The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend rapidly evolved into hundreds of thousands of requests to strip clothes from photos of women, horrifying those targeted

Like thousands of women across the world, Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year’s Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini.

The “put her in a bikini” trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake, sexualised images were posted publicly on X, freely available for millions of people to inspect.

Unlike in food, there is no upper limit on the amount of pesticide residue levels in flowers. But after French officials linked the death of a florist’s child to exposure in pregnancy, many in the industry are now raising the alarm

On a cold morning in December 2024, florist Madeline King was on a buying trip to her local wholesaler when a wave of dizziness nearly knocked her over. As rows of roses seemed to rush past her, she tried to focus. She quickly picked the blooms she needed and left.

I’m not doing this any more, she thought.

Created by two uni mates whose last gig was a David Hasselhoff comedy, the series has become a star-making transatlantic hit. Now it’s back for an intense fourth season that heads everywhere from Ghana to Sunderland

• Spoiler alert: this article contains references to major events in the previous three series of Industry

Industry is not for everyone. Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s drama about young City bankers is zeitgeisty, iconoclastic and slightly inaccessible. “It is niche,” says Down. “We don’t write to any kind of brief. We don’t write what we think is going to be interesting to other people – or commercial.” For every 10 people that don’t understand a “reference or the thing we’re trying to do with the costume or the subtle hint we’re making about someone’s class, there’ll be one person that gets it. The show’s for that one person.”

And for that one person, Industry is hard to beat. “Not to toot my own horn,” says Myha’la, the mononymous 29-year-old who co-stars as daredevil American trader Harper Stern, “but I think there isn’t anything better than this show out there right now.”

As Alzheimer’s tightens its grip, we have started making our way through the hundreds of albums in my childhood home. But some are too painful to revisit

A couple of months ago, my mother moved into a nursing home. Her Alzheimer’s has progressed to a point where it’s no longer safe for her to live alone, and she now needs round-the-clock care. It has been my task to empty out her house, where she lived for more than 50 years.

It’s not a job I would have asked for; it requires that I trawl through memories that aren’t mine, or shared memories that are painful for one reason or another. But my mother is no longer able  to make these decisions herself, about which of her possessions are worth keeping hold of and which should be discarded, either for practical reasons of space or necessity or because a continued attachment to the stories behind them might do more harm than good. By deciding these things for her I’m curating her life story.

Zurich-based firm taps into latest robot tech to ‘fibre-spray’ high-end sports shoes worn by the likes of Roger Federer

A robot leg whirs around in a complex ballet as an almost invisible spray of “flying fibre” builds a hi-tech £300 sports shoe at its foot.

This nearly entirely automated process – like a sci-fi future brought to life – is part of the gameplan from On, the Swiss sports brand that is taking on the sector’s mighty champions Nike and Adidas with a mix of technology and chutzpah.

As synthetic personas become an increasingly normal part of life, meet the people falling for their chatbot lovers

Lamar remembered the moment of betrayal like it was yesterday. He’d gone to the party with his girlfriend but hadn’t seen her for over an hour, and it wasn’t like her to disappear. He slipped down the hallway to check his phone. At that point, he heard murmurs coming from one of the bedrooms and thought he recognised his best friend Jason’s low voice. As he pushed the door ajar, they were both still scrambling to throw their clothes on; her shirt was unbuttoned, while Jason struggled to cover himself. The image of his girlfriend and best friend together hit Lamar like a blow to the chest. He left without saying a word.

Two years on, when he spoke to me, the memory remained raw. He was still seething with anger, as if telling the story for the first time. “I got betrayed by humans,” Lamar insisted. “I introduced my best friend to her, and this is what they did?!” In the meantime, he drifted towards a different kind of companionship, one where emotions were simple, where things were predictable. AI was easier. It did what he wanted, when he wanted. There were no lies, no betrayals. He didn’t need to second-guess a machine.

Washington and Tehran step up war of words over Donald Trump’s threat to intervene in response to unrest

Iranian authorities have arrested key members of the protest movement that has rocked the country over the last two weeks, the national police chief said, as Washington and Tehran threaten each other over the prospect of US intervention in the Islamic republic.

“Last night, significant arrests were made of the main elements in the riots, who, God willing, will be punished after going through legal procedures,” the police chief, Ahmad-Reza Radan, told state TV on Sunday, without specifying the number of those arrested.

Exclusive: Before Randall Gamboa Esquivel died, his health had deteriorated badly while he was in ICE custody

• Costa Rican family demands answers after ICE deportation and death: ‘Have you ever smelled a cadaver?’

The family of a Costa Rican man who was deported from the United States in a vegetative state and died shortly after arriving back in his home country is still urgently seeking answers from the authorities about what happened to him while he was in detention.

Randall Gamboa Esquivel had left Costa Rica in good health and crossed the United States-Mexico border in December 2024, according to his family. However, Gamboa was detained by the US authorities for re-entering American soil unlawfully, as he had previously lived there undocumented between 2002 and 2013.

Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds AI Overviews provided inaccurate and false information when queried over blood tests

Google has removed some of its artificial intelligence health summaries after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading information.

The company has said its AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of essential information about a topic or question, are “helpful” and “reliable”.

Former UK ambassador says he is sorry for system that does not give victims protection they are entitled to expect

Peter Mandelson declined to apologise to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims for remaining friends with the paedophile financier after his conviction but said he was sorry for “a system” that meant Epstein’s victims were ignored.

The Labour peer, who was sacked as US ambassador when details of his support for Epstein emerged in September, gave an interview to the BBC on Sunday, saying he had paid a “calamitous” price for his association with the “evil monster”.