The Brief

California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced an investigation into how and whether Elon Musk’s X and xAI broke the law in the past few weeks by enabling the spread of naked or sexual imagery without consent.

xAI reportedly updated its Grok artificial intelligence tool last month to allow image editing. Users on the social media platform X, which is connected to the tool, began using Grok to remove clothing in pictures of women and children.

“The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking,” Bonta said in a written statement. “This material, which depicts women and children in nude and sexually explicit situations, has been used to harass people across the internet. I urge xAI to take immediate action to ensure this goes no further.”

Bonta urged Californians who want to report depictions of them or their children undressed or commiting sexual acts to visit oag.ca.gov/report. In an emailed response, xAI did not address questions about the investigation.

Research obtained by Bloomberg found that X now produces more non-consensual naked or sexual imagery than any other website online. In a posting on X, Musk promised “consequences” for people who made illegal content with the tool. On Friday, Grok limited image editing to paying subscribers.

One potential route for Bonta to prosecute xAI is a law that went into effect just two weeks ago creating legal liability for the creation and distribution of “deepfake” pornography.

X and xAI appear to be violating the provisions of that law, known as AB 621, said Sam Dordulian, who previously worked in the sex crimes unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office but today works in private practice as a lawyer for people in cases involving deepfakes or revenge porn.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, author of the law, told CalMatters in a statement last week that she reached out to prosecutors, including the attorney general’s office and the city attorney of San Francisco, to remind them that they can act under the law. What's happening on X, Bauer-Kahan said, is what AB 621 was designed to address.

“Real women are having their images manipulated without consent, and the psychological and reputational harm is devastating,” the San Ramon Democrat said in an emailed statement. “Underage children are having their images used to create child sexual abuse material, and these websites are knowingly facilitating it.”

A global concern

Bonta’s inquiry also comes shortly after a call for an investigation by Gov. Gavin Newsom, backlash from regulators in the European Union and India and bans on X in Malaysia, Indonesia, and potentially the United Kingdom. As Grok app downloads rise in Apple and Google app stores, lawmakers and advocates are calling for the smartphone makers to prohibit the application.

Why Grok created the feature the way it did and how it will respond to the controversy around it is unclear, and answers may not be forthcoming, since an analysis recently concluded that it’s the least transparent of major AI systems available today. xAI did not address questions about the investigation from CalMatters.

“The psychological and reputational harm is devastating.”Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Democratic Assemblymember, San RamonEvidence of concrete harm from deepfakes is piling up. In 2024, the FBI warned that use of deepfake tools to extort young people is a growing problem that has led to instances of self harm and suicide. Multiple audits have found that child sexual abuse material is inside the training data of AI models, making them capable of geneating vulgar photos. A 2024 Center for Democracy and Technology survey found that 15% of high school students have heard of or seen sexually explicit imagery of someone they know at school in the past year.

The investigation announced today is the latest action by the attorney general to push AI companies to keep kids safe. Late last year, Bonta endorsed a bill that would have prevented chatbots that talk about self harm and engage in sexually explicit conversations from interacting with people under 18. He also joined attorneys general from 44 other states in sending a letter that questions why companies like Meta and OpenAI allow their chatbots to have sexually inappropriate conversations with minors.

California has passed roughly half a dozen laws since 2019 to protect people from deepfakes. The new law by Bauer-Kahan amends and strengthens a 2019 law, most significantly by allowing district attorneys to bring cases against companies that “recklessly aid and abet” the distribution of deepfakes without the consent of the person depicted nude or committing sexual acts. That means the average person can ask the attorney general or the district attorney where they live to file a case on their behalf. It also increases the maximum amount that a judge can award a person from $150,000 to $250,000. Under the law, a public prosecutor is not required to prove that an individual depictured in an AI generated nude or sexual image suffered actual harm to bring a case to court. Websites that refuse to comply within 30 days can face penalties of $25,000 per violation.

In addition to those measures, two 2024 laws (AB 1831 and SB 1381) expand the state’s definition of child pornography to make possession or distribution of artificially-generated child sexual abuse material illegal. Another required social media platforms to give people an easy way to request the immediate removal of a deepfake, and defines the posting of such material as a form of digital identity theft. A California law limiting the use of deepfakes in elections was signed into law last year but was struck down by a federal judge last summer following a lawsuit by X and Elon Musk.

Future reforms

Every new state law helps give lawyers like Dordulian a new avenue to address harmful uses of deepfakes, but he said more needs to be done to help people protect themselves. He said his clients face challenges proving violation of existing laws since they require distribution of explicit materials, for example with a messaging app or social media platform, for protections to kick in. In his experience, people who use nudify apps typically know each other, so distribution doesn’t always take place, and if it does, it can be hard to prove.

For example, he said, he has a client who works as a nanny who alleges that the father of the kids she takes care of made images of her using photos she posted on Instagram. The nanny found the images on his iPad. This discovery was disturbing for her and caused her emotional trauma, but since he can’t use deepfake laws he has to sue on the basis of negligence or emotional distress and laws that were never created to address deepfakes. Similarly, victims told CNBC last year that the distinction between creating and distributing deepfakes left a gap in the law in a number of U.S. states.

“The law needs to keep up with what’s really happening on the ground and what women are experiencing, which is just the simple act of creation itself is the problem,” Dordulian said.

California is at the forefront of passing laws to protect people from deepfakes, but existing law isn’t meeting the moment, said Jennifer Gibson, cofounder and director of Psst, a group created a little over a year ago that provides pro bono legal services to tech and AI workers interested in whistleblowing. A California law that went into effect Jan. 1 protects whistleblowers inside AI companies but only if they work on catastrophic risk that can kill more than 50 people or cause more than $1 billion in damages. If the law protected people who work on deepfakes, former X employees who detailed witnessing Grok generating illegal sexually explicit material last year to Business Insider would, Gibson said, have had protections if they shared the information with authorities.

“There needs to be a lot more protection for exactly this kind of scenario in which an insider sees that this is foreseeable, knows that this is going to happen, and they need somewhere to go to report to both to keep the company accountable and protect the public.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Los Angeles Metro's new chief of police says collaboration between sworn officers and unarmed responders will ultimately be what "makes or breaks" the public safety agency he is building for one of the nation's largest public transit systems.

“One needs the other to be effective in this model,” said Chief Bill Scott, who joined Metro in May after leading the San Francisco Police Department for eight years.

Scott spoke with LAist on Tuesday, saying the new Metro Department of Public Safety expects to begin hiring police officers this fall.

The interview came the same week Metro announced the establishment of the department’s “care-based services division,” which houses the neon green-clad ambassadors, homeless outreach and an emerging team of behavioral health responders under one central authority. Previously, those teams were spread across departments within the agency.

The background

Metro’s Board of Directors approved a plan in June 2024 to stand up its own in-house public safety department, replacing the decades-old system of outsourcing law enforcement to regional police agencies.

A year after the board approved the public safety overhaul, Scott joined Metro as the agency’s first chief of police and emergency management.

Before his time with the San Francisco Police Department, Scott served with the LAPD for 27 years.

Scott said Metro's Department of Public Safety has secured vendors to help recruit and vet new officers and hopes to have its recruitment strategy solidified by the spring. Scott said the department is working on agreements with police training academies and finalizing training curriculum.

“ There's a lot of moving parts to [our] plan, and we have a lot of foundational things that we have to get done fairly quickly,” Scott said. “Some of those are well on the way.”

Scott added that he supports initiatives that were already in place before he joined Metro, including the installation of taller fare gates and tap-to-exit.

Police recruitment remains a challenge

At some point in 2029, Metro hopes it will have a full force of around 400 sworn officers. As they are incrementally hired, Metro will whittle down the number of regional law enforcement officers it contracts.

Scott acknowledged that since the nationwide reckoning with policing in 2020, law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have reported issues with staffing.

Police agencies with more than 250 sworn officers reported a staffing drop of 6% from 2020 to 2025, according to a survey last year from the Police Executive Research Forum. Though the survey results indicate signs of improvement as large police agencies saw an increase in hiring in 2024 compared to 2023.

“ Our plan is to build enough excitement about what we're doing to get people to apply, and then we're able to pick people that are aligned with our values,” Scott said.

Internal Metro surveys show upward of 500 people already working for the agency, including bus and rail operators and ambassadors, are interested in becoming sworn officers, Scott said.

“If we get even 10% of those employees the first year, that’s a huge boost for what we’re trying to do,” Scott said. “To have that type of interest is really encouraging.”

The ‘care-based services division’

Part of the training sworn officers will receive from Metro includes how to work with the hundreds of unarmed personnel who round out the department.

Metro riders likely will be familiar with some of those teams. They have been working on the system for several years and include the ambassadors, who help with wayfinding and can administer opioid overdose-reversing drugs, and homelessness outreach workers.

One new team Metro is bringing on board will be made up of clinicians who respond to behavioral health episodes on trains and buses.

Once fully set up, Craig Joyce, a Metro executive and social worker who will lead the new care-based services division, said the department will be able to triage calls for help and send out appropriate teams.

“ If [the dispatcher] hears the words ‘mental health,’ perhaps they send out the crisis response team versus an ambassador team or versus a sworn officer set,” said Joyce, who previously worked on the agency’s homeless outreach efforts. “If there's a serious situation that's occurring, where there's a safety issue, but it's also a mental health [issue], a crisis response co-responder team could go out, where there's a clinician, a peer specialist, but also an officer to manage the safety side of things.”

The long-running debate over where to build a final resting place in Irvine for military veterans couldn’t get past the roadblock that has vexed stakeholders for years Tuesday — where to put it?

After about two hours of discussion, the Irvine City Council voted to table the topic after disagreement over even the parameters of how to go about finding a location for a columbarium, or a structure to inter urns carrying ashes, for veterans with ties to the city.

Councilmember James Mai proposed asking officials to develop a plan for a municipal columbarium, including eligibility preference given  to Irvine residents or those with strong ties to the city and those who served at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. He asked staff to consider locations across the city for the structure, including  Bill Barber Memorial Park, Northwood Memorial Park and adjacent to the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum. But he also explicitly called for a 125-acre plot of land that used to be part of the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro to be excluded.

The land, also known as the ARDA site, is now part of Great Park but has long been lobbied for as a location for a veterans cemetery.

Mayor Larry Agran strongly opposed Mai’s proposed exclusion of the ARDA site, calling the idea “offensive.” Instead, he reiterated his longstanding call for a veterans cemetery at the location.

The council eventually voted 4-3 to table the proposal.

Orange County is home to an estimated 130,000 veterans, but the nearest cemetery dedicated to military personnel is the Riverside National Cemetery more than 40 miles away.

It isn’t the first time a final resting place for veterans has stalled in front of the Irvine City Council. Last year, plans for a veterans cemetery or columbarium were shut down on two separate occasions.

So why does it keep coming back?

For veterans in Irvine, the cemetery represents a broken promise.

When the marine base was shuttered in 1999, Irvine’s population was just over 130,000 and the Great Park idea was nonexistent.

Orange County lobbied for an airport. But for veterans and their families, the former marine base seemed like the perfect resting place where they could receive their last rites for service to their country — and some are still holding onto that hope with a staunch ally in Agran.

But in the years since the debates began, Irvine's population has more than doubled to more than 300,000, and Great Park has been transformed into a residential community for young families, with a $1 billion expansion underway that includes an amphitheater, retail and dining options. The area, residents say, has been transformed too much to also include a cemetery.

Also, the site eyed for a potential cemetery is near an elementary school and families — many of whom are immigrants — who live in the area say it’s bad luck.

But what about a resting place for veterans?

There’s political support, including from state leadership, for a cemetery in Orange County. A bill approved in 2014, AB 1453, calls on the state to build and maintain a resting place for veterans in the area.

After efforts to build it at the former marine base stalled over and over again, a group of fed-up veterans finally took their plans to Anaheim’s Gypsum Canyon.

That location quickly won support from city, county, state and federal leaders.

Construction at the Anaheim site is set to begin this year. However, Agran is convinced the cemetery actually will come to fruition in Irvine.

Standing on a busy street in Skid Row on a recent sunny day, Mary Marfisee tried to block out street noise as she popped her stethoscope into her ears. Dozens of people were milling about. Dogs barked. Music blared. A constant thrum of cars drove past.

But Marfisee is used to the commotion.

"I'm going to listen to your lungs and see if they're ok. Is that ok?" Marfisee asked Hermione, a nervous woman in her twenties who declined to give NPR her full name out of fear for her safety. She was pushing a stroller loaded with plastic bags, stuffed with her belongings.

Marfisee pressed the stethoscope onto the back of Hermione's oversized sweatshirt.

"Your lungs are tight," Marfisee said with concern after a few beats. "Are you having trouble breathing?" she asked.

Everything about Marfisee's approach is slow and deliberate. Before touching Hermione's arm, she hovers her hand over it and makes eye contact. Then, she lowers her hand gently. It's a deliberate, patient approach she's developed over her long career as a family medicine physician.

Hermione's worried expression relaxed. She explained that she has asthma and her inhaler was running low on medicine. She also lost her emergency EpiPen, she said. But when Marfisee offered information about a few nearby clinics that would be able to take her as a walk-in patient, Hermione turned it down.

"Maybe later. They have a bed for me at the Union Rescue Mission," Hermione said, and Marfisee's face bloomed into a smile.

That's because Marfisee, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, is also the family medical services director at the Union Rescue Mission. The Christian organization operates a four-story homeless shelter that is one of the oldest and largest homeless missions in Southern California. She told NPR she's coming up on 20 years tending to the more than 5,000 men, women and children who come through the doors of the shelter every year. Over that span, she's also become a recognizable figure throughout Skid Row on regular walking rounds of "street medicine" delivered to unhoused people where they are.

The interaction with Hermione is a classic example of what typically happens with her patients — both inside the mission or on city sidewalks, Marfisee said.

"Their top priority" is finding stable housing. "Their health is at the bottom of the list," she explained.

As a result, small problems, such as infections, cuts or chronic health issues often fester and become much more serious, she said.

Christmas decorations adorn the walls at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. December 15, 2025.

(

Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

)

Women experiencing homelessness face unique health challenges with few resources

Los Angeles' Skid Row is an epicenter of the homelessness crisis — not just in California, but also the nation. According to a 2025 Los Angeles Homeless Services report, an estimated 43,695 city residents were homeless at the time of an annual count of the homeless population in February. Less than half — 16,723 — live in shelters while the rest are unsheltered.

Meanwhile, a 2024 study on homelessness in Los Angeles from the nonprofit research organization RAND found that Skid Row's unsheltered population continues to skew older and female. Data also shows that this group of women has significantly lower physical and mental health than those who are sheltered, due to factors such as lack of insurance and transportation. That's particularly true for basic services such as gynecological and prenatal care.

The homeless women Marfisee works with face even more challenges than men due to a lack of services, she said.

"There are clinics on Skid Row for general health services but nothing specifically set up to address women's health needs."

Union Rescue Mission's internal studies found that about 87% of women were not up to date with their preventative pap smear or mammogram health screenings.

And when women from shelters do try to get preventative care, they're often faced with a variety of challenges. Marfisee recounted one instance in which a patient who had a family history of breast cancer was trying to schedule a mammogram. After hours of calls, Marfisee said, the earliest appointment her team was able to schedule was nine months out. Then, there were more obstacles.

"She had to come in with her proof of Medicare. Well, she not only didn't have her medical card, she'd moved from address to address, didn't even have an I.D. anymore. So we had to start that whole process," Marfisee said.

Dr. Mary Marfisee and two UCLA medical students lead a cancer awareness talk in the Union Rescue Mission chapel in Los Angeles, educating women residents about cancer prevention and care.

(

Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

)

Another of her patients, a woman who had suffered from lower abdominal pains for decades, faced similar setbacks. When she wasn't in crisis mode — moving from one place to another, and in and out of shelters — the woman went from clinic to clinic seeking help, Marfisee said. But finding the root cause was difficult without consistent care from a doctor to see the case through.

It wasn't until Marfisee and her staff conducted an hours-long history that they learned she had had an IUD placed 32 years prior.

"We could correlate the pain to the birth of her daughter, who was 32 years old, and who was also [living at URM] with her," Marfisee said.

The team scoured their contacts and arranged an emergency appointment for the woman at a county hospital. That's where they confirmed that the forgotten IUD, which can last from 3 to 10 years, had never been removed and was "incarcerated into [her] lower uterine wall," Marfisee said.

She described it as a devastating and eye-opening moment that propelled her into action.

"We felt like we were doing Band-Aid women's health," Marfisee said. "We would just treat an infection or treat a problem, but not really get to the screening issues."

A resident at the Union Rescue Mission reviews a flyer providing information on different types of cancers and their risks. December 15, 2025

(

Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

)

Potential solutions meet red tape

It lit a fire in Marfisee to provide more resources for the 150 or so women who find themselves living at the shelter at any given time. Marfisee began contacting other clinics in the area but soon realized that they were not equipped to offer those services either.

"But I'm great at research," she boasted — and dogged, too.

In December she launched the first phase of a new women's health initiative at the shelter. Alongside some medical student interns, she leads regular town halls to raise awareness about important screenings, including cervical and breast cancer check ups. They encourage the women who attend to ask questions and talk about their own health.

But it's the next phase of the initiative that Marfisee believes will make the greatest difference in these women's lives. URM has partnered with a local hospital to bring a mobile health van to the shelter twice a month. That will allow Marfisee and other volunteer physicians to offer free pap smears and mammograms to the shelter's residents. She estimates they'll be able to provide up to 100 breast exams per visit.

"One of the things that [people who work with homeless women] always say is that these women are so resilient. And I understand why they say that," she said. "But I started to rethink that because they are not really able to take care of their gynecological health needs on their own. They can't really self-treat. They need to be told that this lump that they may have been palpating in the breast is something significant."

The van could be life saving, Marfisee said. Studies show that homeless women die from breast cancer at nearly twice the rate of the general population, largely due to a lack of access to adequate care and the fact that they are more likely to be diagnosed at a later, more advanced stage of the disease.

Unfortunately, she said, the plan to provide mobile health to these women hit a few red-tape and logistical snags, and is three months behind schedule; the van driver's schedule is booked up and the shelter needs to figure out how they'll be dumping any medical waste.

Marfisee, a self-described optimist, estimates they'll overcome the challenges and begin screening patients by February.

"No matter what it takes, we'll get it done. We just have to," she said.

UCLA medical students, working alongside Dr. Mary Marfisee, walk the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, offering medical care to women in need. December 15, 2025.

(

Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

)

Meanwhile, the work continues

Back out on the street, in a small, neglected park about a block away from URM, Marfisee turns onto San Julian Street, which she calls "one of the roughest streets in the city."

There are more than a dozen adults at the park, in various states of alertness; some are in groups, others are alone. One of them is an older woman in a wheelchair. Her hands are gnarled, frozen in what looks to be a painful position.

She's got a scowl on her face as Marfisee and her students approach. But after a few minutes she warms up to them. They go over their set of screening questions: Any aches and pains? Skin issues? Cuts or bruises?

The woman's responses are quiet and mostly monosyllabic, but after a few minutes, she reaches out and takes Marfisee's hands into her own.

She's Marfisee's last street patient of the day. Heading back toward URM, Marfisee makes a note.

"Let's keep her in mind and make a note of where she hangs out, so we can follow up with her," she said.

Marfisee headed into the shelter where she'd jump right into seeing other patients. Maybe, she hoped, that might include Hermione.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Dr. Mary Marfisee and UCLA medical students Rashna Soonavala (right) and Jessica Menjivar Cruz (left). December 15, 2025.

(

Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

)