A television channel run by Russia’s Ministry of Defense is airing a program it claims is AI-generated. According to advertisements for the show, a neural network is picking the topics it wants to discuss, then uses AI to generate that video. It includes putting French President Emmaneul Macron in hair curlers and a pink robe,…
A bill introduced by Michigan lawmakers last week would ban pornography, ASMR, depictions of transgender people, and VPNs for anyone using the internet in the state. House Bill 4938, called the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” would prohibit distribution of “certain material on the internet that corrupts the public morals,” the bill states. It was…
The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September…
OpenAI has announced it is introducing new safety measures for ChatGPT after the a wave of stories and lawsuits accusing ChatGPT and other chatbots of playing a role in a number of teen suicide cases. ChatGPT will now attempt to guess a user’s age, and in some cases might require users to share an ID…
Some international sellers on large platforms like eBay and Etsy have jacked up their shipping costs to the United States to absurd prices in order to deter Americans from buying their products in an effort to avoid dealing with the logistical headaches of Trump’s tariffs. A Japanese eBay seller increased the shipping cost on a…
📄 This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here. A data broker owned by the…
A software engineer in Austin has hooked up Animal Crossing to an AI and breathed new and disturbing life into its villagers. Using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on Animal Crossing scripts and an RSS reader, the anthropomorphic folk of the Nintendo classic spouted new dialogue, talked about current events, and actively plotted against…
This week, we talk about how ‘Boring History’ AI slop is taking over YouTube and making it harder to discover content that humans spend months researching, filming, and editing. Then we talk about how Meta has totally given up on content moderation. In the bonus segment, we discuss the ‘AI Darwin Awards,’ which is, uhh,…
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that broke ice, broke hearts, and broke out the libations. Also, if you haven’t seen it already, we just covered an amazing breakthrough in our understanding of the cosmos, which is as much a story about humanity’s endless capacity for ingenuity as it is…
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss “free speech,” keeping stupid thoughts in one’s own head, and cancel culture. JASON: In August 2014, I spoke to Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com, a timeless,…
