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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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About This Page

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

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Rebecca Rubin / Variety:
The North American box office records its biggest weekend ever with ~$430M in total, driven by Spider-Man: Brand New Day's $355M and The Odyssey's $51M

Wall Street Journal:
Inside David Ellison's risky courtroom strategy to save Paramount's WBD deal, sources say including talks of potential state concessions and political appeals

Alexandra Steigrad / New York Post:
Sources: former 60 Minutes EP Bill Owens seeks ~$50M to launch a rival news series with Scott Pelley and other fired staffers; a source close to Owens denies it

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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