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.

As galling as it is to see young people refer to the items I wore 10 years ago as ‘vintage’, surely the real problem is that so many of them believe their best years are behind them

‘I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” wrote TS Eliot in 1915, in his seminal poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. And as I sit here in 2026 with my jeans turned up (as per the style of the thirtysomething urban millennial), well, I can relate. What has brought on this bout of contemplation? The latest TikTok craze. Loosely known as “Bring Back 2016”, it involves TikTokers urging their mostly gen Z audience to “live 2026 like it’s 2016” – complete with mannequin challenges, a Major Lazer soundtrack and the promise of never-ending summer. And it’s sure to get heads spinning quicker than the fidget spinners it’s resurrecting.

Admittedly, most of the content is just plain silly: 2016 challenges and dances (the bottle flip, the dab); nostalgia for tech crazes (Pokémon Go and that Snapchat dog filter that made you look like a slobbering puppy but in a weirdly sexy way); and a return to 2016 makeup, fashion and low-effort aesthetics. Remember when “vintage film” filters were all the rage (RIP Instagram’s Mayfair and Sierra)? When videos didn’t need a number of takes, lengthy edits, and border on a professional production? When it was OK to just be online without considering what it said about you as a personal brand? Or when the internet wasn’t divisive politics everywhere? Well, that’s 2016 according to TikTok, and it’s time to “Bring! It! Back!”

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.

Exclusive: Lord chancellor urges MPs to back judge-only trials in thousands of criminal cases in England and Wales

The backlog of nearly 80,000 trials clogging up the court system could be cleared within a decade if parliament agrees to slash the number of jury trials, David Lammy, the lord chancellor, has claimed.

In an interview with the Guardian, the deputy prime minister, who is facing a backbench rebellion over the proposals, has urged Labour MPs and the public to back a version of Canada’s judge-only trials in thousands of criminal cases in England and Wales.

Tehran issues warning after Donald Trump says all options are on the table amid crackdown on demonstrations

Iran warned the US not to attack over protests that have rocked the country, as Donald Trump weighed all options for a response from Washington, with the reported death toll from the demonstrations soaring to the hundreds.

More than 500 people have now been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRNA), including 490 protesters. The group reported that more than 10,600 people were arrested by Iranian authorities. The regime has not supplied its own figures and it was not possible to independently verify them.

Campaign groups argue online transactions ‘present real risks to our democracy’ as it is hard to trace their true source

Downing Street has been urged to ban political donations in cryptocurrency by seven senior Labour MPs who chair parliamentary committees.

The committee chairs – Liam Byrne, Emily Thornberry, Tan Dhesi, Florence Eshalomi, Andy Slaughter, Chi Onwurah and Matt Western – called on the government to introduce a full ban in the forthcoming elections bill amid concern that cryptocurrency could be used by foreign states to influence politics.

Move would mean Brussels would receive compensation if future government reneged on deal Starmer is negotiating

The EU is reportedly demanding guarantees the UK will compensate the bloc if a future government reneges on the Brexit “reset” agreement Keir Starmer is currently negotiating.

The termination clause is a stark reminder of the painful and costly divorce in which the EU set up a colossal €5.4bn (£4.7bn) fund to help its member states cope with the disruption caused by the UK’s exit in 2020.