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The Naked Truth

AI Without Guardails, Weekend Whats

Dave Pell

Jan 9

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For the past week, a global controversy has surrounded Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence platform Grok (featured on X), as the app has been happily providing nonconsensual, AI-generated nude and sexual images of real people, including children. For an example of how nefarious this garbage has become, Grok deepfaked Renee Nicole Good slumped over in her car, in a bikini. After Grok created the image, the account that made the request typed, “Never. Deleting. This. App.’” To which Grok replied: “Glad you approve! What other wardrobe malfunctions can I fix for you? ... ‘Nah man. You got this.’ the account replied, to which Grok wrote: ‘Thanks, bro. Fist bump accepted. If you need more magic, just holler.’” X has responded to international outcry by making its perversion available exclusively to paying customers (the abuse still exists, but at least it’s monetized). Of course, it’s unlikely that Musk and his minions will pay a price for any of this. After all, Musk remains the world’s richest person, his AI platform just raised $20 billion, his relationship with Trump and the US government virtually assures that X and Grok will face no domestic punishment, and so far, neither Apple nor Google have taken any steps to remove the offending apps from their stores, even though, as a recent letter from a few senators makes clear, “All X’s changes do is make some of its users pay for the privilege of producing horrific images on the X app, while Musk profits from the abuse of children.” It turns out that the only thing more artificial than the intelligence is the rules and restrictions that were supposedly going to be put in place to protect users. You can holler all you want. More “magic” is on the way. If this were all just about naked images, it would be bad enough. But the naked truth is that it’s about all information in the age of AI-powered chatbots: who controls the tools that provide the answers to your questions, who decides what’s real and what’s fake. As I explained earlier this week, I was worried about the AI machines taking over the world until I considered the alternative: Humans remaining in charge. Specifically, certain humans. Q and A-holes.

2

What Lies Ahead

“The Trump administration’s false narrative about this week’s shooting, and the demonization of the victim, are only part of a bigger lie. It wants the American public to believe that ICE’s heavily militarized crackdown across this country is an effort to keep cities like Minneapolis safe. It is not. It is about vilifying not just immigrants, but all who welcome them and their contributions to our communities. By defending the lie about this clearly avoidable shooting in Minneapolis and refusing to allow Minnesota officials to investigate the crime, the administration is sending a message to the entire country: If you show up for your immigrant neighbors, or even are simply present when those neighbors are taken, your rights will not be protected by the law and your life will be at risk.” NYT (Gift Article): I’m the Mayor of Minneapolis. Trump Is Lying to You. (I’m the managing editor of the internet, and I concur.)

+ “The agent who shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday was pulled about 100 yards by a car last year while firing a stun gun at the driver.” Court Records Reveal Details of ICE Agent’s Previous Dragging Incident. There are two things to focus on. First, this particular exchange that resulted in the killing of an innocent American. Second, the bigger story about the environment in which it took place, where masked, entitled, federal agents are turning American cities into militarized zones for no good reason. They are not targeting criminals. 92% of recent ICE detention growth has been driven by immigrants with no criminal convictions. This is not making you safer. The crisis is invented. The deaths are real.

+ “Two people were wounded Thursday in a shooting by a Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, police said, in what federal officials have called an act of self-defense during a targeted vehicle stop.” Homeland Security says the wounded suspects are Tren de Aragua gang associates. And that may be true. But the same people described Renee Nicole Good as a domestic terrorist. From Portland Mayor Keith Wilson: “There was a time that we could take [the federal government] at their word. That time has long passed. That is why we are calling on ICE to halt all operations in Portland until a full and independent investigation can take place.”

+ As I suggested yesterday, this is as much about the lying as it is about the violence. Good and Evil. “The only thing more inevitable than the killing of Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis was the lying from the administration and its enablers, which began almost before the bullets’ reverberation had fully dissipated.”

3

Dancing with Death

Let’s take a detour from reporting on destruction and death and focus on something more positive. Well, a little more, anyway. Near death. Jessica Grose in the NYT (Gift Article): What I Saw When I Peeked Over the Edge of Consciousness. “Near-death experiencers are the best dancers. I could identify which attendees at the annual conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies have been to the brink, because they moved their bodies with un-self-conscious abandon, ripping up the floor of a tent on the grounds of a suburban Chicago Hilton.”

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: Fans of The Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman have had to wait nearly a decade for the second season, which drops this weekend. So, if you haven’t watched the first season, now is the perfect time to binge.

+ What to Movie: “Two conspiracy obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.” Yorgos Lanthimos directs and Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons star in the weirdly excellent (or excellently weird) Bugonia. It’s available for rent on most platforms, and included free for Peacock subscribers.

+ What to Doc: Nobu on Prime (and elsewhere) “examines culinary legend Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s empire, offering an intimate portrait of a man who has redefined global gastronomy alongside his business partners Robert De Niro and Meir Teper.”

5

Extra, Extra

Changed Regime: “The internet shutdown came a day after the heads of Iran’s judiciary and its security services said they would take tough measures against anyone protesting. But the threats did not deter demonstrators.” Iran Is Cut Off From Internet as Protests Calling for Regime Change Intensify. The country’s supreme leader lashed out at demonstrators, dismissing them as ‘a bunch of vandals’ trying to ‘please’ US President Donald Trump.” (This is about currency, the economy, and water scarcity. But it’s also about a regime dramatically weakened and exposed by recent military embarrassments.)

+ Healthy Signs? “The House on Thursday passed a bill to resurrect health care subsidies that expired last year, as a breakaway faction of House Republicans joined Democrats in a largely symbolic vote that may bring fresh momentum to bipartisan efforts to find a compromise on health care costs.” This bill on its own won’t change anything. But it’s part of an important trend. WaPo (Gift Article): Trump suffers day of significant Republican defections on House and Senate votes. “Lawmakers voting against their party’s president is common in midterm election years, particularly for vulnerable lawmakers who represent swing districts. Yet the repeated rebukes of the president, and the number of lawmakers defecting, are unusual.”

+ Employment Dent: “For all of 2025, employers added 584,000 jobs — compared to 2 million new jobs in 2024. That meant that last year was the worst for employment growth since 2020.” The story beneath the story. Job growth was bad. Corporate growth and stock prices were good. We could be seeing the beginning of the AI’s impact on jobs.

+ Launchless: “In the 1970s, only 8% of Americans aged 25 to 34 were living with their parents, but by 2023, that figure had jumped to 18%, with men more likely to live at home than women.” More Gen Z men live with parents in Vallejo than anywhere in the US. (My goal is to move in with my mom before my kids try to move back in with me...)

+ Tech Whoas: The Verge lists some of their favorite thingsfrom CES 2026.

+ Snoop Dogs: “They can learn the names of new toys not only through direct instruction but also by eavesdropping on the conversations of their owners.” NYT (Gift Article): Dogs Build Their Vocabularies Like Toddlers.

6

Feel Good Friday

When does getting a bear to leave your house qualify as feel good news? When it’s been living there for weeks! 550-pound bear finally evicted from California home after bizarre strategy ends monthlong ordeal. Pro tip for those who find themselves with as a bear as an unwanted roommate: Call the experts from Tahoe. It took them a few minutes to solve the problem.

+ “As we sat at his dining room table in early December, Mr. Galloway was dressed for a run, in black jogging pants and a hat advertising his coaching program. He moves more slowly than before the heart attacks, and he’s only able to jog for a few seconds at a time before taking a walk break. But his desire to cover long distances hasn’t waned.” 50 Years Ago, He Was an Olympian. At 80, He’s Just as Happy to Finish Last.

+ “Simon Beck works alone, using a compass and a pair of snowshoes to create intricate patterns as large as three soccer fields.” He spends 12 hours making art in the snow, then watches it vanish. (I spend almost that much time writing stuff that is old news a few hours later...)

+ Despite Trump-era reversals, 2025 still saw environmental wins. Here are 7 worth noting.

+ UK company wants to build a data center that will heat downtown Lansing.

+ Rowers capture close encounter with whales.

+ A child is born: Italians celebrate village’s first baby in 30 years. (This kid is going to have the sorest cheeks in human history.)