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Apple e Google são pressionadas a banir apps que geram nudez com IA

17 July 2026 at 19:30

A Apple e o Google foram intimados por um procurador de San Francisco a remover aplicativos que gerem imagens de nudez não consensuais.

As notificações extrajudiciais foram enviadas pelo procurador David Chiu, que exigiu a remoção de 13 aplicativos de troca de rostos (face swap) os quais permitem que usuários criem imagens de nudez sem o consentimento das pessoas envolvidas, com o auxílio da inteligência artificial (IA). Ele solicitou ainda o rompimento das relações comerciais com os desenvolvedores desses apps.

Chiu comentou o conflito com esse segmento de apps e a problemática da relação desses aplicativos com grandes empresas de tecnologia:

Gerar imagens íntimas não consensuais é ilegal, prejudicial e completamente inaceitável. […] Essas empresas têm a responsabilidade de garantir que os aplicativos em suas plataformas não facilitem abuso sexual. […] O fato de algumas das maiores e mais consolidadas empresas de tecnologia do mundo estarem facilitando isso precisa acabar.

Pesquisadores das universidades de Cornell e Georgetown descobriram que, de 155 apps de criação de deepfakes, 70% deles permitiam gerar conteúdos com nudez sem quaisquer restrições — demonstrando que mesmo os apps que não são promovidos como tal não impedem práticas criminosas. Uma investigação da Tech Transparency Project (TTP) revelou números parecidos.

A Apple possui um histórico delicado com o tema: embora esses estudos apontem leniência com a existência desse tipo de ferramenta na App Store, a Maçã possui um rastro de combate a esse tipo de prática — ainda que sob pressão governamental —, a exemplo da ameaça de remoção do X em meio à polêmica com a geração de imagens de nudez com o auxílio do Grok.

Ao longo dos últimos meses, a empresa foi criticada por autoridades como o governo do Reino Unido e o estado americano da Virgínia Ocidental para combater a proliferação de apps com conteúdo adulto em meio a crianças e adolescentes.

Representando o Google, Dan Jackson afirmou que centenas desses aplicativos foram excluídos da loja do Android:

O Google Play não permite aplicativos que contenham conteúdo sexual, e tomamos continuamente medidas proativas para detectar e remover apps com conteúdo prejudicial. […] Quando recebemos denúncias, investigamos e agimos rapidamente, o que, nesses casos, incluiu suspender centenas de aplicativos que violavam nossas políticas e restringir termos de busca relacionados, como “nudify”, em nossa loja.

A Apple, por sua vez, optou por não comentar o caso.

via WIRED

SpaceX Eager to Support the Pentagon’s Lethal AI Models

17 July 2026 at 22:50

After years of being engaged, it looks like SpaceX and the Pentagon are finally ready to send out save-the-dates.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk’s formerly-just-rockets company is now in talks with the Department of Defense over providing the military access to its data-center capacity for running AI models, tying the knot on their already close relationship.

People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the arrangement could cost the Pentagon billions of dollars, but stressed the talks are ongoing and could fall apart.

Computing power is a precious commodity during this ever-raging AI boom, and SpaceX has it in spades. Musk has rapidly built data centers in Memphis, Tennessee and a lot of that capacity hasn’t been tapped into, with Bloomberg reporting that his AI startup xAI is only using 11 percent of its total computing power.

Selling this excess compute would help generate the company some much needed revenue, even if it directly benefits its rivals. SpaceX has struggled to be profitable, losing $5 billion last year. And xAI, which was folded into SpaceX before its IPO last month, burned through $6.4 billion over the same period. All the while, Musk has struggled to sell his Grok chatbot to businesses, as its capabilities lag behind leaders like Anthropic and ChatGPT.

The real story, though, is the deepening ties between Musk’s business empire and the Pentagon, which goes way back. SpaceX has worked with the military to deploy a secretive network of spy satellites, for example, and also had a small contract to experiment with building a rocket that could deliver military cargo across the globe.

Those collaborations have gotten way bigger in the past year. In May, it won a $2.29 billion Space Force contract to build a network of satellites that could function as a military internet service, connecting weapon systems across the globe. That same month, it was awarded an even larger $4.16 billion contract to provide the technology to build a system that can track missiles and aircraft from orbit.

To be clear, Musk’s companies are far from the only tech leaders to be getting in bed with the Pentagon. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle all have similar deals for providing cloud computing capacity to the military, as well as for providing their AI models, the WSJ noted.

But it’s a particularly hypocritical road to be going down for Musk. When Musk cut off Starlink satellite access to the Ukrainian forces in 2023, he reasoned that he didn’t want SpaceX to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Fast forward to this June, when a Pentagon official bragged that the military used Grok to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran during Operation Epic Fury, sparking a war that killed thousands of civilians in the country.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX’s Shares Tank After Starship Fails to Launch

The post SpaceX Eager to Support the Pentagon’s Lethal AI Models appeared first on Futurism.

Tesla (TSLA) shareholders are begging Musk to explain missed goals

16 July 2026 at 21:45

Tesla shareholders have flooded the company’s Q2 2026 earnings Q&A portal with questions, and the most-upvoted ones tell a bleak story: retail investors are now demanding that Elon Musk explain why the company keeps missing its own short-term goals.

The tone has shifted from asking about Tesla’s grand vision to asking why almost none of it is showing up on schedule — on robotaxi, “Full Self-Driving,” and Optimus.

xAI can’t deny Grok makes CSAM anymore. So it’s suing users.

16 July 2026 at 21:26

Facing mounting pressure to acknowledge that Grok can still be used to generate non-consensual sexualized images of adults and minors, xAI filed a lawsuit Tuesday, suing the first user that Elon Musk’s firm has accused of using its chatbot to create illegal content.

The complaint targets Terry Wayne Harwood, who was arrested earlier this year for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), the South Carolina attorney’s office announced.

As xAI alleged, the company assisted in that arrest after discovering that Harwood had been using two xAI accounts for months to undress or “nudify” non-sexual images of multiple victims, including a young girl who appeared to be as young as 10.

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Musk’s xAI sues user who allegedly used Grok to create child sexual abuse material

16 July 2026 at 16:19

Case is one of first brought by an AI company against a user ⁠for allegedly using a tool to generate child abuse material

Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup xAI has sued a South Carolina man arrested ⁠earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting minors, alleging he misused the company’s AI system Grok to ⁠create child sexual abuse ⁠material.

xAI ​alleged in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas on Tuesday, that Terry Harwood violated the company’s ⁠terms of service. The case is one of the first brought by an AI company against one of its users ⁠for allegedly using an AI system to generate child sexual abuse material.

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© Photograph: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Starship joue gros cette nuit : SpaceX tente plusieurs premières qui peuvent changer la suite

Cette nuit, Starship 13 devra réussir là où le vol précédent a vacillé. SpaceX joue bien plus qu’un simple essai : ce qui se passera dans les prochaines minutes pourrait décider de la suite de son programme le plus ambitieux.

Bruxelas aprova plano da rede social X para cumprir regras europeias sete meses após multa de 120 milhões

16 July 2026 at 12:55

A Comissão Europeia aprovou o plano de ação submetido pela rede social X para resolver as infrações ao DSA detectadas em dezembro de 2025. A plataforma tem seis meses para implementar as medidas e submeter uma auditoria independente, mas o Conselho para os Serviços Digitais considerou o plano apenas "parcialmente adequado".

The post Bruxelas aprova plano da rede social X para cumprir regras europeias sete meses após multa de 120 milhões appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Judge: Trump can’t deport researchers just for working in content moderation

15 July 2026 at 22:26

This week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) won a key battle in its fight to reverse a visa-restriction policy that the Trump administration had used to attempt to revoke green cards and deport non-US citizens who work on misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.

In an opinion published Tuesday, US District Judge James Boasberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy until the CITR’s lawsuit is resolved.

On its face, the policy does not require visa denials or deportations. Instead, it authorizes immigration investigations into individuals suspected of helping foreign adversaries attempt to manipulate public opinion by suppressing US speech.

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Elon Musk quietly buys a $1 billion gas turbine company to power Grok

15 July 2026 at 00:32

Elon Musk has quietly bought APR Energy, a Jacksonville-based company that operates a fleet of mobile gas and diesel turbines totaling more than 1 GW of generation capacity.

The self-styled champion of a “solar electric economy” now owns a fossil fuel power company — and he’s buying it to feed the electricity-hungry data centers running xAI’s Grok.

SpaceX Stock Plunges to All-Time Low After Competitor Makes Major Leap

13 July 2026 at 18:50

Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX took another beating when trading resumed on Monday, sliding to an all-time low of just under $139, well below its IPO opening price of $150.

It’s now over 38 percent down from its all-time high of $225 three weeks ago, illustrating how rapidly the hype has inverted into widespread skepticism over Musk’s vision.

Following a blockbuster Wall Street debut, the space company has struggled to maintain any degree of momentum as investors continue to ask some very hard questions, including over its major pivot to orbital data centers and its near-term profitability. Despite being valued at almost two trillion dollars, the company lost nearly $5 billion last year.

Shares have hovered below the company’s opening price for weeks now, despite plenty of bullishness among analysts.

The news comes just days after Chinese state-run media showed a Long March 10B rocket booster being caught by an offshore recovery platform, indicating the country was making major strides in catching up with SpaceX’s reusable rocket tech. Over the weekend, an experimental Japanese reusable rocket safely took off and landed, suggesting the nation may be right behind China as well.

Beyond some steepening international space launch competition, experts believe SpaceX’s transformation into an “AI play” may be closely related to its Wall Street woes, as the BBC reports.

“Everyone saw SpaceX as an AI story,” CFRA investment research analyst Keith Snyder told the broadcaster.

“With Elon Musk, any company he touches gets people excited,” he added. “But this was also the first time people felt like they were able to invest in something that was being marketed as an AI play.”

How SpaceX will cover its enormous losses and start actually making some money — not to mention, prove that orbital data centers don’t just make sense but are even feasible to begin with — remains a major point of contention.

In short, the initial enthusiasm surrounding SpaceX’s IPO is firmly behind us.

“If you bought around the first tick you’re definitely underwater,” Snyder told the BBC. “It started to look a lot like a meme stock.”

“If you’re an IPO investor, you’re ok,” Mergermarket analyst Samuel Kerr added. “If you bought in the first few days, you’re not very happy right now.”

Investors remain sharply divided on where SpaceX shares are headed next. Many analysts from major investment banks remain bullish, expecting the stock to make massive gains. Case in point, Morgan Stanley believes the company will reach a price tag of $300 — far more than double its current stock price.

Snyder has a far more muted outlook, expecting SpaceX to fall down to just $115 a share.

Meanwhile, Musk has said he thinks “SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals,” a characteristically ambitious and perhaps delusional argument that assumes a lot of things will go right for the company.

Whether investors will buy into this lofty vision remains to be seen. Given its recent stock performance, it’s far from a guarantee.

“If SpaceX can do all the things it says it will do, yes, investors are sitting on the most valuable company ever,” Kerr told the BBC. “But it’s got a lot of work to do to get there.”

More on SpaceX: Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More than the Entire Earth

The post SpaceX Stock Plunges to All-Time Low After Competitor Makes Major Leap appeared first on Futurism.

Musk tells Tesla staff to switch to Grok — a model he admits is worse

10 July 2026 at 22:14

Elon Musk told Tesla staff to move to using Grok, the AI model from his own xAI (now folded into SpaceX), according to a memo sent to employees on Friday.

The push comes days after Tesla capped employee spending on third-party AI tools — and it lands even though Musk himself concedes Grok is not as good as its rivals.

Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More than the Entire Earth

10 July 2026 at 17:53

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long heavily relied on selling science fiction to investors.

He wants to pollute our planet’s orbit — already brimming with junk — with gigantic orbital data centers. Then, he wants to settle on the surface of the Moon. Ultimately, he wants to make humanity an interplanetary species by building a city on Mars with the help of an enormous fleet of Starship spacecraft, leaving a planet reeling from a climate crisis behind.

It’s the kind of lofty — and, according to his many critics, delusional — thinking that turned him into an (almost) trillionaire. And, as SpaceX continues to struggle selling investors on Musk’s lofty imagination, the mercurial CEO is already conjuring new visions to keep the hype train chugging. According to a recent tweet, he believes that “SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals.”

Musk was responding to one of his supporters questioning SpaceX’s recent AI compute deal with Anthropic, arguing that it was giving too much money to a competitor.

To Musk, it all comes down to our ability to fully harness the power of the Sun. As illustrated by the Kardashev scale — a method devised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev that measures a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can channel — Musk believes we’re not even close to unlocking our full potential as a species.

By utilizing all that untapped solar energy, Musk thinks SpaceX could eclipse the Earth’s entire GDP of around 100 trillion dollars — if you’re willing to entertain his outrageously lofty vision, that is.

Back in January, Musk argued that “space-based industries will vastly exceed the value of all of Earth, given that you could harness roughly 100,000 times more energy than Earth and still be using less than a millionth of the Sun’s energy!”

Skeptics will differ. He also claimed that “due to autonomy, Tesla is worth more than the rest of the auto industry,” while his EV maker’s struggling Optimus robot will increase “Earth GDP by an order of magnitude.”

It’s the kind of wishful thinking his entire business empire is teetering on top of lately. For years now, tech leaders have been trying to sell us on a utopian “age of abundance,” in which manual labor is a thing of the past and everybody enjoys a high standard of living.

However, reality tells a dramatically different story. Despite Musk’s repeated promises for over a decade, in one telling example, Tesla vehicles are still far from reliably driving themselves without constant oversight.

Even investors are having trouble buying into his dreams of training AI models from space. SpaceX’s shares initially rallied following a blockbuster IPO last month, but have been in decline ever since. The muted enthusiasm highlights persistent doubts over a multitrillion dollar valuation for a company that lost a staggering $5 billion last year.

In short, his claim that SpaceX will somehow become worth more than the entire global economy should be taken with an astronomical amount of salt.

It also assumes that SpaceX is operating within a vacuum. Considering the major strides China’s space program is making as of late, that’s far from a given.

More on SpaceX: If You Thought SpaceX Stock Was Doing Badly Before, Now It’s Really Tanking

The post Elon Musk Says His Goal Is for SpaceX to Be Worth More than the Entire Earth appeared first on Futurism.

“You Are a Parasite”: Elon Musk Humiliated for Criticizing Zohran Mamdani

10 July 2026 at 15:50

During a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence last week, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani took aim at the richest person in the world to make a salient point about growing inequality.

“We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry, while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more,” he said.

Elon Musk, who temporarily became a trillionaire following his company SpaceX’s IPO last month, didn’t take kindly to the slight.

“Mamdani has built nothing,” he tweeted angrily in response. “He is a taker, never a maker.”

But his knee-jerk retort didn’t exactly land. The most-liked reply pointed out that Musk’s empire had been built on tens of billions of dollars of government handouts. One user called him out for being the “biggest single recipient of US taxpayer dollars of all time.”

One particularly scorching takedown came from grassroots political organizer Jay Ponti, who pointed out that many of Musk’s business successes were built on the shoulders of others.

“[Martin] Eberhard and [Marc] Tarpenning founded Tesla,” he wrote, referring to the EV maker’s original CEO and CFO before Musk joined in 2004. “You didn’t invent eBay or Twitter.”

“Your wealth is from acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and stealing credit,” Ponti added. “Everything you have was built by workers and you fight to keep from unionizing while you receive [government] welfare.”

“You are a parasite,” the political organizer concluded.

The scathing remarks highlight Musk’s more-than-rocky rise to fame and how his companies, Tesla and SpaceX in particular, have massively benefited from government contracts over the years. According to an eye-opening Washington Post investigation last year, Musk’s businesses have sucked up at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits.

If Musk himself hadn’t been a “taker,” his companies could’ve easily flatlined without regular taxpayer-funded cash infusions.

Meanwhile, Mamdani has done little to earn such a title. On the contrary, his administration has been built on giving — from plans to expand low-cost childcare, fighting wage theft affecting gig workers, setting up city-run grocery stores, and adding a second homes tax for wealthy New York City residents.

After SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO last month made Musk the world’s first trillionaire, Mamdani had some choice words.

“Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich,” he tweeted at the time.

There’s at least one subject where both Mamdani and Musk do see eye to eye: eliminating waste and pushing for efficiency. In a jab at the billionaire’s ill-fated and enormously wasteful Department of Government Efficiency, Mamdani recently launched what he calls the Commission on Government Efficiency.

However, instead of cutting foreign aid and condemning thousands to die around the world, Mamdani is using the group to make it easier for NYC residents to access affordable city services.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Has Sucked Up $38 Billion in Aid From the Federal Government, and Now He’s Slashing That Help for Others

The post “You Are a Parasite”: Elon Musk Humiliated for Criticizing Zohran Mamdani appeared first on Futurism.

What will define Elon Musk’s legacy? Doge cuts to USAID Ebola programs

Experts say cuts have hindered the response to DRC’s Ebola outbreak and resulted in ‘significant numbers’ of deaths

Elon Musk has an Ebola problem. SpaceX stock dropped precipitously after its initial public offering, and Tesla faces a wave of lawsuits. But instead of focusing on his companies, Musk has posted frequently on X about the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he helped dismantle – or, in his words, feed into the woodchipper – last year.

“Elon’s USAID crash-out over the past week has been a thing to behold,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top USAID official who oversaw the agency’s Ebola response in 2014-2015 and the president of Refugees International. “In a way, it’s helpful that Elon is doing this, because it’s putting attention back on the issue of what he did last year.”

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© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA

© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA

© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA

Doubt that Elon Musk ‘earned’ his trillion? Rightwing media says you’re in an ‘impotent envy cult’ | Arwa Mahdawi

30 June 2026 at 12:00

The lovefest from Musk’s conservative fans completely overlooks the unscrupulous tactics behind his immense wealth

For 12 glorious days in June, Elon Musk experienced something nobody else in the history of humankind has ever experienced: trillionaire status.

Did all those zeros make Musk happy? Did the army of children he has sired love him more? Did he find inner peace? We’ll never know because Musk was dragged back to being a boring old billionaire last Wednesday, after shares in Tesla and SpaceX plunged amid a broader tech sell-off.

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© Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

© Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

© Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

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