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.

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.

Independents muscle in on craze for the black stuff with dark beers that use same nitrogen process as Irish favourite

Famously, according to the advertising slogan anyway, Guinness is good for you. But for the past couple of years, Guinness has been practically inescapable.

Backed by its owner Diageo’s £2.7bn marketing war chest, the brand has shaken off its “old man” reputation, becoming a staple of gen Z pub culture, exploiting its Instagrammable colour scheme and social media trends such as the “splitting the G” drinking game.

Heidi Alexander calls for end to violence while Tory leader says she would ‘not have an issue’ with regime change

The UK wants to see a peaceful transition of power in Iran, a cabinet minister has said, after Donald Trump said he could support protesters with military force.

As the US weighs the option of military strikes, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, said she would not be drawn on America’s foreign policy towards Iran, where protests have been met with a violent police response.

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”.

In first TV interview since he was sacked as UK ambassador to US, Mandelson says association with Epstein was ‘terrible mistake’ but adds: ‘I was not culpable’

Laura Kuenssberg asks Peter Mandelson if he liked Donald Trump when he was the UK ambassador.

Mandelson says he did like Trump, listing of numerous reasons why, but said he did not like all of his “language”.

I like him, yes, I liked his humour, his graciousness…

I liked his directness. You knew exactly what he was thinking and where you stood and what he wanted. And how he was proposing to engage, with you. Did I like in all his language? No, I didn’t, did I? Did he make me gasp?

What’s going to happen is there’s going to be, another discussion, a lot of consultation and a lot of negotiation.

At the end of the day, we are all going to have to wake up to the reality that the Arctic needs securing against China and Russia.

Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds PIs have been hired as part of harassment campaigns and in some cases have tracked women to domestic violence refuges

As Laura stood in the court witness box, preparing to tell magistrates about her ex-husband’s obsessive nature, she flicked through the prosecution’s evidence file and saw the photographs. One of her leaving the house, another of her driving her car on the motorway. They had been taken by a professional. Staring at the grainy images, she felt numb.

Laura’s ex-husband had hired a private investigator to put her under surveillance. On two occasions she had been trailed, with the PI taking photographs of her as he went. Her ex-husband was later sanctioned with a stalking protection order, but the man he hired to facilitate his harassment was never even questioned.