{"id":724266,"date":"2026-08-02T10:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724266\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T10:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:53:10","slug":"prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-take-aim-at-trillionaire-elon-musk-in-blistering-new-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724266\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take aim at &#8216;trillionaire&#8217; Elon Musk in blistering new statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prince Harry and Meghan Markle&#8217;s charitable foundation, Archewell Philanthropies, has published a statement on its Sussex.com website praising Minnesota&#8217;s decision to outlaw AI &#8220;nudification&#8221; applications, which passed the state Senate with a unanimous 65-0 vote, and taking aim at Elon Musk over his efforts to &#8220;stop the law from going into place&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The statement, headlined &#8220;Can we all agree technology should not enable predators to target children?&#8221;, commends the legislation as a landmark moment driven by the advocacy of families and young people demanding stronger digital safeguards.<\/p>\n<p>Archewell described the Minnesota ban as &#8220;an example of leadership fit for the digital age: a bi-partisan decision to stop technology from enabling predatory behavior disproportionately targeting women and children.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The foundation noted that even in a politically divided state, the measure attracted no opposition whatsoever: &#8220;It was unanimously agreed that this technology, if not stopped, would protect predators and hurt innocent people, especially women and girls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The statement reserved its sharpest language for the technology industry&#8217;s efforts to undermine such protections. Archewell said that &#8220;Big Tech has taken shocking steps to limit restrictions on or accountability for these objectively predatory A.I. product features.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In particular, the foundation took aim at the company behind X&#8217;s Grok AI tool, noting that &#8220;the trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X&#8217;s Grok, sued the state of Minnesota to stop the law from going into place&#8221; just before the ban was due to take effect.<\/p>\n<p>The statement drew attention to three separate legal actions filed in the same week against that very feature, &#8220;including a UK lawmaker, an Arkansas family, and five children from Tennessee, all filing new lawsuits against that same Grok feature, alleging it created sexual material of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Archewell accused the company of &#8220;mitigating risk to their bottom line instead of aggressively responding to the clear evidence their product features are enabling predators to prey on women and children.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"fa8cd\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"1d9de5c2fe48936b45c00a0275602834\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" class=\"rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image \" lazy-loadable=\"true\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%202000%201333'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-runner-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/u200bprince-harry-and-meghan-markle.jpg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"\\u200bPrince Harry and Meghan Markle\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Prince Harry and Meghan Markle&#8217;s charitable foundation, Archewell Philanthropies, has taken aim at Elon Musk over his efforts to &#8216;stop the law from going into place&#8217; in Minnesota<\/p>\n<p> | <\/p>\n<p>GETTY<\/p>\n<p>The statement explains that these applications enable users to produce nude images of other people, including children, without any form of consent. <\/p>\n<p>Drawing on research referenced by the United Nations, Archewell highlighted staggering figures: &#8220;90 to 95 percent of all online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, with around 90 percent depicting women.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The scale of the problem has grown rapidly, with the foundation noting that &#8220;the total number of deepfake videos online in 2023 was 550 percent higher than in 2019.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The statement further underscored the gendered nature of the crisis, citing that &#8220;deepfake pornography makes up 98 percent of all deepfake videos online, and 99 percent of the individuals targeted are women.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>                LATEST ROYAL DEVELOPMENTS<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"7f783\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"d260e0825e5e8da5322024aeb83e566c\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" class=\"rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image \" lazy-loadable=\"true\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%202000%201333'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-runner-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785667990_475_image.jpg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk officially became a trillionaire earlier this year<\/p>\n<p> | <\/p>\n<p>GETTY<\/p>\n<p>The law, Archewell said, was a direct response to &#8220;a growing body of evidence and stories of women, teen girls, and children targeted with AI-generated non-consensual images.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Beyond Minnesota, the statement noted that legislators in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and California have begun &#8220;proposing interventions and launching investigations to stop A.I. technology designed to allow the abuse, harassment, stalking, and sexualization of targeted individuals and children.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the federal level, Archewell pointed to the passage of the Take It Down Act through Congress, which criminalises the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and AI-generated deepfakes whilst compelling platforms to take them down.<\/p>\n<p>However, the foundation expressed frustration that other crucial legislation remains stalled. <\/p>\n<p>The Defiance Act, which would grant survivors of non-consensual deepfakes a civil right of action, &#8220;has been passed by the Senate twice but has yet to make it to a vote on the House floor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Archewell posed a pointed question about the hold-up: &#8220;The answer may lie in the deepest offense to families and children: the tech industry&#8217;s commitment to pushback on these bills to protect their bottom line.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The foundation concluded its statement with a broadside against the technology sector&#8217;s priorities, declaring that &#8220;Big Tech companies are raising billions claiming AI will bring society forward, yet they retaliate against basic safety measures to keep children safe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Archewell closed with two rhetorical questions that encapsulated its wider call for urgent action: &#8220;Can AI make our world better while it enables the worst in humans? Should our children pay the price while we wait to find out?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the statement, the foundation made clear its support for lawmakers willing to confront the industry, writing that &#8220;Archewell Philanthropies applauds leadership taking the tech-fueled sexualization of women and children seriously and doing all they can to keep society safe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The intervention marks the latest effort by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex&#8217;s organisation to campaign for stronger digital protections, particularly for women and young people vulnerable to AI-generated exploitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry and Meghan Markle&#8217;s charitable foundation, Archewell Philanthropies, has published a statement on its Sussex.com website praising&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[995,96,59,100,50,983,1852,56,54,55,741,1384],"class_list":["post-724266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-meghan-markle","tag-news","tag-prince-harry","tag-royal","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}