Civitai, an online marketplace for buying and selling Artificial Intelligence generated content backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is allowing users to purchase custom instruction files that generate celebrity deepfakes. A new analysis found that some of these files have been specifically designed to produce pornographic images that are officially banned by the site. Researchers from Stanford and Indiana University examined user “bounties,” which are requests for specific types of content, to understand how the platform is being used and to what extent it facilitates the creation of non-consensual imagery.
The study found that between mid-2023 and the end of 2024, most bounties requested animated content, but a significant portion focused on deepfakes of real people, and 90% of these deepfake requests targeted women. The findings highlight how bespoke deepfake tools make it easier for users to generate realistic, personalized images that can evade moderation rules, even when explicit content is formally prohibited. The marketplace structure, along with paid custom instruction files, raises concerns about how emerging Artificial Intelligence image tools can be weaponized against specific individuals, particularly women, with minimal friction or oversight.
Alongside these concerns about misuse of Artificial Intelligence, demand for electric vehicles and their batteries is rapidly reshaping the automotive landscape. In 2025, EVs made up over a quarter of new vehicle sales globally, up from less than 5% in 2020, reflecting sharp growth in adoption over a short period of time. Some regions are far ahead of the global average: In China, more than 50% of new vehicle sales last year were battery electric or plug-in hybrids, and in Europe more purely electric vehicles were sold in December than gas-powered ones, while the US saw a small sales decline from 2024. As EVs become more common on roads worldwide, battery technologies and supply chains are expanding and evolving, setting the stage for new breakthroughs and challenges in 2026 and beyond, from scaling production to improving performance and addressing regional disparities in uptake.
