The Grok, The Bad & Alexa 🤖😵‍💫

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appenig, we cover a smathering of those stories you may have missed over the Holidays, starting with Alexa’s migration to become an online AI chatbot. We also address the frankly horrible story of Grok being used to ‘digitally undress’ women and children on X, we have a cool app that could help you keep at least one new year’s resolution, cover a report on AI slop gaining traction on YouTube, and much more!

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 AI Bots – New Home for Alexa and a Depressing New Low for Grok

The tech world kept turning with new appenings across our couple of weeks of downtime over the Holidays, but there were a couple of stories over the New Year that grabbed our attention. The first is the news that Amazon has performed a kind of migration for Alexa, giving it a new home on Alexa.com and a new lease of life as an online chatbot rather than something confined to your home smart devices. What we like about this move is that Amazon has opted for a family-friendly approach, positioning online Alexa as an educational discovery hub rather than a broader-purpose bot like ChatGPT or Gemini. It could be a great niche for Amazon, especially as the online Alexa integrates with its wider ecosystem, including smart devices. The other story is, unfortunately, a bit less comfortable to report on: X’s integrated AI bot, Grok, is being used to ‘digitally undress’ women and children on the platform, putting them in sexualized images, such as wearing bikinis. Those impacted include the 14-year-old star of Stranger Things, Nell Fisher. Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has also been digitally undressed by Grok. X has suspended 1000s of accounts for creating the images, without seemingly addressing Grok's ability to do it. Governments around the world are demanding answers, but so far, there has been an ominous silence from US regulators. The FTC, DOJ and FCC have all declined to comment, never mind act, at the time of writing. Sure, we’ve all had our eyes on Venezuela this week, but it is, frankly, quite depressing that a story like this has barely made a ripple of condemnation. #GrokGoesRogue Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Caffeine Clock

Hey! It’s January, and you know what that means – hard-to-keep New Year’s Resolutions. Most of us will have our new-year-new-me vows centered on something that makes us healthy, so that’s why we wanted to highlight Caffeine Clock, an app that tracks your caffeine intake and, crucially, can let you know when you’ve had too much or when it’s a good time to refuel with a latte or energy drink. It’s a great tool if you, like most of us here at 3A, know full well you drink too much coffee. Caffeine Clock is free, but you can also pay a one-off $4.99 fee to remove adverts. Get it for iOS here or Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 20%

📈📉 YouTube – AI Slop Makes Up 20% of Videos Shown to New Users

2025 saw a growing chorus of concern over the sheer volume of AI ‘slop’ permeating through social platforms. Unfortunately, many believe this is going to get worse before we see a concerted effort to combat it. To highlight the growing issue, a study suggests that one in five videos shown to new users through the algorithm are garbage AI creations. It’s a huge issue, not just on YouTube, and it’s really not getting the attention it deserves. #SlopControl Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

We’re easing back into things after the break, reconnecting as a team, and getting back to building things we’re incredibly excited about. There’s a lot in motion – from P3 and Front Pages to Shift and Quiet Collection – and it feels good to be back in the mix. We’re grateful to be starting 2026 together, thank you for being here with us.