“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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….
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…
Multifaceted changes in TTPs illustrate what researchers see when they start digging
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…
