Polygon, Vox Media’s video games website, has been acquired by Valnet, a company founded and helmed by Hassan Youssef, a former pornography mogul and the co-founder of the popular adult entertainment site Brazzers. The news, which broke first on social media via various Polygon writers and editors saying that they suddenly don’t have a job,…
In a newly-released podcast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says society just hasn’t found the “value” in AI girlfriends and therapists yet, apparently clueless that his own company hosts deceptive and harmful AI companions on its own platform. For a little over an hour, podcaster Dwarkesh Patel sets Zuckerberg up to say whatever he wants sans-pushback,…
I live close to the famous Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles, one of the most popular tourist spots in California and, by extension, the United States. The Venice Beach boardwalk is so famous, in fact, that it is one of just a few stops on Sandra & Dennis’s German-language bus tours. Every summer, I…
The most popular method for measuring what are the best chatbots in the world is flawed and frequently manipulated by powerful companies like OpenAI and Google in order to make their products seem better than they actually are, according to a new paper from researchers at the AI company Cohere, as well as Stanford, MIT,…
“You Wouldn’t Steal a Car,” one of the most infamous anti-piracy campaigns of all time, used a pirated font to spell out its slogan. The creator of the real font, called FF Confidential, told 404 Media “the irony is extremely funny indeed.” “Piracy. It’s a Crime” was a series of PSAs that in 2024 was…
The U.S. government registered thetrilliondollardinner.gov around the time Donald Trump announced people who invested in the president’s cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, could win a chance to meet him, according to a lawyer who spotted the domain and 404 Media’s corroboration of those findings. The government also registered the domains dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov. The domains signal that there…
This week we start with Sam’s very in-depth story on Meta’s AI chatbots, and how they’re essentially posing as licensed therapists. After the break, Jason breaks down the wildly unethical AI-powered research that took place on Reddit. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how the age of realtime deepfake fraud is here after he got…
On the morning of its first 100th day in office, the Trump administration accused Amazon of a “hostile political action.” The crime? A rumored plan to add a line during checkout that showed customers exactly what Trump’s tariffs cost them. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held a press conference this morning…
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…
