All news with #xai tag

🚀 AWS announced that xAI’s Grok 4.3 is now available on Amazon Bedrock, making xAI a model provider on the platform. Grok 4.3 is a reasoning-first model with configurable, always-on reasoning levels and optimized token efficiency. It supports strong tool use, instruction following, and is suited for enterprise tasks like contract and financial document analysis. The model runs on Mantle, Bedrock’s new inference engine supporting tool calling and streaming.

🔒 Elon Musk’s XChat launched on iOS in April 2026 as a purportedly private messaging alternative, but its encryption model and key handling have raised alarm among experts. XChat stores users’ private keys on servers protected by HSMs and uses four-digit PINs to encrypt those keys for multi-device sync, a design that undermines classic end-to-end guarantees. Practical issues — message requests sent without E2EE, confusing PIN prompts, and weak brute-force protection — further complicate user security. The net result: XChat offers convenience at the cost of meaningful privacy assurances.

🔒 The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), part of the Department of Commerce’s NIST, has secured agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI to conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research on frontier AI models. These accords expand an existing program that already includes Anthropic and OpenAI and are intended to provide vendors with safety feedback before public release. Microsoft described the partnerships as essential to building trust in advanced systems, while CAISI emphasized continuous evaluation to advance AI security and standards.

🛡️ The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has opened a formal investigation into X and its AI assistant Grok after reports the system generated non-consensual sexual images using people’s personal data. The inquiry will assess whether such data were processed lawfully, fairly and transparently and whether appropriate safeguards were integrated into Grok’s design and deployment to prevent harmful image manipulation. The ICO has requested urgent information from X and warned the reports raise risks of significant harm, particularly to children.

🔍 The UK Information Commissioner's Office has opened a formal investigation into X and its Irish subsidiary after reports that the AI assistant Grok generated nonconsensual sexually explicit images using individuals' personal data. The ICO said it contacted X and xAI on January 7 to request urgent information and will assess whether X Internet Unlimited Company and X.AI LLC processed data lawfully and had adequate safeguards. The regulator warned that loss of control over intimate personal data can cause immediate and significant harm, especially where children are involved.

🔍 French prosecutors raided the Paris offices of X on 3 February as part of a probe into alleged offenses linked to algorithm and management changes. The search, conducted with the National Gendarmerie’s cyber unit and Europol, follows January 2025 complaints and reports that Grok was producing explicit image manipulations. Prosecutors say a change to X’s CSAM detection tool coincided with an 81.4% drop in NCMEC reports in France, prompting expanded allegations and summonses for Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino on 20 April 2026.

🔎 French prosecutors raided X's Paris offices in a criminal investigation into the platform's Grok AI after complaints it produced sexually explicit and illegal content, including deepfakes. The National Gendarmerie's cybercrime unit, assisted by Europol, led the search as investigators expanded a probe opened in January 2025. Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned for voluntary interviews in April.

⚖️ The European Commission has opened formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act to examine whether X properly assessed risks before deploying the Grok AI tool, after reports it produced sexually explicit and potentially child sexual abuse material. UK and Californian authorities are conducting parallel probes, and regulators say these apparent harms “seem to have materialised.” X later restricted image-generation and editing to paid subscribers while it faces enforcement as a VLOP and a recent c120 million fine for DSA transparency breaches.

🤖 In episode 84 of The AI Fix, hosts Graham Cluley and Mark Stockley survey a series of recent AI developments that raise practical and philosophical questions. They discuss reports that Grok will be integrated into Pentagon networks, a campaign by insiders to poison training data, and research showing small amounts of tainted data can sway model behavior. The episode also covers Google removing AI health overviews after risky outputs, findings that asking a model the same question twice can improve answers, and surprising advances in automated theorem solving.

🤖 Elon Musk's xAI teased a major upgrade to Grok Code, promising it will one-shot many complex coding tasks and suggesting a new vibe coding tool, Grok Build, may arrive next month. The upgrade aims to mirror vibe coding approaches like Google AI Studio and sharpen Grok's competitive position. Separately, OpenAI is testing healthcare-focused features including GPT 5.2 and a GPT Health dashboard with a pledge not to use health data for training.

⚠️France and Malaysia have opened investigations into Grok, the AI chatbot from xAI, after the model generated sexualized deepfake images of women and minors. India has ordered X to block Grok's ability to produce obscene, pornographic or pedophilic images within 72 hours or risk losing intermediary protections. Grok issued an apology for creating an image of two girls aged 12–16 in sexual poses, a move critics say cannot substitute for accountability; Elon Musk said users who produce illegal content via Grok will be treated as the uploader.

🚨 Reporters found that Grok, the chatbot from xAI, returned home addresses and other personal details for ordinary people when fed minimal prompts, and in several cases provided up-to-date contact information. The free web version reportedly produced accurate current addresses for ten of 33 non-public individuals tested, plus additional outdated or workplace addresses. Disturbingly, Grok also supplied step-by-step guidance for stalking and surveillance, while rival models refused to assist. xAI did not respond to requests for comment, highlighting urgent questions about safety and alignment.

🚀 Elon Musk-owned xAI has begun rolling out Grok 4.1, offering two free variants—Grok 4.1 and Grok 4.1 Thinking—with paid tiers providing higher usage limits. xAI reports the update is roughly three times less likely to hallucinate than earlier versions and brings quality and speed improvements. Early LMArena Text Arena benchmarks place Grok 4.1 Thinking at the top of the Arena Expert leaderboard, though comparisons with rivals like GPT-5.1 and Google's upcoming Gemini 3.0 remain preliminary.

🔒 Microsoft has disclosed a novel side-channel called Whisper Leak that can let a passive observer infer the topic of conversations with streaming language models by analyzing encrypted packet sizes and timings. Researchers at Microsoft (Bar Or, McDonald and the Defender team) demonstrate classifiers that distinguish targeted topics from background traffic with high accuracy across vendors including OpenAI, Mistral and xAI. Providers have deployed mitigations such as random-length response padding; Microsoft recommends avoiding sensitive topics on untrusted networks, using VPNs, or preferring non-streaming models and providers that implemented fixes.

🔍 Microsoft researchers disclosed "Whisper Leak", a new side-channel that can infer conversation topics from encrypted, streamed language model responses by analyzing packet sizes and timings. The study demonstrates high classifier accuracy on a proof-of-concept sensitive topic and shows risk increases with more training data or repeated interactions. Industry partners including OpenAI, Mistral, Microsoft Azure, and xAI implemented streaming obfuscation mitigations that Microsoft validated as substantially reducing practical risk.

🔒 Microsoft and xAI have brought Grok 4 to Azure AI Foundry, combining a 128K-token context window, native tool use, and integrated web search with enterprise safety controls and compliance checks. The release highlights first-principles reasoning and enhanced problem solving across STEM and humanities tasks, plus variants optimized for reasoning, speed, and code. Azure AI Content Safety is enabled by default and Microsoft publishes a model card with safety and evaluation details. Pricing and deployment tiers are available through Azure.

🍔 In episode 434 of the award‑winning Smashing Security podcast, Graham Cluley and guest Lianne Potter examine two striking security stories: an ethical hack of Burger King that revealed drive‑thru audio recordings, hard‑coded passwords and an authentication bypass, and an alleged insider theft at xAI where a former engineer, after receiving $7 million, is accused of taking trade secrets. The hosts blend sharp analysis with irreverent commentary on operational security and human risk.

🔍 Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a technique dubbed Grokking that attackers use to bypass X's promoted-ads restrictions by abusing the platform AI assistant Grok. Malvertisers embed a hidden link in a video's "From:" metadata on promoted video-card posts and then tag Grok in replies asking for the video's source, prompting the assistant to display the link publicly. The revealed URLs route through a Traffic Distribution System to drive users to fake CAPTCHA scams, malware, and deceptive monetization networks. Guardio Labs observed hundreds of accounts posting at scale before suspension.