• California AG sends cease and desist to xAI over Grok’s explicit deepfakes

    January 17, 2026

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, days after his office launched an official investigation into the company over reports that Grok was generating nonconsensual If you’ll recall, xAI and Grok have been under fire for taking images of real individuals and putting them in revealing clothing like bikinis upon random users’ requests. Bonta’s office demands that xAI immediately cease and desist from creating “digitized sexually explicit material” when the depicted individual didn’t consent to it or if the individual is a minor. It also demanded that xAI stop “facilitating or aiding and…

  • Italy investigates Activision Blizzard for pushing in-game purchases

    January 17, 2026

    Italy has launched two investigations into Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard, alleging the company has engaged in “misleading and aggressive” sales practices for its popular smartphone games Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty Mobile. The country’s competition regulator, Autorità Garante della Concorrenza E Del Mercato (AGCM), said the investigations focus on the use of design elements to induce users, particularly children, into playing for long periods, and make in-game purchases by urging them to not miss out on rewards. “These practices, together with strategies that make it difficult for users to understand the real value of the virtual currency used in the…

  • How to pair AirPods with any device

    January 17, 2026

    AirPods work most smoothly with Apple hardware, but they also connect reliably to Android phones, Windows laptops and other Bluetooth devices. The pairing process depends on the platform in use although the basics remain the same. Once the AirPods are placed in pairing mode, most devices detect them quickly and handle the remaining steps in the background. The guide below explains how to pair AirPods with Apple products, how the process differs on newer iPhones that support H2 features and how to connect them to non-Apple devices. How to pair AirPods with Apple devices Apple builds AirPods to pair almost…

  • Bluesky rolls out cashtags and LIVE badges amid a boost in app installs

    January 17, 2026

    Social network Bluesky is updating its app to allow anyone to share when they’re livestreaming on Twitch, and adding specialized hashtags, known as cashtags, for discussing publicly traded stocks. The new features could potentially help Bluesky capitalize on a recent boost in new installs, which have arrived in the days after the X deepfake news went mainstream. On X, users were asking its integrated AI bot Grok to turn photos of real women and sometimes minors into sexualized images without consent. This week, California’s attorney general opened an investigation into xAI’s chatbot over the proliferation of the “nonconsensual sexually explicit material.” In…

  • 2026 BMW 5 Series review

    January 17, 2026

    German executive sedans are niche vehicles in Australia, but the BMW 5 Series continues to be one of the best. Edgy, angular exterior styling is what defines the current-generation G60-series executive sedan, which arrived locally roughly two years ago. Not much has changed since then, which means this is still the most diverse 5 Series family to date. Key talking points are, of course, the all-electric i5 models and the beastly M5 performance flagship, which have stolen some of the limelight from the more traditional 5 Series cars. The result is just one non-performance, non-electrified petrol variant – the 520i…

  • How to cancel CyberGhost and get a refund

    January 17, 2026

    I came out of my CyberGhost review with a positive opinion, feeling it had earned its spot in my best VPN roundup. However, even an expert review is subjective, and there’s a chance CyberGhost will not work for you. If that’s the case, here’s how to cancel your subscription. How to stop your CyberGhost subscription renewing Cancelling your CyberGhost subscription won’t end it right away, unless you delete your account or get the refund (I’ll explain how to do both of those later). Instead, the way to cancel CyberGhost is to stop your subscription from renewing at the end of…

  • YouTube relaxes monetization guidelines for some controversial topics

    January 17, 2026

    YouTube is updating its advertiser-friendly content guidelines to allow more videos on controversial issues to earn full ad revenue, as long as they’re dramatized or discussed in a non-graphic manner. These controversial topics include self-harm, abortion, suicide, and domestic and sexual abuse. YouTube notes that content on child abuse or eating disorders will remain ineligible for full monetization. YouTube announced the change this week in a video on its Creator Insider channel. “In the past, the degree of graphic or descriptive detail was not considered a significant factor in determining advertiser friendliness, even for some dramatized material,” YouTube explained. “Consequently,…

  • Three months of access is only $3 right now

    January 17, 2026

    One way to read more in the new year is to incorporate audiobooks as part of your reading habit. Audible is having a sale right now that makes that easier and cheaper to do: you can get three months of access for only $1 per month, or a total of $3. The promotion runs through January 21. An Audible subscription grants one audiobook per month to keep. This can be selected from a massive catalog of new releases and bestsellers. The collection here has just about everything. Amazon However, it’s easy to plow through a single book in a month.…

  • The AI healthcare gold rush is here

    January 17, 2026

    AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast.  In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for healthcare, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation. The money and products are pouring into health and voice AI, but so are concerns about hallucination risks, inaccurate medical information, and massive security vulnerabilities in systems handling sensitive patient data.  Watch as Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with health care, what other products can expect an AI-makeover, and more.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also…

  • TikTok sued by former workers over alleged union-busting

    January 17, 2026

    You know things are messed up when a Big Tech company fights accusations of union-busting by insisting it was only AI layoffs. That’s where things stand after a group of fired TikTok moderators in the UK filed a legal claim with an employment tribunal. The Guardian reported on Friday that around 400 TikTok content moderators who were unionizing were laid off before Christmas. The workers were sacked a week before a vote was scheduled to establish a collective bargaining unit. The moderators said they wanted better protection against the personal toll of processing traumatic content at a high speed. They…