Civitai, a hugely popular site for sharing AI models and a critical piece of infrastructure for AI-generated pornography across the internet, yesterday announced that it will now ban content depicting incest, self-harm, and fetishes featuring “bodily excretions” like urine, vomit, menstruation, and diapers. The site is also demonetizing content featuring the likeness of real people…
The lives of most Wii consoles ended sometime in the early 2010s, left to collect dust in dorm rooms and parents’ dens, having run their last Just Dance disc long ago. But at least one Wii is finding another life hosting a website. Security engineer Alex Haydock found a discarded “sacrificial Wii” at the 2024…
Adam Chace picked a pretty good time to create a data archiving product for turbulent times. I first saw an ad for PrepperDisk on Reddit soon after the election of Donald Trump: “Take lifesaving websites into any emergency,” and “Be SHTF (Shit Hits the Fan) Proof,” the ads read. PrepperDisk is a mini internet box…
Generative AI is a power and water hungry beast. While its advocates swear it’ll change the world for the better, the tangible benefits today are less clear and the long term costs to both society and the environment may be enormous. Even the federal U.S. government knows this, according to a new report published Wednesday…
Last month, Roy Lee was suspended from Columbia after he was accused of using AI to “cheat” on technical job interviews for Amazon, Meta, and TikTok. On Sunday, he announced that he raised $5.3 million to start Cluely, a new startup that aims to allow users to similarly “cheat on everything.” Cluely went viral when…
Adrian Basar did not want to become a distant-water fisherman. With 22-hour workdays and pay of around 450 dollars per month, it’s not the most glamorous—or fulfilling, or generally safe—job. But Basar took it to help support his seven-sibling family. One of them is currently in university, studying mathematics. “I support them so they can…
We start this week with Emanuel and Jason’s big story on Massive Blue, a company that is selling AI-powered undercover bots posing as protesters and children to the cops. After the break, Sam tells us about visiting the millennial saint. In the subscribers-only section, we talk business and the state of 404 Media. Listen to…
An exploit in Activision-Blizzard’s popular real-time strategy game StarCraft II is allowing people to inject disturbing videos into multiplayer matches and show them to other players without warning, according to several accounts in the StarCraft II community and one player who talked to 404 Media. Some of the videos people said they saw in game…
On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a “native-AI newsroom.” Worried he’s missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling…
Something that we’ve been thinking a lot about since we founded 404 Media was how one of the worst parts of working at a big company like VICE was the regular layoffs. A cruel aspect of the job was that whenever there was some kind of cataclysmic event that affected the economy—COVID, Russia’s invasion of…
