France opens criminal probe into X algorithms under Musk
The investigation comes after Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAi, deleted multiple posts from its chatbot Grok that included antisemitic comments. Among them, Grok called itself 'MechaHitler' and insinuated that the Jewish people were controlling Hollywood.
French National Assembly member Thierry Sother and European Union Parliament member Pierre Jouvet asked Arcom, France's digital content regulator, to look into Grok's behavior Thursday.
'Since the July 4th update, Grok has substantially changed behaviors leading it to comment antisemitic ideas, to praise Hitler and even to support Le Pen,' Sother said to French media Libération.
X has not immediately responded to requests for comment.
X and Musk have been on French and European radars since January when Éric Bothorel, a French parliamentarian, raised concerns over X's use of personal data, a biased algorithm and the reduction of diversity in posts.
He also denounced Musk's personal interference within the platform, calling it 'a true danger and a threat for our democracies,' according to Libération.
The European Union has been investigating X for two years on accusations it breached the EU's platform regulation law, the Digital Service Act. The EU fined Apple and Meta $800 million in April over antitrust rules.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Gaza student leaves France over anti-Semitic social media posts spat
A Gazan student on a French scholarship left for Qatar after anti-Semitic posts were found on her social media, the foreign ministry said on Sunday. The case sparked political backlash and led the government to suspend its scholarship programme for students evacuated from Gaza. A student from Gaza who had been studying in France on a scholarship left for Qatar Sunday, ordered out over anti-Semitic comments found on her social media accounts, the foreign ministry said. Foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot "stressed the unacceptable nature of the comments made by Ms. Nour Attaalah, a Gazan student, before she entered French territory", said the ministry statement. "Given their seriousness, Ms. Attaalah could not remain on French territory. She left France today to go to Qatar to continue her studies there," it added. The student's lawyer, Ossama Dahmane, said Attaalah had chosen to "pursue her studies in another country in a spirit of appeasement and to guarantee her security", even if "she firmly denies the accusations made against her". Read moreFrance suspends intake of Gazan evacuees over student's antisemitic posts The young woman, who had received a student visa and a government scholarship as part of a programme for Gazan students, had been due to join Sciences Po Lille in the fall. She arrived in France on July 11, according to a French diplomatic source. But social media posts from the past two years calling for the killing of Jews, since deleted, were discovered. That led to a judicial investigation for condoning terrorism, and an inquiry to determine why the posts had not been detected in advance. FRANCE 24 was unable to confirm the screen shots attributed to her by internet users and media outlets, but Sciences Po Lille said Wednesday that her social media comments had been confirmed, without elaborating. Dahmane, the lawyer, said the "alleged facts are largely based on shared tweets, taken out of context". Barrot said Friday that France was freezing all its student evacuation programmes from Gaza pending the outcome of the investigation into how the posts had been missed. The foreign ministry would not say how many students have been affected, citing privacy reasons. France has allowed in several hundred students from Gaza since the start of the war between Israel and the Hamas movement. (FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Forbes
12 minutes ago
- Forbes
How ‘Vibe Coding' Is Creating A New AI Economy
In early January, 18‑year‑old Justin Jin launched Giggles — an AI-powered social entertainment app that's reportedly attracted over 120,000 waitlist sign-ups and generated 150 million impressions — all without a venture capital war chest, a marketing budget, or a traditional engineering team. Instead, he and his team of young co-founders leveraged AI to build an app for Gen Alpha and Gen Z, where users interact through AI-generated content, digital collectibles and gamified social engagements. A few weeks later, another startup arrived on the scene — Base44, founded by a non-technical creator who used AI to 'vibe code' a no-code development platform. Within six months and under ten people, it reached profitability, pulled in 300,000 users and sold to Wix for $80 million in cash, according to TechCrunch. Suddenly, a new archetype emerged: Companies not founded on traditional engineering teams, but shaped by creativity, culture and AI orchestration. This is the story of the moment. AI is redefining entrepreneurship, allowing people with a vision and cultural understanding — but not necessarily computer-science degrees — to ship platform-level products. But questions are mounting: Can this new model of entrepreneurship scale beyond prototype success without deeper engineering muscle? The Rise Of Vibe Coding Two years ago, the phrase 'vibe coding' barely existed. Today, it's everywhere. The term — coined by Andrej Karpathy, former AI lead at Tesla and cofounder of OpenAI — describes writing with AI by simply speaking ideas. 'You fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials and forget that the code even exists,' Karpathy tweeted in February. It's shorthand for a new era, where programming is done through a natural language like English. According to Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, many startups now use AI to generate up to 95% of their codebase — achieving results that once required teams of 50 to 100 engineers with fewer than ten people. Meanwhile, in a recent article for Business Insider, Alistair Barr highlighted how 'non‑traditional, AI‑native developers' are turning natural language into apps, fundamentally altering SaaS economics. This shift is democratizing entrepreneurship. Product managers, artists, even high-schoolers can now ship products faster than ever before, all without technical expertise. But it also comes with some problems. As Nigel Douglas, head of developer relations at Cloudsmith, cautioned in the Financial Times, 'If you're creating an app in your spare time, a 'DIY disaster' might just mean an ugly interface. But in a business setting, the wrong tool can do real damage and result in data breaches, service outages, or a compromised software supply chain.' GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke echoed this warning at the just-concluded VivaTech in Paris: 'A non‑technical founder will find it difficult to build a startup at scale without developers,' adding that tools like vibe coding don't provide the depth needed to justify serious investment. Even AI-native founders acknowledge the model's limitations. 'There's a need to build technical depth. We know that's important and are expanding engineering operations and bringing on advisors,' said Edwin Wang, co-founder of Giggles. 'The future, however, must be a community-governed and decentralized future where there's a balance between creativity and coding.' When Creativity Replaces Code: The Giggles Test Case Giggles is a microcosm of this transformation. Jin, alongside co-founders Edwin Wang and music artist Matthew Hershoff, built a system where users are rewarded for digital expression through game-like interactions — including AI-generated videos, collectible content, and daily quests. The result was a storytelling-centric platform developed without a traditional coding team — a structure that reflects the emerging blueprint behind many Gen Z–led apps. Jin previously founded Mediababy, which sold for $3.8 million, according to Reuters. That experience, he said, shaped his belief that platforms thrive when they prioritize user expression and fluid engagement over rigid structure. At Giggles, that belief translated into a product anchored in prompt-driven creativity, gamified feedback loops, and community-led interaction. As Wang noted, the company positions itself not just as an alternative to TikTok, but as a platform tailored for a generation it believes is increasingly disengaged from traditional social formats. And according to Hershoff, 'creators aren't limited to just posting photos and videos. They can vibe code a game, develop an app, create a whole virtual world and post it on Giggles.' Can AI-First Startups Scale? For all the momentum behind AI-native startups, there's a hard truth facing founders like Jin: culture can spark attention, but infrastructure sustains it. Platforms like Giggles, which thrive on virality and creator energy, eventually confront the same foundational question as any company with ambition. Can they scale securely, reliably, repeatedly and with technical discipline? At this stage, Giggles is less an anomaly and more a litmus test for how AI is transforming digital entrepreneurship. It's a living experiment in what happens when creativity, not technical expertise, drives product development. But to evolve from prompt-powered outfits into structured business ecosystems, these companies will need more than just vibes. They will need systems, safeguards and engineering depth. That's where founders must reckon with the limits of what vibe coding can achieve. Dohmke's warning at VivaTech isn't a dismissal of AI's potential, but a reminder of where the handoff happens. While AI can accelerate the zero-to-one moment, scaling responsibly requires the engineering rigor to turn a clever idea into a truly dependable platform. Jin and his team appear to recognize that. While Giggles was built without a traditional engineering stack, the company is now investing in its technical foundation. Wang, the platform's co-founder and lead developer, acknowledges that 'scaling creativity still requires coding discipline.' That doesn't diminish their AI-first origin; it refines it. The next test for Giggles — and others like it — isn't whether AI can launch a product. It's whether that product can become the infrastructure others depend on. A Hybrid Future For Founders What might the next decade yield? The trends point at a wave of hybrid founders: People with vivid creative vision and AI fluency who bring in veteran operators and engineers to solidify their product. That's the emerging blueprint: rapid prototyping, followed by structural discipline. Industry stalwart Reid Hoffman sees that promise, noting that 'bringing AI into your toolkit makes you enormously attractive.' But he and others caution that early AI advantage doesn't equal long-term lead. As AI-generated code gets better, so too must practices around testing, review, and security. In the end, the rise of vibe coding is real, but it's only half the story. Architecture, execution and human judgment are what matters most. While Giggles, Base44 and the rising 'AI-native' wave might be writing the prologue, the plot turns on whether these founders can turn vibe into real structure. 'In the end,' Jin told me, 'it's not just about who can build fast. It's about who can build something that lasts.'
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elis: Disclosure of trading in own shares occured from July 28 to August 1, 2025
Disclosure of trading in own shares occurred from July 28 to August 1, 2025 Saint-Cloud, August 4, 2025 In accordance with the regulations on share buybacks, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/1052, Elis hereby declares the purchases of its own shares made from July 28 to August 1, 2025 under the buyback program authorized by the 24th resolution of the General Shareholders' Meeting of May 22, 2025 and announced on March 6, 2025: Aggregated presentation: Issuer name Issuer code(LEI) Transaction date ISIN Code Daily total Volume (in number of shares) Daily weighted average price of shares acquired (in euros) Platform (MIC Code) ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/28/2025 FR0012435121 20,000 25.0413 XPAR ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/29/2025 FR0012435121 24,000 25.0691 XPAR ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/30/2025 FR0012435121 32,000 24.8650 XPAR ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/30/2025 FR0012435121 9,000 24.7547 DXE ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/31/2025 FR0012435121 32,310 24.0257 XPAR ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/31/2025 FR0012435121 25,520 24.0674 DXE ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/31/2025 FR0012435121 6,000 23.8797 TQE ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 07/31/2025 FR0012435121 4,500 23.9301 AQE ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 08/01/2025 FR0012435121 22,627 24.3029 XPAR ELIS SA 969500UX71LCE8MAY492 08/01/2025 FR0012435121 5,711 24.1992 DXE Total 181,668 24.4979 The purpose of the own shares purchase operations is (i) to cover maturing performance share plans and to allocate free shares to employees as part of the contribution to the Elis for All 2025 international employee shareholding plan, and (ii) to be cancelled in accordance with the 26th resolution of the Combined General Meeting of May 22, 2025. Contacts Nicolas BuronDirector of Investor Relations, Financing & TreasuryPhone: + 33 (0)1 75 49 98 30 - Charline LefaucheuxInvestor Relations Phone: + 33 (0)1 75 49 98 15 - Attachment Elis - Disclosure of trading in own shares occured from July 28 to August 1, 2025
