Elon Musk’s X profile (Jonathan Raa/Getty Images)

Grok has been climbing Apple and Google’s app store rankings amid calls to remove it for sexualized images

Critics have pointed out that Apple and Google have removed other apps for less.

1/9/26 1:23PM

As uproar has grown around sexualized deepfakes of women and children through Grok’s image generation tools, so has the xAI chatbot’s popularity.

The issue became popularized in late December, as users on X tagged Grok to make it digitally undress people. More recently, as Grok’s outsized volume of deepfakes has become more heavily publicized — social media and deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh found that 85% of Grok’s images are sexualized and its posts dwarf other deepfake sites — people have been calling for action.

Europe and India have announced probes over the images. The UK’s prime minister has vowed to take action, and three Democratic US senators have asked Apple and Google to remove X and Grok from their app stores, NBC reports.

In response to the outrage, Grok has restricted its image generation tool on X to paid users but has left the Grok stand-alone app and website largely untouched.

At the same time, Grok has been climbing the Apple and Google app store rankings. Grok is currently No. 4 in the iOS App Store, having moved up from 44th the day after Christmas. On the Google Play Store, it’s now ranked No. 13 overall, up from 62.

Many social media users have pointed out that back in 2018, Apple removed Tumblr from its store for sexualized images of children. In the AI era, Google and Apple have removed a number of smaller apps for offering sexually exploitative content generation, but Grok and X remain.

Last year, xAI CEO Elon Musk filed a lawsuit alleging that Apple favored its partner OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the App Store.

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Jon Keegan4h

Report: SpaceX posted $18.5 billion in revenue and a $5 billion loss last year

All eyes on are SpaceX as it prepares for a blockbuster IPO as soon as this summer, and everyone is eager to get a look at the company’s official numbers for the first time.

The Information is reporting that last year, SpaceX posted $18.5 billion in revenue with a $5 billion loss.

According to the report, the numbers reflect the combined finances of SpaceX and xAI, which it acquired in February.

After acquiring xAI, SpaceX’s successful space launch and satellite business may have been dragged down by xAI’s massive data center spending. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that xAI had burned through $8 billion in the first nine months of 2025.

SpaceX Posted Nearly $5 Billion Loss Last Year from AI Spending

According to the report, the numbers reflect the combined finances of SpaceX and xAI, which it acquired in February.

Jon Keegan5h

Report: Amazon hopes its Project Houdini modular data center plan is the trick to speed up construction

Amazon is looking for a magic trick that can help it get past data center construction bottlenecks so it can work through the $244 billion worth of cloud computing backlogs it wants to deliver.

It may have just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. (I know, groan.)

Business Insider is reporting that Amazon’s Project Houdini seeks to slash labor costs and installation time by building modular “data halls” — the rows of racks of servers that make up the heart of data centers — in factories, and then shipping them fully assembled on trailers to data center sites.

According to the report, the modular plan would save weeks of construction time and tens of thousands of hours of labor costs.

This week in Amazon’s letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the company is planning $200 billion in capital expenditure this year, and that it is embracing its tradition of taking big bets on experiments like Project Houdini:

“You need to invent and experiment like crazy. Many of these experiments will fail, and it might feel like you’re getting nowhere. But, your culture must possess the tenacity to keep at it.”

Amazon creates 'Project Houdini' to make data center delays disappear

According to the report, the modular plan would save weeks of construction time and tens of thousands of hours of labor costs.

“You need to invent and experiment like crazy. Many of these experiments will fail, and it might feel like you’re getting nowhere. But, your culture must possess the tenacity to keep at it.”

Jon Keegan6h

Creator of popular, mysterious “HappyHorse” text-to-video model is Alibaba

AI benchmark leaderboards are often where mysterious new models make their debut, stoking speculation about the unnamed companies behind them.

That was the case with an impressive new text-to-video model named HappyHorse-1.0 that shot to the top of public leaderboards. CNBC reports that Chinese tech giant Alibaba has confirmed that it is the owner of the new model.

HappyHorse beat out the popular Seedance model from rival ByteDance in blind human evaluations to claim the top spot on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard.

While OpenAI has announced it is shuttering its text-to-video Sora app, the category continues to see intense competition as a flurry of video models improve with more realistic physics and cinematic effects.

Alibaba just revealed it’s behind a viral AI video model dominating leaderboards

HappyHorse beat out the popular Seedance model from rival ByteDance in blind human evaluations to claim the top spot on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard.

Jon Keegan4/9/26

OpenAI: Our new AI tool is too dangerous to release, too!

This week, Anthropic warned that it had developed a new model that was too dangerous to cybersecurity to be released to the public.

According to a new report, OpenAI is saying similar things about a new cybersecurity tool it is working on (separate from its rumored forthcoming Spud model).

Axios wrote that OpenAI is allowing a small group of partners to test its new AI tool, which has “advanced cybersecurity capabilities.”

The realization that we have arrived at an era of powerful new AI models that could overwhelm current cybersecurity defenses is spooking investors, with cybersecurity stocks like Cloudflare, Zscaler, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks all down sharply this morning.

Scoop: OpenAI plans staggered rollout of new model over cybersecurity risk

Axios wrote that OpenAI is allowing a small group of partners to test its new AI tool, which has “advanced cybersecurity capabilities.”

Jon Keegan4/9/26

OpenAI’s Stargate shrinks further as UK data center “paused”

OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate global data center project just got smaller.

First announced at the White House alongside President Trump at the start of his second term, the OpenAI partnership with Oracle and SoftBank sought to build massive data centers around the world, including sites in the UAE, the UK, and Norway.

Bloomberg reports that the company is “pausing” the Stargate UK project, citing high energy costs and regulatory obstacles.

Last month, the company and its partner Oracle scrapped its planned expansion of the Stargate I data center site in Abilene, Texas.

In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said:

“AI compute is foundational to that goal — we continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

Stargate UK was announced in September, including a partnership with Nvidia and Nscale that would scale up to 31,000 GPUs.

OpenAI Pauses Stargate UK Data Center Effort Citing Energy Costs

Bloomberg reports that the company is “pausing” the Stargate UK project, citing high energy costs and regulatory obstacles.

Last month, the company and its partner Oracle scrapped its planned expansion of the Stargate I data center site in Abilene, Texas.

In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said:

“AI compute is foundational to that goal — we continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

Stargate UK was announced in September, including a partnership with Nvidia and Nscale that would scale up to 31,000 GPUs.

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