Musk

In theory, Musk and Altman’s court fight could pose key questions about AI safety – in reality, it’s motivated by money and personal grievanceSign up for the TechScape newsletter: our free technology emailHello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you from beneath a cherry blossom tree in Prospect Park in New York City. Spring has arrived!Facing AI and a tough job market, gen Z turns to entrepreneurship: ‘I have to prove myself’ Continue reading...

Owner of X summoned along with former CEO Linda Yaccarino over investigation by cybercrime unitBusiness live – latest updatesEurope live – latest updatesElon Musk has been summoned to Paris, where investigators are looking into allegations of misconduct related to the social media platform X, including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content.The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino – the former chief executive of X – were on Monday summoned for “voluntary interviews”, while other employees of the platform were scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Continue reading...

Suit alleges the billionaire’s AI company is illegally spewing toxic pollutants from its datacenter in the Memphis areaA new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into the Black neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.The suit, filed Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its enormous datacenter in Southaven, Mississippi. The plaintiff – storied civil rights group the NAACP, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center – says xAI has been polluting the surrounding historically Black communities by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits. The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven. Continue reading...

Platform says it will reward original creators as it penalises ‘aggregators’ for flooding timelines with ‘stolen posts’Business live – latest updatesElon Musk’s X has reduced payments to users who post clickbait and recycle news stories as it warned account holders against “flooding the timeline” with low-quality content.Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, wrote on the social media platform that all “aggregators” – users who quickly repackage and repost news from other accounts – had received less money from the creator revenue sharing programme. Continue reading...

Company claims law regulating AI systems, set to go into effect in June, infringes on its first amendment rightsElon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado over a new AI law set to take effect in June.The suit seeks to block the state from enforcing the law, which would impose new requirements on AI systems to protect state residents from “algorithmic discrimination” in sectors such as education, employment, healthcare, housing and financial services. Continue reading...

Cable signed by Marco Rubio and seen by Guardian suggests staff work with Pentagon psychological operations unitThe United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.The cable, signed by secretary of state Marco Rubio on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad. Continue reading...

• A judge dismissed X's lawsuit against an advertising boycott, labeling it a 'fishing expedition,' marking a significant legal setback for Musk's platform. • The ruling highlights ongoing complexities surrounding free speech protections, corporate accountability, and advertiser rights in the digital platform economy. • The decision underscores judicial skepticism toward X's legal strategy and may embolden further advertiser actions against the platform.

Archeologists believe remains found in Maastricht, Netherlands, may be of real-life soldier who inspired novel characterMore than three-and-a-half centuries after a musket ball to the throat put an end to decades of exemplary swashbuckling, the French soldier who inspired Alexandre Dumas and went on to be immortalised on the stage and screen – not to mention as a plucky cartoon dog – may rise again.Workers repairing a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht have discovered a skeleton that could belong to the 17th-century Gascon nobleman Charles de Batz-Castelmore – better known as d’Artagnan – whose exploits led Dumas to make him the hero of the Three Musketeers. Continue reading...

Lawsuit argues XAI failed to disclose risks, limitations and exposure to harm that come with using chatbotThe mayor and city council of Baltimore, Maryland, filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI company on Tuesday, alleging that its Grok chatbot violated consumer protections by generating nonconsensual sexualized images.Baltimore’s lawsuit argues that xAI deceptively marketed Grok as a general-purpose AI assistant and X as a mainstream social media site, failing to disclose the risks, limitations and exposure to harm that come with using the platform and chatbot. The suit, filed in the circuit court for Baltimore city, argues that the court has jurisdiction over xAI given that the company advertises and operates in Baltimore. Continue reading...

• Elon Musk launched Terafab, a $20 billion-plus semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas, jointly developed by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI to produce custom chips for EVs, Optimus robots, and AI computing. • The facility targets terawatt-scale power output, addressing global chip shortages constraining Musk's AI and robotics timelines amid TSMC capacity limits. • This vertical integration bolsters U.S. domestic manufacturing self-sufficiency amid geopolitical tensions and accelerates competition in AI hardware where compute is the key bottleneck.

• A federal jury ruled Elon Musk liable for defrauding Twitter shareholders by intentionally driving down the stock price to renegotiate or exit the $44 billion takeover deal in 2022. • The verdict was reported by Reuters and Bloomberg News on Friday, with damages to be determined in a later phase of the trial. • This ruling holds significant implications for corporate takeover accountability, potentially affecting future high-profile mergers involving public companies.

California jurors hand win to investors who sued billionaire saying he publicly disparaged social media platform in 2022A California jury has ruled that Elon Musk is responsible for Twitter investors’ stock plummeting when he sought to buy the social media platform for $44bn in 2022. Jurors handed the win to a group of investors who sued the billionaire saying he publicly disparaged the company with the aim of bringing down Twitter’s stock price to get a better bargain.The trial, which began earlier this month in federal court in San Francisco, focused on whether Musk intended to move the market with his comments. During a six-month period in 2022, after his offer to buy Twitter, he posted constantly to his millions of followers that the social network was rife with bots that produced spam and created fake accounts. Continue reading...

• Elon Musk stated Tesla and SpaceX AI will continue large Nvidia chip purchases even as Tesla advances its AI5 chip, optimized for edge compute in Optimus and Robotaxi. • Tesla's Terafab AI chip manufacturing facility is set to launch within seven days from March 14, potentially by March 21. • Musk praised Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, noting AI5's efficiency in half-reticle format could halve fab needs, with AI6 potentially matching dual AI5.

Exclusive: eSafety commission pointed to Musk’s promise that ‘removing child exploitation is priority #1’ in letter obtained by Guardian Australia The Australian online safety regulator warned Elon Musk’s X amid the Grok sexualised image generation scandal that it found child abuse material was “particularly systemic” on X and more accessible than “any other mainstream service”, correspondence obtained by Guardian Australia reveals.The eSafety commissioner wrote to X in January after its chatbot Grok was used to generate sexualised images of women and children online, in what the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described as “abhorrent”. Continue reading...

• Elon Musk has unveiled 'Macrohard,' a Tesla-xAI agent that combines Grok and screen-reading technology to automate entire software company operations, representing a significant step toward autonomous software development. • The system runs on Tesla's AI4 infrastructure and demonstrates the convergence of multiple AI capabilities—natural language processing and computer vision—to handle complex software engineering tasks. • This development signals accelerating competition in AI agent technology beyond traditional model training, as companies race to deploy autonomous systems that can perform knowledge work at scale.