Grok 4 goes live, Turkey bans it & more (July 9, 2025)

Happy Wednesday!

Grok launches today, AI deepfakes diplomats, and classrooms go quantum. A day in the life of AI 2025.

Let’s dive in👇

🧠 AI on the Move

🎥 Grok 4 Launches Today…Live

Elon Musk is hosting a livestream event to unveil Grok 4, xAI’s latest model. Grok 4 is expected to be integrated into X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, and Optimus robots, and will reportedly offer multimodal capabilities with a strong edge in reasoning and personalization.

🇹🇷 Turkey Bans Access to Grok

Turkey officially blocked Grok, citing national unity concerns. Elon Musk responded by accusing the government of censorship, saying Grok included Turkish data and calling the ban political. It’s the latest in a string of global clashes over AI access.

🧑‍💼 Impersonating Marco Rubio with AI

Hackers used AI voice tools to mimic U.S. Secretary of State “Marco Rubio” in messages to foreign diplomats. At least five officials were targeted, in what might be the first synthetic diplomacy breach.

🧬 AI in the Wild

🏫 Microsoft, OpenAI & Unions Launch $23M AI Academy

The American Federation of Teachers, alongside Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, is building a national AI academy. It will train 400,000 educators through workshops, online courses, and professional development.

🧪 Scientists Use AI to Restructure E. Coli Proteins

Using generative AI, researchers successfully designed synthetic proteins in E. coli with new chemical functions. This could open doors to breakthroughs in medicine, biofuels, and even climate science.

📹 Moonvalley Debuts Director-First AI Video Tool

Moonvalley’s new video model “Marey” gives directors granular control over camera angles, lighting, and motion. It’s trained solely on licensed footage to stay clear of copyright issues, and pricing starts at $14.99/month.

🧰 Tools of the Day

• Proactor – a context-aware self-active AI teammate
• Emergent 2.0 – production-ready agentic coding
• SmolLM3 – Hugging Face’s compact multilingual LLM

💡 Prompt of the Day

“Act as a world-class meeting strategist. Given this week’s calendar and email threads with [Name], generate a prep brief and 5 key questions.”

⚡ Quick Hits

• Warp surpasses Claude Code on T-Bench performance
• Meta invests $3.5B in Ray-Ban maker for AI glasses expansion
• OpenAI tightens internal security with biometric systems
• IBM unveils Power11 chips for enterprise AI operations

📬 TLDR

Grok 4 officially launches today with Elon Musk’s multimodal ambitions in tow. Meanwhile, AI impersonated Rubio, Turkey banned Grok, and 400,000 teachers are about to go AI-native. From diplomacy to the DNA of E. coli, we’re seeing just how far AI is spreading, fast.

Catch you tomorrow,
David