UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes

Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate whether Elon Musk’s firms have complied with data protection law

Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.

Published: February 3, 2026, 4:46 pm

French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

Prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms

Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.

“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:01 pm

Disastrous start for US TikTok as users cry censorship

New US-owned app struggled with a storm and was accused of blocking content critical of Trump – can it recover?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I’m moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.

I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, “‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases”, about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate.) This month, Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to compel social media platforms to respond to warrants in 72 hours.

Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

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What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots

The slopaganda era: 10 AI images posted by the White House – and what they teach us

Apple reports record iPhone sales as new lineup reignites worldwide demand

South Korea’s ‘world-first’ AI laws face pushback amid bid to become leading tech power

Can you guess our screen time? A priest, pensioner, tech CEO and teenager reveal all

Published: February 3, 2026, 2:18 pm

Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies

Pearson, Experian and others fall sharply after startup unveils software to automate a range of professional services

European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.

Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.

Published: February 3, 2026, 4:01 pm

Barnsley rebranded UK’s first ‘tech town’ as US giants join AI push

Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses

In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”.

The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK.

Published: February 3, 2026, 12:01 am

Elon Musk merges SpaceX with xAI at $1.25tn valuation

Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company

• Musk is taking SpaceX’s minority shareholders for a ride | Nils Pratley

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year.

The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:25 am

‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report

Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruption

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.

Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

The dump dinner: spaghetti is now being served straight on to the table – but why?

A raft of online videos show parents serving up dinner without a single plate in sight, to the amazement of their families

Name: Dump dinners.

Age: Horribly new.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:25 pm

‘The smart, the rich, the powerful’: Epstein associated with Silicon Valley elite years after his release from prison

Billionaires and intellectuals attended events with the disgraced financier years after he served time for sex offense, files reveal

Newly released emails and travel itineraries appear to show that for years after Jeffrey Epstein served time for procuring underage girls for prostitution, he continued to attend exclusive dinners alongside Silicon Valley’s most famous billionaires.

The emails, part of a trove released by the Department of Justice on Friday, show that as late as 2018, Epstein was invited to or attended dinners alongside the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Google vice-president and later Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Published: February 3, 2026, 11:41 pm

Nasa delays moon rocket launch by a month after fuel leaks during test

Artemis II mission was due to begin as early as next week and astronauts have spent almost two weeks in quarantine

Nasa has postponed its historic mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again, after issues arose during a critical test of its most powerful rocket yet.

The US space agency had planned to launch the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as next week, but announced overnight that it would be delayed until March, without specifying a date.

Published: February 3, 2026, 12:04 pm

Ultra-processed foods should be treated more like cigarettes than food – study

UPFs are made to encourage addiction and consumption and should be regulated like tobacco, say researchers

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report.

UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

Elon Musk merges SpaceX with xAI at $1.25tn valuation

Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company

• Musk is taking SpaceX’s minority shareholders for a ride | Nils Pratley

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year.

The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:25 am

Why are women turning to testosterone? – podcast

Just like men, women are increasingly being told by online influencers that the classic symptoms of middle age could be down to low testosterone. In the second part of this miniseries exploring the hormone, Madeleine Finlay finds out what testosterone supplementation is doing for women. She hears from science journalist Linda Geddes, who is taking testosterone for low libido, and from prof Susan Davis, a consultant endocrinologist and head of the Monash University Women’s Health Research Programme. Susan explains what the evidence really shows about the benefits and risks of women taking testosterone

‘Frightening’ how easily women can get hold of testosterone, say doctors

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

Up to half of coarse sediments on UK urban beaches may be human-made, study suggests

Researchers say waste dumping and climate breakdown have contributed to rise in brick, concrete and glass on beaches

As much as half of some British beaches’ coarse sediments may consist of human-made materials such as brick, concrete, glass and industrial waste, a study has suggested.

Climate breakdown, which has caused more frequent and destructive coastal storms, has led to an increase in these substances on beaches. Six sites on the Firth of Forth, an estuary on Scotland’s east coast joining the River Forth to the North Sea, were surveyed to better understand the makeup of “urban beaches”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 1:56 pm