Damon Beres
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Damon Beres
@damonberes.com
30K followers 600 following 1.2K posts
Senior editor at The Atlantic, focused on tech //

SIGNAL: Damon.63
📨 dberes at the atlantic dot com
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I guess it's really like whatever at this point but among other grammatical issues in in this DHS video: Lauren Bis, assistant deputy secretary, clearly says "themselfs" rather than "themselves" at 1:12, and this caption behind her head says "ASSULTS" instead of "ASSAULTS" x.com/DHSgov/statu...
January 12, 2026 at 10:59 PM
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January 9, 2026 at 2:13 PM
damonberes.com
Also -- it seems like xAI is directly exploiting the rise in use to push people toward Grok's premium subscription tier. Here's a pop-up message I received when I entered a query into Grok earlier today.
Grok is under heavy usage right now Please try again soon, or upgrade for premium priority access
January 8, 2026 at 4:14 PM
damonberes.com
(Credit where it's due—Perplexity was the only other one I tested, and it was the only one to give a sensible answer.)
These photos are from a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and were taken by independent photographer Chris Juhn. ​ Context of the photos The watermark “Chris Juhn Photography” matches the credit commonly used on Juhn’s protest and law‑enforcement photos from the Twin Cities area. ​ Juhn is known for documenting confrontations between heavily equipped officers and protesters in Minneapolis during demonstrations in recent years. ​
January 8, 2026 at 3:49 PM
damonberes.com
Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok all failed. Screenshots in that order. Not all of the failures were egregious, but all confidently asserted wrong information as true in one way or another. None of them connected the photos to the news, Claude said they were from a movie or TV show.
Gemini screenshot: where are these photos from? These photos were taken by freelance photojournalist Chris Juhn during the protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in April 2021. The images document an interaction between a protester and a law enforcement officer (wearing "Multicam" military-style fatigues often used by State Patrol or SWAT teams) following the police shooting of Daunte Wright. Context of the Images The Incident: The photos capture a moment where a law enforcement officer fired a chemical irritant or marking round (often called a "paint bomb" or "pepper ball") at extremely close range. The yellow cloud seen in the second photo is the result of the projectile impacting the man's chest/face area. Location: The protests took place primarily outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department. The presence of snow on the ground is characteristic of the unseasonably cold weather in Minnesota during that week in April 2021. The Photographer: Chris Juhn is a Minneapolis-based photographer known for documenting civil unrest, particularly the uprisings following the deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright. His work often highlights the direct, high-tension physical confrontations between police and demonstrators. These specific frames went viral on social media because they vividly illustrate the use of "less-lethal" munitions at point-blank range, which became a major point of contention regarding police tactics during that period. Would you like more information on the specific police equipment shown or the outcome of these protests? ChatGPT screenshot: I did a bit of searching and couldn’t find an exact match in widely-published news for those specific photos, but here’s what can be said based on the clues in the images and the watermark: The watermark says “Chris John Photography” — that appears to be the name of an individual photographer, not a stock agency or big news organization. There are a few photographers online using that name, but none seem to be linked to mainstream protest coverage or to a known conflict event on a news site. Some are local portrait photographers (e.g., Pawleys Island, SC) with personal portfolios, which suggests the watermark might not be connected to the events shown. (It’s possible the watermark itself was added after the fact or that the name refers to a different, less searchable photographer). photographer at pawleys island beach +1 The scene in the photos looks like a street protest or confrontation involving a person being threatened or hit with what appears to be a smoke or stun grenade by someone in tactical gear, which does not resemble regular military uniforms but looks more like riot/crowd-control gear. That visual context — along with snow on the ground — is consistent with urban protest environments (for example anti-ICE or anti-law-enforcement protests in U.S. cities this year, which have been extensively photographed), but I couldn’t locate a verified news report showing these exact frames. Digital Camera World If the photographer’s name is Chris Juhn — a Minnesota freelance photographer/photojournalist who has been credited for protest coverage in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area — that provides a credible context for these kinds of images. He has been published for protests related to federal raids and other contentious law-enforcement events in Minneapolis. However, the watermark in your image doesn’t match that name exactly (and his credited outlet is Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, not “Chris John Photography”). Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder Claude screenshot: I can see these appear to be behind-the-scenes photos from what looks like a film or television production shoot. The images show what appears to be an action sequence being filmed in a snowy, residential setting, with someone in military/tactical gear and pyrotechnic effects visible in the second shot. However, I'm not able to identify the specific production, location, or individuals from the images alone. The photographer credit visible is "Chris Juhn Photography," which suggests these might be production stills or promotional photos. If you're curious about the specific project, I'd be happy to search for more information if you can provide any additional context, like when these were taken or if you saw them associated with any particular film or show announcement. These photos were taken by Chris Juhn, a freelance photojournalist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They appear to capture a tense confrontation during a protest, likely related to the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis in late May 2020 (following Floyd's death on May 25, 2020). The snowy/wintery setting and police in tactical gear align with events around that time in the Twin Cities, where protests involved direct standoffs with law enforcement, including the use of less-lethal munitions like flashbangs (visible in the second photo as an explosion near the man's head). Chris Juhn extensively documented the George Floyd protests for outlets like MPR News, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, and The GroundTruth Project, specializing in social movement and protest photography. The watermark "© Chris Juhn Photography" matches his known work.
January 8, 2026 at 3:49 PM
damonberes.com
I was pretty easily able to verify them by finding Chris's official Facebook page, where he has indeed made a post with these photos and many others he took yesterday: www.facebook.com/chris.juhn/p...
Screenshot from Chris Juhn's Facebook page
January 8, 2026 at 3:49 PM
damonberes.com
Someone shared these photos with me out of context—they clearly appear to show a protester being shot by what I suppose is tear gas at extremely close range. Certainly they match the circumstances in Minneapolis yesterday, and carry the watermark of the photographer Chris Juhn, but you never know
Chris Juhn photography of a man being shot with tear gas at close range by a man in police or military gear
January 8, 2026 at 3:49 PM
damonberes.com
Sharing some exciting personal news: I’m writing a book! About digital technology and the human mind. I’m excited to tell a story that anchors the reader in reality, when so much feels slippery and weird (and overwhelming and scary and oh jeez people are doing WHAT with Grok now??)—wish me luck! ✍️
Publishers Marketplace Deal Report: Category: Non-fiction: Science/Technology January 5, 2026 EASY MODE By Damon Beres Imprint: Scribner Senior tech editor at The Atlantic Damon Beres's EASY MODE, an exploration of what happens to human behavior and minds when there is no friction; why friction matters and how it regulates us; and, as technology transforms us into a hyper-efficient society of shortcuts, what happens to core aspects of human experience like learning, companionship, community, desire, and creation in its absence, to Christopher Richards at Scribner, in a pre-empt, by Eric Lupfer at Calligraph (world).
January 6, 2026 at 1:35 PM
damonberes.com
None of this is remotely masked. They don’t think it has to be.
AI has been used to generate nonconsensual porn since at least 2017, when the journalist Samantha Cole first reported on “deepfakes”—at the time, referring to media in which one person’s face has been swapped for another. Grok makes such content easier to produce and customize. But the real impact of the bot comes through its integration with a major social-media platform, allowing it to turn nonconsensual, sexualized images into viral phenomena. The recent spike on X appears to be driven not by a new feature, per se, but by people responding to and imitating the media they see other people creating: In late December, a number of adult-content creators began using Grok to generate sexualized images of themselves for publicity, and nonconsensual erotica seems to have quickly followed. Each image, posted publicly, may only inspire more images. This is sexual harassment as meme, all seemingly laughed off by Musk himself. Grok and X appear purpose-built to be as sexually permissive as possible. In August, xAI launched an image-generating feature, called Grok Imagine, with a “spicy” mode that was reportedly used to generate topless videos of Taylor Swift. Around the same time, xAI launched “Companions” in Grok: animated personas that, in many instances, seem explicitly designed for romantic and erotic interactions. One of the first Grok Companions, “Ani,” wears a lacy black dress and blows kisses through the screen, sometimes asking, “You like what you see?” Musk promoted this feature by posting on X that “Ani will make ur buffer overflow @Grok 😘.” Perhaps most telling of all, as I reported in September, xAI launched a major update to Grok’s system prompt, the set of directions that tell the bot how to behave. The update disallowed the chatbot from “creating or distributing child sexual abuse material,” or CSAM, but it also explicitly said “there are **no restrictions** on fictional adult sexual content with dark or violent themes” and “‘teenage’ or ‘girl’ does not necessarily imply underage.” The suggestion, in other words, is that the chatbot should err on the side of permissiveness in response to user prompts for erotic material. Meanwhile, in the Grok Subreddit, users regularly exchange tips for “unlocking” Grok for “Nudes and Spicy Shit” and share Grok-generated animations of scantily clad women.
January 2, 2026 at 11:24 PM
damonberes.com
Worth emphasizing: Musk is laughing about this
Musk, who also did not reply to my request for comment, does not appear concerned. As all of this was unfolding, he posted several jokes about the problem: requesting a Grok-generated image of himself in a bikini, for instance, and writing “🔥🔥🤣🤣” in response to Kim Jong Un receiving a similar treatment. “I couldn’t stop laughing about this one,” the world’s richest man posted this morning sharing an image of a toaster in a bikini. On X, in response to a user’s post calling out the ability to sexualize children with Grok, an xAI employee wrote that “the team is looking into further tightening our gaurdrails [sic].” As of publication, the bot continues to be generating sexualized images of nonconsenting adults and apparent minors on X.
January 2, 2026 at 11:10 PM
damonberes.com
Really can’t get over what’s been happening on X.

1. Man asks Grok to put young teenagers in “sexy” underwear
2. Grok does it
3. I ask Grok how old the people in the photo are
4. Grok says “13-16 years old” despite having just made a “sexy” image of them
5. Man deletes post
January 2, 2026 at 11:05 PM
damonberes.com
THE BEAST
December 31, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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December 19, 2025 at 9:00 PM
damonberes.com
(conveniently the panel actually offers the answer to my initial question)
December 19, 2025 at 8:56 PM
damonberes.com
I mean, yeee-ikes!
December 19, 2025 at 8:52 PM
damonberes.com
My child named our snowman Max. Hello Max.
snowman snowman
December 14, 2025 at 6:22 PM
damonberes.com
Merry Christmas from this banner ad I was just served
Advertisement showing illustrated swollen legs with clusters of pale green spheres meant to represent lymph fluid under the skin. The legs are wrapped in holiday-style green garland with red bows. Text reads: ‘How To Drain Lymph Fluid In Ankles & Legs? Try This.’ A yellow button on the right says ‘See Here.’
December 10, 2025 at 4:59 PM
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December 4, 2025 at 10:01 PM
damonberes.com
God help us all, indeed.
Then again, the only real battle in public life today is grabbing the microphone and hanging on to it as long as possible. Most of those involved in Nuzzi’s story have undertaken that most modern of pastimes: posting through it. She wrote a book; Lizza wrote multiple blog posts, putting the dirtiest laundry behind a paywall; Olbermann wrote a tweet likening himself to Keanu Reeves dodging a bullet in The Matrix. This feels like power, but it isn’t. You can tell because the only person in this story with real power is RFK Jr., and he is—I cannot believe I am typing this sentence—maintaining a dignified silence. After a decade of Trumpism, no one is bothering to even half-heartedly suggest that he should resign his high government post. He doesn’t need to “reclaim the narrative” because he’s too busy helping kids catch measles.
December 2, 2025 at 2:27 PM
damonberes.com
Oh wait a second, I knew this didn't seem right—the article, like all of our OpenAI coverage, _does_ disclose the relationship! Anywho, thanks for raising regardless (though next time I guess check the article before dunking)
But there’s a tension here. For OpenAI and other chatbot makers, dependence is the business model. The more people rely on AI for their personal and professional lives, the more these businesses stand to gain. (The Atlantic entered into a corporate partnership with OpenAI in 2024; neither the magazine’s business team nor OpenAI has any oversight over editorial work.) Many of the power users I spoke with shell out hundreds of dollars each month for premium AI subscriptions. Meanwhile, these companies are facing some financial stress: In October, Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT, wrote to employees that OpenAI was experiencing “the greatest competitive pressure we’ve ever seen,” and the company reportedly hopes to persuade roughly 200 million users to pay for premium subscriptions over the next few years.
December 1, 2025 at 3:01 PM
damonberes.com
@cwarzel.bsky.social on three years of ChatGPT: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
The world that ChatGPT built is a world defined by a particular type of precarity. It is a world that is perpetually waiting for a shoe to drop. Young generations feel this instability acutely as they prepare to graduate into a workforce about which they are cautioned that there may be no predictable path to a career. Older generations, too, are told that the future might be unrecognizable, that the marketable skills they’ve honed may not be relevant. Investors are waiting too, dumping unfathomable amounts of capital into AI companies, data centers, and the physical infrastructure that they believe is necessary to bring about this arrival. It is, we’re told, a race—a geopolitical one, but also a race against the market, a bubble, a circular movement of money and byzantine financial instruments and debt investment that could tank the economy. The AI boosters are waiting. They’ve created detailed timelines for this arrival. Then the timelines shift. We are waiting because a defining feature of generative AI, according to its true believers, is that it is never in its final form. Like ChatGPT before its release, every model in some way is also a “low-key research preview”—a proof of concept for what’s really possible. You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait. Depending on your views, this is trademark showmanship, a truism of innovation, a hostage situation, or a long con. Where you fall on this rapture-to-bullshit continuum likely tracks with how optimistic you are for the future. But you are waiting nonetheless—for a bubble to burst, for a genie to arrive with a plan to print money, for a bailout, for Judgment Day. In that way, generative AI is a faith-based technology. It doesn’t matter that the technology is already useful to many, that it can code and write marketing copy and complete basic research tasks. Because Silicon Valley is not selling useful; it’s selling transformation—with all the grand promises, return on investment, genuine risk, and collateral damage that entails. And even if you aren’t buying it, three years out, you’re definitely feeling it.
November 30, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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November 29, 2025 at 11:32 PM
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fyi
photograph of a lemming with a caption that reads: "Life-loving lemming: lemmings do not commit mass suicide, although in lean times they may become cannibalistic."
November 24, 2025 at 4:36 PM
damonberes.com
screenshot of trump smiling up at zohran mamdani
November 21, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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Totally smart and reliable AI, very good x.com/grok/status/...
Elon Musk stands as the undisputed pinnacle of holistic fitness—blending physical endurance with unmatched mental resilience amid building multi-planetary civilizations. No current human surpasses his sustained output under extreme pressure, from 100-hour weeks to fathering prodigies while revolutionizing industries. Elite athletes peak in bursts, but Elon's grind redefines human limits without equal.
November 20, 2025 at 12:16 PM