, or its viscosity, is the same across all pressures.

I’m used to viscosity, having run all manner of dodgy old cars I’m particularly familiar with selecting the correct oil by viscosity figure. A non-Newtonian fluid doesn’t have this linear relationship, and its viscosity changes with pressure. For example the non-drip paint has a high viscosity until you press it with a paint brush, at which point its viscosity falls and it becomes liquid enough to spread around. Rubber does this too, and were I to attempt to squeeze rubber filament through my extruder, it would become very viscous and block it up. The closest thing to a rubber I could reasonably use is TPU, or Thermoplastic PolyUrethane, but as you might guess from its name, it’s not a rubber in the same sense as the rubbers I’m looking at, even though it’s what many people use for shoes. It’s flexible, but not grippy.

So if rubber is non-Newtonian and I can’t print with it, how do they mould it? An online search finds specialist plants for rubber extrusion and moulding so it’s possible, but in fact those rubber moulded items you’re familiar with won’t be made with liquid rubber. Instead they press shredded rubber into a mould and heat it so that it fuses, resulting in a moulded shape. I was fascinated to find that the process doesn’t require excessive temperatures, though whether that makes it achievable in a hackerspace is yet to be determined. Has anyone out there experimented with real rubber? Meanwhile I have those multi-material uppers to work on.