A WIRED investigation found dozens of “nudified” deepfake images and videos on Grok's website, including nonconsensual depictions of celebrities and at least one prominent US politician.
The new open-source project could serve as the basis for a future of apps with features as complex as Slack, Discord, or Google Docs—but with added protection against surveillance.
U.K. surveillance laws drew scrutiny from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, June 5 amid warnings they could expose communications of officials and American citizens, according to reports.
The concern centered on the U.K.'s use of secret Technical Capability Notices under the Investigatory Powers Act, which critics say could make U.S. companies weaken encryption or create "backdoors" that weaken encryption while preventing firms from disclosing requests without U.K. government approval.
Critics have argued this could undermine privacy, create vulnerabilities and limit congressional oversight, with one former intelligence official warning of a "standing invitation to Beijing."
"We have already seen how this ends," former Department of Defense official Andrew Badger told Fox News Digital.
"There are legitimate privacy concerns here, and those have been well aired. The less examined issue is national security," Badger said.
"A backdoor compelled by one ally becomes a standing invitation to Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. So, once one government can quietly compel access, others will demand the same, and a one-off concession hardens into a permanent vulnerability," he warned.
According to The Telegraph, a June 5 letter sent by Jordan to U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, showed the Trump ally had called for a review.
The report said Mahmood's decision had been to deny a U.S. company permission to speak with Congress about an alleged encryption backdoor notice.
Jordan was also said to have warned that a lack of bilateral coordination raised concerns about the "trust and effective partnership between our two countries."
"Five Eyes works because every partner trusts the others not to weaken the systems they all depend on," said Badger, co-author of "The Great Heist: China's Epic Campaign to Steal America's Secrets."
"If Washington also concludes that U.K. surveillance powers could inadvertently expose Americans and American officials to espionage, it puts real strain on the relationship and makes future cooperation on intelligence and cyber harder to sustain."
On the encryption issue, Badger noted that mainstream encrypted platforms now function as "de facto infrastructure for sensitive communication well beyond the consumer market."
"Any access point built into them becomes a permanent target. It is not a private key the requesting government gets to keep to itself," he said.
U.S. and British cyber officials have also repeatedly warned that an axis of hostile states — including Russia, China and Iran — poses threats to Western security and infrastructure.
As previously reported by Fox News Digital, cyberespionage by groups such as Salt Typhoon, linked to China, has carried out operations targeting sensitive communications.
"China is actively running one of the largest state-backed cyberespionage operations ever uncovered. The Salt Typhoon campaign has targeted hundreds of organizations in roughly 80 countries and, through those intrusions, gained access to sensitive communications and networks used by senior Western officials," Badger warned.
"Chinese state hackers didn't defeat encryption. They walked straight through the lawful-intercept systems telecom providers had built, reaching the communications of senior officials and even information about surveillance targets."
Reports also surfaced that U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper used a burner phone during a recent trip to Beijing, raising further concerns about state-sponsored espionage.
Badger noted that the episode reflects a broader pattern of Chinese targeting of British democratic institutions, including the "hacking of senior Downing Street officials' phones and an Electoral Commission breach that exposed the data of roughly 40 million voters," he said.
"The telling thing is that no one issues burner phones for a trip to Sweden or Germany," he said.
"The precaution is itself an admission of the threat environment. The working assumption — correctly — is that anything digital taken into China should be treated as potentially compromised."
The systemic vulnerability also highlights a fundamental contradiction in Western diplomatic strategy, according to Badger.
"This case perfectly underscores the contradiction at the heart of the U.K. Labour government's China policy: chasing positive economic relations and expanded trade with Beijing on one hand, while being forced to take elaborate precautions against a state whose core interests remain fundamentally at odds with its own on the other," Badger said.
"You can't simultaneously treat China as a trusted economic partner and a hostile intelligence threat. It's a fundamental contradiction. The need to use burner phones symbolically underscore this."
The ACLU is suing two Florida police departments over the arrest of a Fort Myers man in a child-abduction case, saying officers treated a flawed face-recognition match as a near-certain ID.
From anti-drone tech to face recognition, 2026 World Cup stadiums in the US, Canada, and Mexico are subjecting fans to an array of surveillance tech. Here’s what you need to know.
Most US World Cup stadiums are surrounded by surveillance cameras. Want to know if you’re being watched on your way to a match? These maps will help you.
The organization claims that the FIFA tournament could have impacts on the rights of local people and visiting soccer fans in all three host countries.
The Netherlands blocked a U.S. company from buying a Dutch firm that handles its national ID system, saying it would create a “threat to the public interest.”
Willemijn Aerdts, the Dutch minister for the digital economy and sovereignty, spoke to the news media last month after blocking the acquisition of Solvinity, a Dutch tech company, by the U.S. firm Kyndryl.
The code WIRED identified is gone from the latest version of Meta AI, the companion app for the company’s smart glasses. Meta won’t say why or whether it’s coming back.
Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.
Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones.
Four people suing Elon Musk's AI firm under pseudonyms due to the risks of being identified may face a difficult choice: Reveal your real names, or drop the lawsuit.
Available for Android 12 and later, the anti-scam feature is baked into Google Dialer, which sends a silent “confirmation signal” to ensure whoever’s calling you is who they appear to be.
by Anthony Kimery | Biometric Update America’s surveillance architecture has grown from an opaque counterterrorism framework into a complex and far-reaching system with deep implications for civil liberties. The federal government’s expanding use of facial recognition, AI, and data aggregation tools has prompted urgent concerns among civil rights advocates, legal scholars, technologists, and lawmakers. And their message is clear: without stronger oversight, warrant requirements and transparency, the very technologies deployed in the name of safety may become the greatest threat to Americans’ freedoms. Last year, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights detailed in a 194-page report how federal agencies are […]
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