US agency investigates Nike for alleged discrimination against white workers
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has launched an investigation into Nike over allegations that the sports giant discriminated against white employees and job applicants.The federal agency is demanding that Nike turn over information related to the allegations, including the company’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related 2025 Targets and other DEI-related objectives”, it announced on Wednesday.Nike, which described the escalation as “surprising and unusual”, insisted that it adheres to “all applicable laws” on discrimination.It comes amid a broader crackdown by Donald Trump’s administration on diversity initiatives, which he has repeatedly decried as “radical”.“When there are compelling indications, including corporate admissions in extensive public materials, that an employer’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related programs may violate federal prohibitions against race discrimination or other forms of unlawful discrimination, the EEOC will take all necessary steps – including subpoena enforcement actions – to ensure the opportunity to fully and comprehensively investigate,” said EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas.
The EEOC is responsible for enforcing laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.The federal agency has the authority to investigate charges against employers who are covered by the law.Lucas, a Republican, was appointed as acting head of the EEOC by the US president in 2025.Her predecessor during the Biden administration, Charlotte Burrows, was fired shortly after Trump’s return to office last year.“Title VII’s prohibition of race-based employment discrimination is colorblind and requires the EEOC to protect employees of all races from unlawful employment practices,” Lucas said.
“Thanks to President Trump’s commitment to enforcing our nation’s civil rights laws, the EEOC has renewed its focus on evenhanded enforcement of Title VII,”On his first day in office, Trump signed an order directing federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants or contracts,He also signed a follow-up order requiring federal contractors to certify that they don’t promote DEI,The administration has also targeted universities, urging them to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal funding,The information that the EEOC is seeking dates back to 2018, and includes criteria used to select employees for layoffs, information related to the company’s tracking, use of worker race and ethnicity data, and information about “16 programs which allegedly provided race-restricted mentoring, leadership, or career development opportunities”.
Lucas has targeted programs related to diversity and gender since being appointed by Trump in 2025, in alignment with the administration’s agenda.In a recent interview with the New York Times, she said that her goal was to undo the consequences of an “aggressive focus by D.E.I.activists” under the Biden administration.
In a statement, a Nike spokesperson said: “We have had extensive, good-faith participation in an EEOC inquiry into our personnel practices, programs, and decisions and have had ongoing efforts to provide information and engage constructively with the agency.“We have shared thousands of pages of information and detailed written responses to the EEOC’s inquiry and are in the process of providing additional information.”Nike is a “proud American company”, the spokesperson added.“We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices and follow all applicable laws, including those that prohibit discrimination.We believe our programs and practices are consistent with those obligations and take these matters seriously.
We will continue our attempt to cooperate with the EEOC and will respond to the petition.”
French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit
Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.It said in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for “voluntary questioning” in April in their capacity as “de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino resigned as chief executive of X in July last year.The French prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms
From ‘nerdy’ Gemini to ‘edgy’ Grok: how developers are shaping AI behaviours
Do you want an AI assistant that gushes about how it “loves humanity” or one that spews sarcasm? How about a political propagandist ready to lie? If so, ChatGPT, Grok and Qwen are at your disposal.Companies that create AI assistants, from the US to China, are increasingly wrestling with how to mould their characters, and it is no abstract debate. This month Elon Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” Grok AI caused international outrage when it pumped out millions of sexualised images. In October OpenAI retrained ChatGPT to de-escalate conversations with people in mental health distress after it appeared to encourage a 16-year-old to take his own life.Last week, the $350bn San Francisco startup Anthropic released an 84-page “constitution” for its Claude AI
UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes
Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.It said the creation and circulation of the images on social media raised serious concerns under the UK’s data regime, such as whether “appropriate safeguards were built into Grok’s design and deployment”.The move came after French prosecutors raided the Paris headquarters of X as part of an investigation into alleged offences including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes.X became the subject of heavy public criticism in December and January when the platform’s account for the Grok AI tool was used to mass-produce partially nudified images of girls and women
Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies
European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.Shares in the UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8% on the news, and shares in the information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%. The software company Sage lost 10% in London and the Dutch software company Wolters Kluwer lost 13% in Amsterdam.Shares in the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13% and the credit reporting company Experian dropped by 7% in London, amid fears over the impact of AI on data companies
Disastrous start for US TikTok as users cry censorship
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I’m moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, “‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases”, about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate
‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report
The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.Here are some of the key points from the second annual report, published on Tuesday. It stresses that it is a state-of-play document, rather than a vehicle for making specific policy recommendations to governments
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