Pittsburgh Steelers part ways with head coach Mike Tomlin after 19 seasons
Head coach Mike Tomlin is leaving the Pittsburgh Steelers after 19 seasons, the team confirmed on Tuesday,“Obviously, I am extremely grateful to Mike for all the hard work, dedication and success we have shared over the last 19 years,It is hard for me to put into words the level of respect and appreciation I have for Coach Tomlin,” Steelers president Art Rooney II said in a statement,“He guided the franchise to our sixth Super Bowl championship and made the playoffs 13 times during his tenure, including winning the AFC North eight times in his career,”Rooney added that the decision was ultimately down to Tomlin, saying the head coach had “decided to step down”.
Tomlin released his own statement shortly afterwards.“I am deeply grateful to Art Rooney II and the late Ambassador [Dan] Rooney for their trust and support,” Tomlin said.“I am also thankful to the players who gave everything they had every day, and to the coaches and staff whose commitment and dedication made this journey so meaningful.”The 53-year-old leaves the Steelers never having recorded a losing season during his long tenure with the team, but Pittsburgh’s loss to the Houston Texans on Monday night extended a streak of playoff losses, and there were scattered chants of “Fire Tomlin” from the home crowd.Tomlin’s Steelers last won a playoff game in the 2016 season.
However, he still appeared to have the support of the locker room.After Monday’s loss, several players went out of their way to express their faith in Tomlin.“Mike T has had more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said.“And more than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change, but there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside, and obviously that sways decisions from time to time.But it’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.
”During his nearly two decades in charge of the team, Tomlin compiled 193 wins in the regular season, a total that puts him ninth all-time in NFL history and tied with another legendary Steelers head coach, Chuck Noll,He won the Super Bowl in February 2009 in his second season with the Steelers and reached the title game again two years later but lost to the Green Bay Packers,Although he led his team to the playoffs on a consistent basis afterwards they rarely looked like genuine Super Bowl contenders and Pittsburgh now hope his replacement, who will be just the team’s fourth head coach since 1969, will bring revitalize the franchise,The first thing the new head coach will need to address is quarterback,The Steelers have not had a high quality starter since Ben Roethlisberger retired after the 2021 season.
The team’s starter this past season was Rodgers, and while he did an adequate job in 2025, he is 42 and has hinted he may retire in the coming weeks.Tomlin’s Steelers contract ran through to the end of the 2027, and the team could be entitled to compensation if he joins another team before then.“While this chapter comes to a close, my respect and love for the Pittsburgh Steelers will never change,” Tomlin said in his statement.“I am excited for what the future holds for this organization, and I will forever be grateful for my time coaching in Pittsburgh.”In other coaching moves on Tuesday, Kevin Patullo, who attracted ire from large parts of the Eagles fanbase as the team failed to defend their Super Bowl title, was removed as Philadelphia’s offensive coordinator.
The Los Angeles Chargers reacted to their playoff exit by firing offensive coordinator Greg Roman and offensive line coach Mike Devlin.The Chargers offense was ineffective in their playoff loss to the New England Patriots and the offensive line struggled badly with injuries during the season and failed to protect quarterback Justin Herbert.
It’s the governance of AI that matters, not its ‘personhood’ | Letters
Prof Virginia Dignum is right (Letters, 6 January): consciousness is neither necessary nor relevant for legal status. Corporations have rights without minds. The 2016 EU parliament resolution on “electronic personhood” for autonomous robots made exactly this point – liability, not sentience, was the proposed threshold.The question isn’t whether AI systems “want” to live. It’s what governance infrastructure we build for systems that will increasingly act as autonomous economic agents – entering contracts, controlling resources, causing harm
Musk’s AI tool Grok will be integrated into Pentagon networks, Hegseth says
Pete Hegseth announced on Monday that the US military will begin integrating Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks.Speaking at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas on Monday evening, the US defense secretary said that the integration of Grok into military systems would go live later this month. “Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said.Hegseth also unveiled a new “AI acceleration strategy” at the Department of Defense that he said will “unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments, and demonstrate the execution approach needed to ensure we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future”.In December, it was announced that the defense department had selected Google’s Gemini, another AI model, to power the military’s new internal AI platform, known as GenAI
Can X be banned under UK law and what are the other options?
The UK government is threatening Elon Musk’s X with the nuclear option under the country’s online safety laws: a ban. The social media platform is under pressure from ministers after it allowed the Grok AI tool, which is integrated within the app, to generate indecent images of unsuspecting women and children.The government has said it will support the media regulator Ofcom, which has launched an investigation into X, if it decides to push ahead with a ban. But is such a move likely?The Online Safety Act (OSA) contains a provision that allows Ofcom to seek a court order imposing “business disruption measures” on a website or app that is in breach of the legislation. These measures are in effect a block on the recipient operating in the UK
UK media regulator investigating Elon Musk’s X after outcry over sexualised AI images
The UK media watchdog has opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the use of the Grok AI tool to manipulate images of women and children by removing their clothes.Ofcom has acted after a public and political outcry over a deluge of sexual images appearing on the platform, created by Musk’s Grok, which is integrated with X.The regulator is investigating X under 2023’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which carries a range of possible punishments for breaches, including a UK ban of apps and websites for the most serious abuses.Ofcom said it would pursue the investigation as a “matter of the highest priority”, while Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, said the regulator had the government’s full backing.Ofcom said: “Reports of Grok being used to create and share illegal nonconsensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material on X have been deeply concerning
Google parent Alphabet hits $4tn valuation after AI deal with Apple
Google’s parent company hit a major financial milestone on Monday, reaching a $4tn valuation for the first time and surpassing Apple to become the second-most valuable company in the world.Alphabet is the fourth company to hit the $4tn milestone after Nvidia, which later hit $5tn, Microsoft and Apple.The spike in share price comes after Apple announced it had chosen Google’s Gemini AI model to power a major overhaul of the iPhone maker’s digital assistant Siri, which comes installed in every iPhone. Neither company disclosed how much the deal was worth.“After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models,” Apple said in a statement to CNBC
Malaysia blocks Elon Musk’s Grok AI over fake, sexualised images
Malaysia has become the second country to temporarily block access to Elon Musk’s Grok after a global outcry over the AI tool and its ability to produce fake, sexualised images.Malaysia said it would restrict access to Grok until effective safeguards were implemented, a day after similar action was taken by Indonesia.Several governments and regulators have taken action over Grok’s image tool, which is embedded in the X social media site and has provoked outrage as it allows users to manipulate images of women and children to remove their clothing and put them in sexual positions.The Musk-led company that developed Grok, xAI, said last week the ability to generate and edit images would be “limited to paying subscribers” on X. Such users have provided personal details to the company and can be identified if the function is misused
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