New from 404 Media: Google is serving AI images of mushrooms when users search for some species. Very risky, potentially fatal error for foragers who are trying to find what mushrooms are safe to eat. Could have "devastating consequences" one expert said
New from 404 Media: in a massive shift, Telegram says it now *will* provide user data to authorities in response to legal orders. Includes IP addresses and phone numbers. Yesterday privacy policy said just terror suspects. Now it is crimes more broadly
With news that pager explosions are the work of Israeli front company making the devices, of course reminded of when the FBI made its own front company for phones for criminals. Stakes (and collateral) higher in Lebanon, obviously. But this is how the trade-offs were discussed
New: a project analyzing human language usage by scraping the web is shutting down because "generative AI has polluted the data." It's going to become much harder to analyze human use of language with the rise of AI-generated stuff being everywhere image
New from 404 Media: a police report we obtained shows a Starship food delivery robot abruptly changed direction, ran into a person, and knocked her down/injured her. Robot then headed in her direction again. Company offered victim promo codes as apology
New from 404 Media: LinkedIn is training AI on users before updating its terms of service. People noticed a new setting on generative AI. I asked LinkedIn, they said they're updating their terms "shortly." They went ahead and trained AI w/o updating image
Multiple experts we spoke to with experience recycling/handling lithium batteries say the pager explosions in Lebanon are likely not from just batteries alone; combination with explosives more likely
New: Snapchat is reserving the right to use your own, AI-generated likeness in ads that can then target you. The setting is on by default according to our tests image
Today in AI slop, Google serves AI slop as top result for one of the most famous paintings in history. When you searched for the artist Hieronymus Bosch, the top result was an AI generated version of the Garden of Earthly Delights
New: earlier today we got court records which show a stalker allegedly made an AI chatbot version of a woman on sex bot site that was used to dox and harass her. Bot programmed with victim's address; anyone could use the bot and have it output the address image