16 January 2026

Welcome, and a quick reflection

Goodness me. A hundred editions. Two years. And I’m still going. I’m pleased that at least a few people are interested in the policy and politics of our digital creations, and not just the tech itself or its share price.

Thank you for joining me.

When I named this newsletter, I knew that many people would assume it would be about cybersecurity or cybercrime or whatever, especially since I’d been writing about that for more than a decade. But no. Plenty of people are doing that already, and doing it well.

I meant cyber in an older, broader sense. Or maybe a newer sense, of third wave cybernetics. Or, given that’s kind of pretentious, just tech policy.

Which means, at least for this week, the continuing global backlash against Grok AI’s ability to undress people, or at least their images. And it means another look at Australia’s social media age restrictions.

I’ll also touch briefly on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 that’s about to be debated in parliament because it’s about speech, and these days a lot of our speech happens online.

There’s more, of course, so do read on...

The world reacts to Grok AI’s undressing binge

Mere hours after posting last week’s newsletter, news came through that the Grok Imagine image editor was now limited to X’s paying subscribers. That turned out to be not true.

Grok said that, but as Forbes reported: “Image generation was still available to unpaid users through Grok’s standalone website by simply confirming their year of birth when prompted.”

Does that really address the problem?

Since then, there’s been a global reaction, including from our own prime minister Anthony Albanese who called the material “abhorrent”.

Predictably, Elon Musk has had a sook, saying the outcry is an excuse for censorship. While the UK hopes to build a “coalition of decency”, for example, Musk just accused their government of being “fascist”.

Grok has been banned in Indonesia and Malaysia, and now in the Philippines. Tech Policy Press is tracking the rest of the international regulatory response, so I’ll leave that to them.

“X claims it has stopped Grok from undressing people, but of course it hasn’t,” reports The Verge. “As of Wednesday evening, despite the policy’s claims, our reporters were still able to use the Grok app to generate revealing images of a person in a bikini using a free account.”

Finally, it must be remembered that while Grok provides the tools, it takes humans, usually men, to initiate the act. As Digital Rights Watch points out, it’s a business decision, and X is choosing profit over safety.

CAN GROK REALLY “APOLOGISE” FOR ANYTHING? In my latest podcast I chat with a philosopher who’s deeply interested in these questions and many others, such as chatbots that mimic the dead, and technological determinism: The 9pm Unnatural Act with a Pig with Patrick Stokes. Don’t let the title distract you. Look for The 9pm Edict in your podcast app.

Hasty hate crime bill looks set to fail

On Tuesday the government released a draft version of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, which, to quote the explanatory memorandum, “represents a comprehensive package of reforms which would further criminalise hateful conduct, and ensure that those that seek to spread hate, division and radicalisation are met with severe penalties”.

It would also expand powers to allow the cancellation or refusal of visas, set up a national firearms buyback scheme, and amend firearms laws — although those are all outside the scope of this newsletter.

What’s remarkable is the haste with which this bill is being processed.

The draft text — all 144 pages of it — was published on the Attorney-General’s Department website on Tuesday, with no opportunity for public consultation. A review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) kicked off — they were told about it on Monday — and they held public hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The public only had until 4pm on Thursday to make submissions. And today is Friday.

Parliament has been recalled to sit this coming Monday and Tuesday, and the PM wants the whole thing wrapped up by Tuesday night.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say this is not a pathway to quality lawmaking, especially when it covers such nuanced topics as free speech and its limits, and the definitions of “religious official”, “spiritual leader”, “hate crime”, “hate symbol”, and many more.

There’s also a “reversing [of] the burden of proof so a defendant is required to present evidence, in the first instance, that the public display of a prohibited hate symbol was for a legitimate purpose” — and “public” includes online. So, guilty until proven innocent.

Obviously I’m not arguing for some imagined right to display a swastika or whatever. But I am arguing for a more considered approach to these issues — and perhaps a chance for a proper consultation with us, the public.

As it happens, the bill is set to fail, as both the Coalition and the Greens have ruled out their support.

The Guardian reports: “Among [opposition leader Sussan] Ley’s key concerns was the absence of provisions banning phrases such as ‘globalise the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’, which [some] Jewish leaders consider antisemitic and inflammatory. She said the government was rushing the new laws, which bureaucrats responsible for legislative drafting could not explain.”

I’ve added “some” there because there’s still controversy over whether those phrases are, in fact, antisemitic. But this is very outside our scope here, as is a discussion of which Jewish organisations truly represent the views of diverse Jewish communities. So is most of the party-political squabbling.

Meanwhile the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union which represents journalists, calls the bill a threat to freedom and democracy.

The government’s minions will be busy this weekend, amending the draft so we can see the actual legislation tabled in parliament on Monday. We’d better order in plenty of Coping Gin.

And how’s that teen social media ban going?

Around 4.7 million social media accounts were identified as belonging to under-16s in the first half of December and shut down, according to initial figures gathered by eSafety Commission.

Commissioner Julie Inman Grant isn’t fazed by reports, as we noted last week, that many teens are working around the ban.

“While some kids may find creative ways to stay on social media, it’s important to remember that just like other safety laws we have in society, success is measured by reduction in harm and in re-setting cultural norms,” she said, while acknowledging that the true impact “won’t be measured in weeks or months but will likely be generational”.

Or at least until after the next election.

“Speed limits for instance are not a failure because some people speed. Most would agree that roads are safer because of them. Over time, compliance increases, norms settle, and the safety benefits grow,” she said.

Research shows that social media time does not increase teenagers’ mental health problems, however. “The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year.”

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Also in the news

• All 1,700 schools in Victoria have been caught up in cyber attack, with attackers accessing names, emails, encrypted passwords, year levels, and the schools’ names of thousands of current and former students.

• Microsoft has signed a deal with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), making various commitments around the use of AI. The agreement “incorporates three core priorities: sharing information and learning, embedding the worker voice in tech development, and collaborating on public policy and skills,” reports Information Age.

• OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Health, but would you trust it with your medical data? After all, remember Dr Google.

• Google’s autonomous taxi arm Waymo plans to start testing self-driving taxis in Australia this year, reports The Sizzle.

• The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has published Artificial intelligence for small business: Managing cyber security risks, which is what it says on the tin.

• An Australian teen has been charged with making swatting reports which falsely claimed that mass shootings were taking place at retailers and educational institutions in the US.

• The Australian Institute of Criminology has published some data on the availaboilithy and purchase of digital firearms products, by which they mean “including blueprints and printing files to manufacture 3D-printed firearms”.

• The self-described “Bush Legend” using social media to tell Australian animal stories is generated by AI, causing some to refer to it as “AI Blakface”.

• And also from The Conversation, “Yes, those big touchscreens in cars are dangerous and buttons are coming back”.

Elsewhere

• Apple’s AI service Siri will be powered with AI provided by Google in a multi-year deal reportedly worth US$5 billion, or about 0.13% of Apple’s market capitalisation. Alphabet Class C shares (GOOG) climbed roughly 1.1% in after-hours trading.

• Grok is in and ethics are out in the Pentagon’s new AI-acceleration strategy.

• Wikipedia is now 25 years old, but some old fights are still going. Curiously, Wikipedia has also signed AI deals with Microsoft, Meta, and Perplexity.

• A new paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: AI and Democracy: Mapping the Intersections.

• It’s from 2023 but it’s worth a re-run. The LLMentalist Effect is where chat-based large language models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con.

Inquiries of note

Nothing new this week.

What’s next?

As mentioned, Parliament is now returning for two days this coming Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 January. The only items on the draft legislation programs for the House of Representatives and the Senate are the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill and the Condolence Motion for Victims of the Bondi Antisemitic Terror Attack — although of course either items might be added on the day.

DOES SOMETHING IN THE EMAIL LOOK WRONG? Let me know. If there’s ever a factual error, editing mistake, or confusing typo, it’ll be corrected in the web archives.