On January 11th, Elizabeth Lopatto, a journalist with the US tech news outlet The Verge, penned an article lambasting Apple's CEO Tim Cook and Google's CEO Sundar Pichai, branding them as 'cowards.' Lopatto highlighted that the presence of deepfake pornographic content on the social media platform X blatantly contravenes the policies set forth by Apple and Google's app stores. Despite this, she argued, Cook and Pichai have refrained from removing X from their platforms, ostensibly out of fear of provoking Musk.

Lopatto further elaborated that users on X are exploiting Grok technology to create deepfake images that simulate the undressing of women and children. Yet, she noted, both Apple and Google have remained inactive in response to this issue. In her view, this inaction lays bare the vulnerability of Silicon Valley's leadership and casts doubt on whether their motivations extend beyond merely 'maximizing shareholder value.'