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Techmeme
January 2, 2026, 4:35 PM
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Top News

Bloomberg:
xAI's Grok says “lapses in safeguards” led it to create sexualized images of minors in response to user prompts on X; the images have been taken down  —  Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has created sexualized images of people including minors on the social media platform X …
Maggie Harrison Dupré / Futurism:
Grok, at the request of users, appears to be altering images to depict real women being sexually abused, humiliated, hurt, and even killed  —  Earlier this week, a troubling trend emerged on X-formerly-Twitter as people started asking Elon Musk's chatbot Grok to unclothe images of real people.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
India orders X to fix Grok to block the generation of obscene content, giving it 72 hours to submit an action-taken report or risk losing “safe harbor” immunity  —  India has ordered Elon Musk's X to make immediate technical and procedural changes to its AI chatbot Grok after users …
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Yann LeCun says Llama 4's “results were fudged a little bit”, and that the team used different models for different benchmarks to give better results  —  The AI pioneer on stepping down from Meta, the limits of large language models — and the launch of his new start-up
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pebble unveils Pebble Round 2 smart watch with a rounded screen and basic health and activity tracking but no heart rate monitor, shipping in May for $199  —  Shortly after bringing back the Pebble smart watch and launching a low-cost AI smart ring, Pebble is readying yet another new product: the Pebble Round 2.
Dan Wang:
Tech analyst Dan Wang reflects on the Chinese Communist Party vs. Silicon Valley, AI and manufacturing, and how China and the US are building the future  —  One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
xAI launches Grok Business, priced at $30 per seat/month, for SMBs, and Grok Enterprise, whose price is not listed publicly, for larger organizations  —  xAI has launched Grok Business and Grok Enterprise, positioning its flagship AI assistant as a secure, team-ready platform for organizational use.
Rishabh Jaiswal / Reuters:
SpaceX plans to lower its Starlink satellites from orbiting at ~550km to ~480km in 2026 to improve space safety and reduce the likelihood of debris collisions  —  Starlink will begin a reconfiguration of its satellite constellation by lowering all of its satellites orbiting at around 550 km …
Rachel Clun / BBC:
UK crypto buyers are required to share their account details with tax officials starting January 1 or face penalties, as the UK seeks to collect unpaid taxes  —  People buying cryptocurrency in the UK now need to share their account details or face penalties, in changes that came into effect on 1 January.
Kieran Smith / Financial Times:
How Nokia has reinvented itself for the AI revolution by expanding into cloud services, data centers, and optical networks, and by partnering with Nvidia  —  Finnish company that brought the world the 3310 has reinvented itself for the AI revolution  —  Few digital sounds have burrowed into the human brain like the Nokia ringtone.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:35 PM ET, January 2, 2026.

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From Mediagazer

Borys Kit / The Hollywood Reporter:
James Gunn and Peter Safran step down as co-heads of DC Studios; Skydance appoints ex-Marvel exec Jeremy Latcham as president and chief creative officer of DC

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Skydance reports Q3 revenue up 5% YoY to $7B, net income of $73M, and adjusted EBITDA of $1B, excluding WBD, in its first earnings since closing the WBD deal

Wall Street Journal:
Skydance details plans to slash at least $6B in annual costs, including by eliminating layers of management, combining operations, and reducing tech expenses

More News

Bloomberg:
Chinese AI chip startup Biren surged as much as 119% in its Hong Kong debut, after raising ~$717M in an IPO priced at ~$2.52 per share
Sneha Kumar / Reuters:
Baidu says its AI chip unit Kunlunxin has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong IPO, aiming for a spin-off; a December fundraising reportedly valued it at ~$3B

Earlier Picks

Philosopher Count:
How AI automation can fulfill Thomas Piketty's predictions on rising economic inequality, and why highly progressive taxes on capital can help slow the spiral
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
A look at US tech laws coming in 2026, like California's SB 53 AI transparency law and Virginia's new social media limits for minors, effective from January 1
Vincent Chow / South China Morning Post:
DeepSeek researchers detail mHC, a new architecture they used to train 3B, 9B, and 27B models, finding it scaled without adding significant computational burden
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its AI-powered personal device, which is expected to be largely audio-based
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