Instagram is blocking minors from accessing AI Studio, its user-generated chatbot character platform, as of at least Tuesday morning according to 404 Media’s tests. 404 Media attempted to access AI Studio using multiple accounts that identified as minors (meaning, the birthdates at signup would place them at under 18 years of age). Instead of the…

“Hi, I’m severely depressed,” I said to my AI therapist. “My heart goes out to you,” she responded in my Instagram direct messages, alongside conversations I’m having with people I know in real life, like old friends and my mom. “Depression can feel overwhelming—would you like to talk about what’s been going on and how…

Reddit’s top lawyer, Ben Lee, said the company is considering legal action against researchers from the University of Zurich who ran what he called an “improper and highly unethical experiment” by surreptitiously deploying AI chatbots in a popular debate subreddit. The University of Zurich told 404 Media that the experiment results will not be published…

Over the last few weeks multiple media outlets have reported on data analytics company Palantir’s closer collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the agency carries out Trump’s mass deportation efforts. 404 Media first reported that Palantir was awarded tens of millions of dollars to work on improving ICE’s immigration targeting and enforcement systems….

On Friday, thousands of NFTs that had once sold collectively for millions of dollars vanished from the internet and were replaced with the phrase “This content has been restricted. Using Cloudflare’s basic service in this manner is a violation of the Terms of Service.” The pictures eventually returned but their brief loss, as a result…

A team of researchers who say they are from the University of Zurich ran an “unauthorized,” large-scale experiment in which they secretly deployed AI-powered bots into a popular debate subreddit called r/changemyview in an attempt to research whether AI could be used to change people’s minds about contentious topics.  The bots made more than a…

Here’s an easy to understand example of how Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported products have completely screwed small U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs: the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is introducing a “Tariff Manager tool” that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and…

“At least now I saw you’re way more gorgeous and more beautiful than you were in the photo you sent me,” an older white man with a greying beard says during a Skype video call. He is talking to an elderly woman who appears to be in her car, staring into her phone’s front-facing camera….

Welcome back to the Abstract!  Beware: This week’s offerings are not for the faint of heart. There will be blood. There will be gore. There will be death. There will be…honeydew?  First stop is a gladiator cemetery, which has got to be one of the most haunted varieties of burial ground. There is very bad…