Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.
Teens sue xAI over sexually abusive AI images
A trio of teenage girls filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s company xAI, alleging that the platform’s algorithm was used to generate child sexually exploitive material using their likenesses without their consent.
NPR notes that the lawsuit doesn’t claim the images were generated using xAI’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok, which has faced international scrutiny after being used to generate such images. Rather, the suit alleges that xAI licensed its product to app makers that enabled the production of the images.
While the perpetrator didn’t use xAI’s chatbot, Grok or the social media platform X (also owned by xAI), the lawsuit claims that the perpetrator relied on an unnamed app that used xAI’s algorithm, citing law enforcement. The plaintiffs accused xAI of deliberately licensing its technology to app makers, often outside the U.S. ‘In this way, xAI could attempt to outsource the liability of their incredibly dangerous tool,’ said the complaint.
XAI didn’t respond to NPR’s request for comment.
Musk and xAI have fought to keep the company’s algorithm a secret. I recently wrote about xAI’s failed effort to have a court immediately pause a California law that required that AI companies provide some transparency about their algorithms. In response to MS NOW’s request for comment in January about nonconsensual sexually explicit images created by Grok, a spokesperson for the company said the company has a zero tolerance policy for “any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”
Read more on the latest lawsuit against xAI at NPR here.
Tech bro bashes introspection
A recent interview with Trump-aligned tech investor Marc Andreessen garnered bipartisan backlash and mockery online. In revealing (and demonstrably false) comments, he suggested that “introspection” is a modern invention and a hindrance to successful people.
More tech bro blathering
Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC last week that his technology is destined to fuel a power imbalance by lessening the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men. Karp, who previously boasted to investors about his company’s ability to help the government scare and kill its supposed enemies, has made this kind of hypermasculine rambling a key aspect of his brand.
Read more about his rant to CNBC here.
Former DOGE employees dragged online
A federal judge last week ordered two videos of former Department of Government Efficiency employees be taken down from the internet after they garnered widespread mockery online and death threats against the men. The videos were initially posted by plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to restore National Endowment for the Humanities grants slashed by DOGE after Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead the ostensible cost-cutting effort. In the recorded depositions, the staffers struggled to explain why they authorized various cuts to federal programs under the president’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” executive order.
Read more at The New York Times here.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., unveiled a bill last week that would establish a federal commission to guide AI regulations. The Economy of the Future Commission, if authorized by law, would consist of 10 members selected by majority and minority leadership in the House and Senate. A press release announcing the legislation said it’s necessary to better understand how AI will affect American industries. Check out the senators’ bill and press release here. A new study from the AI research platform Open Measures suggests alternative social media platforms are becoming increasingly popular as people look to ditch older platforms like Twitter and TikTok — occasionally, for political reasons. Check out the study here. Meta’s stock climbed almost 3 percentage points after a Reuters report last week that said the company is planning to lay off 20% of its 79,000 employees to offset its AI-related spending. Read more at CNBC here. Dozens of states officially moved forward with an antitrust trial against Live Nation this week, effectively rebuking the Trump-led Justice Department’s settlement with the company last week. Read my blog on the trial for MS NOW here.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
Bipartisan AI commission proposal
Big Tech alternatives
Meta plans major cuts
Unsettled states
