Jess Asato was portrayed by AI tool as wearing a bikini after she criticised the creation of such non-consensual pictures
A Labour MP has taken legal action against Elon Musk’s AI company after saying its Grok tool helped a user produce fake sexualised pictures of her, part of a wave of such images that flooded X earlier this year.
Jess Asato, the MP for Lowestoft, said in January that seeing herself portrayed by the AI tool as wearing a bikini without her consent was “violating”.
Giving news websites the power to block their content from being used in AI summaries will have global ramifications
The UK’s competition watchdog has ordered Google to change how it uses publishers’ content in its AI-powered search results, in a move that will have global ramifications.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is using powers that allow it to set bespoke rules for major tech firms that it deems to have “strategic market status”. Google, the world’s largest search engine, is one of those companies.
Christi Hill and male officer misidentified in Vickrum Digwa murder case on AI platforms including Grok
A former police officer has been forced to flee to a safe space after she was falsely accused online of being involved in the arrest of Henry Nowak.
Christi Hill, who served as a police constable for 12 years, has criticised social media and AI platforms, including Elon Musk’s Grok, for spreading the false claim that she was one of the officers who arrested Nowak as he lay dying after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa.
DfE plans to withdraw funding for assistive software, saying it is now rarely needed due to ‘widely available free tools’
Disability campaigners have called on the government to halt plans to cut funding for specialist tech support for tens of thousands of disabled students in England.
Almost 10,000 people have signed a petition opposing Department for Education (DfE) proposals to withdraw funding for specialist assistive software available as part of the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA).
While the technology is set to play a growing role in modern warfare, there remains an unresolved ethical challenge
Should the AI-powered drones of the future have a licence to kill? The question is becoming ever more pressing as governments and the defence industry acknowledge that drone systems will play an increasingly crucial role in future warfare.
With drones being deployed in huge numbers in the Ukraine war and AI being used to assist bombing missions in the Iran conflict, there is an expectation among some observers that weapons will have to operate with increased operational autonomy, which means they will need something approximating a moral framework.
The following is a collection of recent articles about Henry Nowak’s murder. The public’s sentiment is overwhelmingly not to blame a single police officer for how the police responded. Instead, the blame […]
Online publishers and news organisations are now able to block their content from appearing in Google’s AI summaries in UK search results, the British competition watchdog has announced.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the new requirement would “put publishers, like news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google”.
In today’s newsletter: Its software is used from health services to militaries. But controversies and criticism of the $375bn company are leading some to ask if Palantir is too powerful
Good morning. The Peter Mandelson story keeps unfolding. Peter Walker explains here what is in the latest release of documents, and Henry Dyer takes a look at the key papers missing from the latest disclosures. Today we are covering another major story: Palantir.
Few companies attract controversy more than Palantir. Since the pandemic, the US data analytics company has grown voraciously, using its AI-driven software to make sense of intractable datasets for customers around the world. For the NHS, it analyses patient records; for the US military, it’s focused on targets in Iran. Palantir’s products are widely used, with the business now worth $375bn.
UK politics | Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, documents reveal.
Ukraine | Russian air raids on major Ukrainian centres including Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv killed at least five people and wounded dozens by early morning on Tuesday, authorities said.
Environment | More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation.
US news | Donald Trump is reconsidering whether to keep pressing for a $1.8bn fund to compensate his allies, a person familiar with his thinking said, as the justice department paused the program to comply with a court order.
UK news | Sir Alan Bates has said that the schemes set up to compensate post office operators over the Horizon IT scandal have been an “utter disaster” and that the government should not be involved in running them.
A new front has opened up in the battle for dominance in AI chips, as Nvidia said its latest development could replace the mouse and keyboard in how people use computers.
The $5tn (£3.7tn) US semiconductor company has launched a “superchip” that puts AI capabilities into laptops and desktop computers, a move that will pit it against Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.
Coalition of more than 100 organisations says move could lead to more children ending up in adult detention facilities
A coalition of more than a hundred refugee children’s organisations has said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in adult prisons or detention centres.
The warning follows a Home Office announcement on Friday of a contract to roll out AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose age is disputed.
Sarah Wynn-Williams did not speak during event after lawyers warned of possible sanctions from tech firm
Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.
Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.
While Westminster’s attention is focused on Andy Burnham and Makerfield, another pivotal byelection is taking place in Scotland’s north-east
The coming byelection in Makerfield, from where Andy Burnham aspires to make rapid progress towards Downing Street, is perhaps the most consequential in British political history. But the decision by the Scottish National party’s former Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, to relocate to Holyrood means that another pivotal contest is taking place more than 350 miles to the north. If Makerfield is a test case for Mr Burnham and Labour’s ability to see off Reform UK, Mr Flynn’s old constituency of Aberdeen South is on the frontline of the increasingly fraught politics of North Sea oil.
Labour, despite finishing second in the 2024 general election thanks largely to anti-Tory tactical voting, will not be expecting much this time round. The ramifications of Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran have exposed Britain’s ongoing vulnerability to fossil-fuel-related energy shocks, highlighting the practical benefits of moving to a green economy. But the knock-on effects of the closure of the strait of Hormuz have also been a gift for the Scottish Conservatives and Reform, who are framing the byelection as a local referendum on reviving oil and gas production beyond Westminster-imposed limits.
Labour leadership hopeful says NI reduction for firms could ‘incentivise’ hiring, particularly of younger people
Wes Streeting has backed calls for national insurance cuts for businesses, and for the government to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.
The former health secretary and potential Labour leadership candidate told the Sunday Times there should be a “targeted reduction” of employers’ national insurance contribution as a way to “actively incentivise” hiring, particularly of young people.
At the beginning of May, GMWatch published a review of the UK government’s genetic technology legislation and supporting guidance. The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 dismisses crucial genetic elements, including gene […]
In 2025, Henry Nowak, a white British boy, was stabbed to death by a Sikh boy. Compared to a crime committed by a white person against a non-white person, this case has […]
Exclusive: IPPR thinktank calls for new measures to boost employees’ influence at ‘pivotal moment’ in history
Workers urgently need more bargaining power over the way AI is adopted in the workplace to ensure the benefits are fairly shared, according to a TUC-backed report from a leading thinktank.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a package of measures to boost employees’ influence at what it calls a “pivotal moment in the history of work”.
The UK government loves to boast that it has halved greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. However, the “emissions” reductions the Government claims are a sleight of hand. They are only reporting their […]
Picture was created by administrator in charge of station’s Facebook account who wanted to create ‘friendlier image’
It was an arresting image and an irresistible story. A group of tough Thai police officers – five men and one woman – all wearing elaborate festival-style dresses, surrounding a drug dealer they had caught while undercover.
The image, released by local police, was so compelling that it found its way on to the front page of the UK’s Daily Star, as well as in picture stories in the Telegraph, the Sun and the New York Post.
As summers become hotter, air conditioner sales are booming. If you’re looking to invest, here’s what to consider
When a heatwave struck the UK this week, Jon Connorton, a software developer, began monitoring temperatures inside his east Hampshire terrace house. With some rooms reaching close to 40C, it was time to deploy the air conditioner. “We just wheel it out in emergencies,” he said. “We were having trouble sleeping.”
Connorton and his wife have a portable air conditioner. These plug-in devices cool interior air by removing heat from it and blowing that heat outside, typically via a large hose slung from a window or door.
Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to claims by the former prime minister Tony Blair.
“This is a bizarre intervention to make during the worst May heatwave on record and when the Iran crisis is providing yet more evidence of the enormous costs of oil and gas,” said Ed Matthew, the UK programme director at the E3G thinktank. “Clean energy is cheaper energy – it protects our bills from prices skyrocketing, its running costs are virtually zero, and it doesn’t cause climate change which threatens economic collapse ... The government should ignore Blair’s ideological nonsense and focus on what works.”
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