AI Sec Watch

Elon Musk's AI company xAI is asking a court to force four people who claim Grok (an AI chatbot) was used to create sexual deepfake images of them to reveal their real names in a lawsuit, despite their concerns about harassment and privacy. The plaintiffs, currently identified by pseudonyms like "South Carolina Doe," say they already suffered emotional distress from the deepfakes, including one targeting a child, and fear further harm if their identities become public.

This research paper presents a framework for understanding how reinforcement learning-based cyber agents (AI systems trained to make decisions by trial and error in cybersecurity contexts) make their decisions. The authors developed a multi-layer approach to explain the "black box" problem (the difficulty in understanding why AI systems reach certain conclusions), which is important for security experts to verify that these AI agents are operating correctly and safely.

A UK Labour MP is suing Elon Musk's AI company after its Grok tool (a generative AI chatbot) was used to create non-consensual sexualized images of her, part of a broader problem of fake intimate images being generated and shared on X. The MP described seeing herself depicted in inappropriate ways without permission as deeply violating.

Google's new Gemini AI agent called Spark demonstrates impressive capability by accessing personal information like pet names and family members' identities without users explicitly sharing them, raising privacy concerns. The article argues that while AI companies promote these tools as solutions to improve productivity, they may be missing more important societal problems that actually need fixing.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is meeting with U.S. lawmakers and Trump administration officials in Washington, D.C. to discuss a new executive order requiring AI companies to voluntarily give the government access to their models for up to 30 days before release. Altman publicly supports the order, saying it strikes the right balance between developing safe AI models and providing cybersecurity tools to trusted defenders.

A former police officer named Christi Hill was falsely identified on social media and AI platforms, including Grok (an AI chatbot), as being involved in an arrest related to a murder case, forcing her to go into hiding. The false identification spread across multiple platforms, demonstrating how AI systems can amplify misinformation by misidentifying people in real-world situations.

Morgan Stanley is opening its wealth management platforms (ShareWorks and Equity Edge) to AI agents (autonomous software that can make decisions and take actions without human input) from corporate clients, allowing these agents to access data directly without using traditional human-focused interfaces. The bank plans to expand this access to 3,400 clients by next year, using the Model Context Protocol (an open-source standard that lets AI models connect to data sources). This move reflects Wall Street's shift toward AI agents handling tasks that software users currently perform manually.

Microsoft announced new AI initiatives at its Build conference, including in-house reasoning models (AI systems designed to work through problems step-by-step) and AI agents (software that can perform tasks autonomously), signaling it is moving toward independence in the AI market. The company's partnership with OpenAI, which previously dominated Microsoft's AI strategy, effectively ended in late April, though Microsoft still provides cloud computing services (the remote servers that store and process data) to OpenAI.

Meta is launching Meta Business Agent, an AI tool that helps businesses of any size respond to customer questions, recommend products, and book appointments through WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The feature will be available through a paid subscription tier as Meta tries to reduce its dependence on advertising (which currently makes up 98% of its revenue) and compete with other AI companies like OpenAI and Google.