Last week, OpenAI claimed that a group of its AI models had broken containment, successfully hacking into the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face to cheat on a benchmark test.

In the wake of the announcement, two very distinct narratives have emerged surrounding OpenAI’s claims. Some say it was essentially a publicity stunt, with the company setting parameters for the test that pushed the models toward outrageous behavior. But others, including certain prominent researchers, warn that the hack should serve as a warning shot for an even more severe AI-enabled cybersecurity disaster that’ll inevitably take place as models become more sophisticated.

“This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an AI system has autonomously committed a crime,” said New York Times journalist Kevin Roose of the event. “If a human did to Hugging Face what OpenAI’s models did to Hugging Face, they would be charged with computer fraud, and potentially sent to prison or fined or prosecuted.”

Debate will surely continue to rage among wonks and skeptics. And new details aren’t exactly tamping out the sense of alarm: on Tuesday, OpenAI issued an update to its ongoing investigation, claiming the incident was worse than initially thought. In addition to hacking Hugging Face, the company now says, its models “used publicly exposed credentials at the account-level on other publicly available services,” totaling “four accounts on four services.”

“We’ll continue to notify service owners directly, and have not seen evidence of broader impact to these providers or other accounts on their services,” OpenAI wrote, without elaborating on which services were affected.

The news further raised alarm bells among some cybersecurity experts, highlighting ongoing concerns over the tech’s ability to evade protective measures. It’s a possibility that researchers have warned about for years, and the incident suggests that the threat is now turning from a possibility into a reality.

On the other hand, more skeptical experts have become suspicious about OpenAI’s hair-raising tale. After all, we’ve heard a strikingly similar story from its biggest competitor, Anthropic, mere months ago. Could OpenAI’s latest admission be a bid to build hype to drum up excitement and prove to investors that its latest AI models are just as much of a cybersecurity threat as Anthropic’s fabled Mythos?

Experts also point out that the Hugging Face hack could’ve easily been prevented, further adding credence to the theory that OpenAI was looking for attention from the public. As cloud security firm Edera co-founder Alex Zenla told Wired, the hack was largely a result of callousness on OpenAI’s part.

“People are YOLO-ing really hard,” he said. “It’s shocking how little people have really thought about a scenario like this.”

“I consider all AI and anything AI touches to be fully untrusted — which is fine, you just need to build against that,” Zenla added. “And this situation proves the point. The fact that OpenAI wasn’t more paranoid about this seems kind of reckless.”

“A simple analysis of the actual risk has an actual simple answer,” security and compliance consultant Davi Ottenheimer told Wired. “The OpenAI mistakes were dead simple.”

As Wired points out, simple protections like fully isolating AI services from the internet could’ve prevented the hack, which have been intimately familiar to researchers for decades now.

Considering OpenAI is nearing a $1 trillion valuation and should have all the resources in the world at its disposal, major lapses in security should have anybody start questioning the company’s narrative.

Yet there could be truth to both versions of the story. It’s entirely possible that there is legitimate cause for concern as AI models become more sophisticated at identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We’ve already seen frontier models flagging thousands of software bugs, underlining their growing competence.

But OpenAI is also heavily invested in showcasing its models’ capabilities to the world as it tries to keep up with Anthropic. That leaves the possibility that the company could’ve coordinated with Hugging Face to orchestrate the hack — or at least given its AI models a strong push in the direction of controversy.

More on the hack: OpenAI Says a Group of Its Models Broke Out of Secure Containment and Hacked Another AI Company

The post OpenAI’s Escaped Models Were Allegedly Rampaging More Extensively Than Previously Reported appeared first on Futurism.

The US job market is in a weird place right now.

Life is clearly rough for the working class, stuck navigating Kafkaeqsue hiring infrastructure while billionaires devour an ever-larger slice of the world’s wealth. But frustratingly, the data being used to steer the economy tells a rosier story than the one workers actually live. The latest unemployment numbers — a flawed metric, admittedly — showed a slight improvement from May to June, at least on paper. And even as the economy appears to cool its jets, Americans keep spending like there’s no tomorrow, even in the face of aggressive inflation.

With so much data — anecdotal and empirical — swirling around, it’s hard to find the pulse of the US labor force. Luckily, one enterprising AI startup found a perfect barometer. There’s no conflicting data or tedious calculations involved — just a little ink, and the vibrating sting of a tattoo machine.

On Thursday, the Y Combinator-backed AI startup LemonLime hosted a bizarre recruitment event in which attendees were offered an “instant interview” in exchange for getting the company’s logo tattooed on their body.

It sounds like a joke, but LemonLime co-founder Jordan Zietz bragged on a LinkedIn post that an astonishing seven people took them up on the offer.

According to his post, the goal was to “meet exceptional people,” and sort out “which of them are just as crazy as we are.”

“That’s why we brought an actual tattoo artist to our party and offered an instant interview to anyone who got a LemonLime tattoo,” Zietz continued. “If you’re reaching out to us to apply for a job, you might want to take notes.”

While coercive body art has become increasingly common in the 21st century, there’s usually at least some form of financial compensation involved. The idea that it takes getting a permanent tattoo just to get one foot in the door for an interview is especially galling, and reveals a lot about the sorry state of the US job market.

One of the people who received a free tattoo, Dimple Amitha Garuadapuri, clarified on LinkedIn that while she didn’t get the company’s logo inked on her skin, “almost everyone else got a LemonLime tattoo.”

Regardless, news of the stunt spread quickly on social media, prompting a lightning-fast apology from the founder, who admitted on X-formerly-Twitter that he “messed up.”

“Even though participants chose their own tattoos and no one was asked to get our logo, I should have understood the pressure and power dynamic created by connecting tattoos to hiring,” Zietz said. “We’ve taken the posts down and have spoken to everyone who participated. We’re also ready to cover associated removal costs with anyone facing any delayed regret.”

Just for good measure, the founder stressed that “interviews were available to everyone regardless,” though it remains to be seen if the seven share that view.

Did you attend the YC afterparty with LemonLime? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out at tips@futurism.com. We can keep you anonymous.

More on tech startups: Startup Sued After Delivery Bot Clobbers 73-Year Old Woman

The post We Are Mildly Horrified by This AI Startup That Coerced People Into Getting Tattoos of Its Logo in Exchange for a Job Interview appeared first on Futurism.

For a time, it appeared as if AI would find broad acceptance among the American masses.

The peanut gallery on social media happily embraced early image generation models as researchers appeared to make significant breakthroughs with the aid of their newfound tools. On paper, surveys found public attitudes toward the tech continued to improve into 2025 — before sharply reversing.

In 2026, America’s honeymoon phase with AI seems to be quickly wearing off. According to a joint poll conducted by Bentley University and Gallup, the percentage of US adults who think AI does “more harm than good” is rising, from 31 percent in 2025 to 39 percent this year, while a piddling 9 percent still think the tech does “more good than harm.”

As outlooks sour, the Bentley-Gallup poll found that Americans’ familiarity with AI continues to grow. In 2026, 70 percent of those polled said they’re “somewhat or extremely knowledgeable” about AI, up 6 percent compared to 2024. The implication probably gives OpenAI Sam Altman a migraine: the more people learn about AI, the less they seem to want it in their lives.

Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly wary about data centers, with a recent Politico survey finding that 41 percent of US adults would oppose a data center being built within three miles of their home, up drastically from 28 percent in January. At the same time, the volume of support for data centers plummeted, down 13 percent over the past six months alone.

Speaking to Bloomberg about the rising aversion to AI, professor of ethics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business Derek Leben said the attitude is increasingly taking root along social lines. Not only do AI haters dislike the tech in their own personal sphere, but they’re increasingly scrutinizing their friends, family, and coworkers about their attitudes.

“The most obvious social effect is suspicion,” Leben told Bloomberg. “There is also a moral and political judgment that is coming along with AI usage, especially in creative industries where the stigma is the strongest.”

Carla Milan, a 37-year-old public health professional in New York City, told the publication she’s frustrated that family and friends deploy AI reflexively, without considering its social or environmental costs.

“I hear people champion AI and I’m like, ‘sure, why don’t we all participate in our collective downfall?'” Milan told Bloomberg. “Why don’t we all play a part in diminishing our humanity and degrading the environment?”

More on AI: Meta Working on Crushingly Sad AI App That Tells Bedtime Stories to Children, for “Tired” Parents

The post The More People Learn About AI, the More They Want It Out of Their Lives appeared first on Futurism.

The majority of workers agree: AI has turned their lives into slop-filled misery, making them yearn for the good old days before the tech existed.

According to a new survey of office workers by professional services company Adaptavist, just shy of two thirds of respondents say they regularly long for their old, pre-AI work life. Over a third of them would delete generative AI tools from their lives in their entirety if that was an option. And some 36 percent admitted they didn’t even understand why AI was being forced on them in the first place.

In many ways, the results shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The advent of AI has led to widespread frustration and added stress for workers being forced to carefully comb over the output of hallucinating AI models and engage in prompt engineering that wasn’t part of their original job description.

The survey’s results are a strong indication that the once-promised boost to productivity thanks to AI has yet to materialize. Worse yet, AI is actively getting in workers’ ways. Some 42 percent of respondents said they “spend more time verifying AI output than they save using it,” while 49 percent reported that “poor-quality AI output slows down projects.”

Meanwhile, generic slop is turning tasks that once required a modicum of creativity into a slog. Almost half of respondents to Adaptavist’s survey said that all the slop is making their jobs “feel more repetitive and less meaningful.”

Instead of being freed up to pursue a life of leisure while AI takes care of the brunt work, as tech leaders once promised, the conversation has shifted to an even unhealthier work-life balance. Workers are clearly afraid of being made redundant as company leaders push for AI adoption. Over half (54 percent) of survey respondents said they fear losing their jobs within the next five years as a result of AI.

“Without clear guardrails, accountability, and alignment, the promise of AI efficiency risks being offset by a growing burden on the very people it is designed to support,” Adaptavist wrote in its report.

In short, it’s no wonder workers are nostalgic for a pre-AI world order. While tech executives are enriching themselves, they’re being forced to adopt AI at all costs, even if it means a drop in productivity.

It’s a confusing and frustratingly incoherent new reality that’s already alienating an entire generation. Thankfully, Gen Z, which is facing a dire post-graduation job market thanks to AI, is choosing to fight back — a growing rebellion against polluting data centers and chatbots that erode our critical thinking skills.

More on work and AI: Sam Altman Says Even the Power of AI Will Never Lead to a Shorter Work Week

The post Employees Long for the Days Before the Workplace Filled Up With AI Slop appeared first on Futurism.

Book publisher Minotaur, which is owned by leading publishing company Macmillan US, has walked away from a $2.4 million deal for an unpublished debut novel “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” by author Jerry Falade.

As Deadline reports, questions surrounding the use of AI during the writing of the book made the publisher drop the contract altogether. But it’s not because the company is drawing an ethical line in the sand while highlighting a major problem for the industry — instead, Minotaur is staying away because it may not be able to secure the copyright if the book contains passages written by an AI.

It’s truly a sign of the times. There’s a growing crisis as AI slop continues to make it increasingly difficult for genuine writers to stand out. Whether accusations of authors having used AI are founded or not almost seems beside the point — the tech has made a huge mess of the publishing world that feels increasingly impossible to clean up.

Despite the latest crime novel being currently unpublished, film and TV studios around the world had already begun jostling for rights for “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body,” according to Deadline, making it a particularly hairy situation. But AI detectors exposed apparent “fingerprints,” or signs that the author had made use of the tech while drafting the novel. Falade has denied the accusations.

“[The author] produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world,” Hodgman Literary independent agent Sandy Hodgman told international publishers in an email obtained by Deadline. “Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion.”

“During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with [the author] for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process,” she added. “We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.”

As a result, several companies that had already started selling rights to the crime novel stopped altogether, pulling out of the project.

It’s a precarious inflection point for an industry already reeling from a massive influx of lazy AI slop. Human authors are seeing their life’s work get ripped off by generative AI tools. Amazon is being flooded with entirely AI-generated books, drowning out works by actual human authors.

It’s become such a big problem, even OpenAI directed its blockbuster ChatGPT to start refusing requests to copy a specific author’s style, as Ars Technica reported earlier this week.

Yet glaring questions over the use of AI and copyright infringement remain unanswered as countless lawsuits work their way through the court system. Just earlier this month, a group of major publishers sued Google, accusing it of illegally scraping millions of copyrighted books to train its Gemini AI model.

Whether AI was used in the writing of the sought-after novel remains murky, making the developing situation particularly intriguing. According to entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider, the author of “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” will have to return the money.

“The accusations are wrong, and I am completely innocent,” the author told Sneider over the phone. “I was on the verge of success, and then all of a sudden, there were rumors, but no one asked me anything. I don’t know why my agency did not have my back.”

“I’ve lost so much already,” the author added. “I have no one to call… no friends in this industry. I don’t know anything. I simply wrote my manuscript, and it sparked crazy bidding wars across multiple countries.”

The news comes after author Mia Ballard’s novel, “Shy Girl,” was pulled from shelves back in March after she was widely accused of using AI to help write the book, as The New York Times reported at the time.

“This controversy has changed my life in many ways and my mental health is at an all time low and my name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do,” she told the newspaper.

More on authors and AI: Novel Pulled From Shelves After Author Is Accused of Using AI

The post Major Publisher Cans $2.4 Million Book Deal After Author Was Accused of Using AI, for a Very Cynical Reason appeared first on Futurism.

Does it ever feel like your inbox is filling up with emails that don’t sound quite human?

You may be right. Last week, I received an email from a publicist identified as “June Barton,” whose address indicated that she worked at a firm called VectorGuideHQ.

The message, which read like any one of the countless PR emails in my inbox, was seeking coverage for a wellness app called RiseGuide. Barton offered to set me up with an account and introduce me to the startup’s founder. When I didn’t respond, Barton followed up.

“Glad to set you up so you can try it, or put you on a call with the founder,” Barton wrote. “Lmk!”

RiseGuide is a real company. But June Barton is not a real PR rep, or even a real person.

For one thing, her headshot — showing a light-eyed, soft-smiling brunette — was clearly AI-generated. Though not visible in the tiny email window, when I opened her profile picture in a new tab, I could see that the image had failed to cut out a watermark disclosing that it was downloaded from the site “this-person-does-not-exist.com,” which traffics in AI-generated faces.

“Generate random human face in 1 click and download it!” reads this-person-does-not-exist.com. “AI generated fake person photos: man, woman or child.”

Even more peculiar was that when I looked up the VectorGuideHQ site in Barton’s email address — june@vectorguidehq.com — it redirected to a United Kingdom-based PR company called Movchan Agency. Barton, I soon learned, was one character among a roster of fake personas used by Movchan to pitch journalists on stories.

When I reached out to the firm’s clients, they said they were unaware of the practice.

“We do work with Movchan Agency, but were not aware of these practices,” RiseGuide’s founder, Oleksandr Matsiuk, told me. “They are meant to act as our PR support and represent our brand by helping us with reaching out to reporters like yourself. Each story gets either created, or previously approved by us, however, we were not aware they were using AI-generated personas in the outreach process — otherwise we would’ve been naturally against it.”

Searching my inbox, I realized that I’d been pitched by a small army of similar fake accounts operated by Movchan.

For instance, earlier this week I got an email from a sender identified as “Summer Casey,” hailing from the address summer@lorvotieio.com. As with Barton’s message, the email, which was sent to pitch a company called AGI Inc, read like any other PR message for an AI company, promising that it would free up time for parents to spend more time with their children.

But again, something about Casey’s headshot seemed off. Sure enough, when I inspected the image, it also had a watermark noting that it came from “this-person-does-not-exist.com.” And also like Barton, plugging her alleged employer’s website — lorvotieio.com — into my browser, I was redirected to the homepage of Movchan.

Movchan, which represents a roster of tech clients and, according to its LinkedIn, specializes in “viral PR,” wasn’t mentioned anywhere in either of the emails.

I started sifting through my inbox. All told, I found dozens of emails from at least fifteen distinct fake personas operated by Movchan, hailing from a potpourri of fake PR firms. There was “Abigail Anderson,” for instance, reaching out from “abigail@kirometaco.com,” as well as “Sarai Singleton” at “sarai@maviosharehq.com,” and “Scarlet Walton” at “scarlet@divojoinio.com.”

Though their headshots didn’t come with the giveaway “this-person-does-not-exist.com” watermark, the images appeared decidedly machine-generated. None of these alleged PR reps had any online presence beyond of my personal inbox — which was strange, given their apparent careers as professional connectors. And just like Casey, each of these three new personas, who allegedly worked for different firms, had been pitching me on AGI Inc.

And when I plugged each of the fake firms’ sites into my search bar, I was once again sent to Movchan’s site.

Some of these characters, as in the cases of Barton, Casey, Anderson, Singleton, and Walton, weren’t presented as having any connection to Movchan.

But other made-up reps were explicitly presented as real employees of the PR firm, albeit emailing from a range of different domains — like “Mia Wilson” at “mia@mvchnpr.design,” who signed off emails as a “PR Manager for Movchan Agency,” and “Natalie Hudson,” an alleged “PR Manager @ Movchan Agency” who sent emails from “natalie.hudson@movchanprboost.com.” Most of the fake personas I found, including Wilson and Hudson, weren’t equipped with profile pictures, rendering them them exceedingly more difficult to spot.

And this was all just in my inbox. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other journalists were being pitched by fake personas operated by Movchan. If it’s happened to you, feel free to reach out to maggie@futurism.com.

Several of Movchan’s clients said they had no idea the firm was operating fake characters on their behalf.

“I had no idea they were using fake personas — this goes entirely against our brand values and standards. We are taking immediate action to put a stop to this right now,” said a representative for Joi AI, a startup that offers AI-powered romantic partners for people tired of a “frustrating dating app experience that leaves people feeling hurt, insecure, and alone.”

Some of the story ideas that were pitched to me by phony Movchan representatives have wound up elsewhere in the news. In September, for instance, a fake persona named “Rosemary Dalton” sent me an email about a new survey from Joi AI. About a week after I received that email, the survey, as well as quotes from a Joi AI employee shared in that message, was included in coverage by The New York Post.

According to LinkedIn, Movchan employs more than a dozen real human employees. So why was it emailing me with a rotation of fake ones?

I reached out to company explaining what I’d found, and that its clients had told me they weren’t aware of the firm’s practice of using fake PR agents and firms. In response, the company’s founder Nadya Movchan confirmed that the 15 different names I’d pulled from my inbox were those of fabricated personas. According to her, the practice started “a few months ago,” and was meant to be “temporary.”

“A few months ago (likely after one of Gmail’s deliverability updates), we had a major issue with our domain reputation,” Movchan told Futurism. “While we started working on the recovery, we decided to purchase pre-warmed domains, so as not to halt outreach, as a temporary measure. They came with pre-warmed mailboxes with set names and pictures from the vendor.”

It’s worth noting that I’ve received emails from fake Movchan personas dating back as far as September 2025, which was almost a year ago. According to Movchan, use of made-up representatives is “definitely not” the agency’s “normal operating practice.”

“Using these pre-warmed domains was definitely poor judgment on my end,” she added.

Though the senders and accounts were fake, Movchan maintained that each of these mailboxes was “operated by real people, who crafted story angles, pitches and managed the outreach — all done by humans doing normal PR work.”

To that end, one of the weirder emails I received — once again on behalf of AGI Inc — was from a sender allegedly named “Isabella Brown.” According to her email address, Brown worked for a company called LunarPostHQ.

“Regards, Isabella,” the sender signed off the email.

In a follow-up message sent from the same account, however, the sender signed off with a completely different name — that of an identifiably human Movchan employee.

“That was a real member operating the account,” Movchan told me, “and signing the follow-up with her name out of habit.”

Out of curiosity, I decided to run emails sent to me by fake Movchan reps through Pangram, a service that identifies AI-generated text. The results were mixed. The emails from Summer Casey and June Barton came back as 100 percent AI-generated; others were identified as 100 percent human, while others were deemed by Pangram to be a mix of human-written and AI-generated content.

Movchan also confirmed that her agency’s clients were unaware of the practice and said they would wind the operation down.

“This was our decision, and we handled it badly,” said Movchan, adding that “regardless of the reason, our operational struggles with the domain didn’t justify this approach. This is definitely not the quality of work that I live up to as a founder, and I will make sure this does not happen again.”

If the internet is feeling less real than ever in the age of AI, it’s because it is. Onward into the uncanny valley we go, one June Barton and Summer Casey at a time.

More on AI: Cambridge Analytica’s Website Is Now an AI Slop Farm

The post A PR Firm Is Using Fake Publicists With AI-Generated Headshots to Spam Journalists With Pitches for Its Clients appeared first on Futurism.

Perhaps more so than any other social media platform, LinkedIn has been inundated with lazy AI-generated brainrot content. It has become the AI slop “punching bag,” a repository of painful engagement bait being spewed out by an army of bots who seem at times to mainly be lobbing business platitudes at one another.

Just last week, Substack CEO Chris Best took aim at the Microsoft-owned career site when he announced the launch of an AI detector feature “because we’re sick of slop and we don’t want Substack to turn into LinkedIn.”

According to AI detection company Pangram, a shocking two thirds of LinkedIn posts are showing up as being AI generated by users of its browser extension. More than 40 percent of longform posts were flagged as “fully AI-generated,” according to the company.

Credit where credit’s due: LinkedIn has seemingly caught on to the abysmal state of its service, quietly introducing a new button that allows users to flag a post that “seems like AI slop.”

“Genuinely thought it was a joke until I clicked on a few posts,” one user wrote in a Bluesky post after discovering the feature.

It’s a baffling move, but probably well intentioned. Whether LinkedIn will act on what will likely be a massive influx of flagged posts remains to be seen, however. Once flagged, the post becomes hidden to the user, but it’s unclear whether somebody at LinkedIn will review it.

As 404 Media points out, the inclusion of the new button is particularly surprising, because LinkedIn is simultaneously encouraging users to generate AI slop through an AI-powered writing assistant.

“LinkedIn’s AI-powered writing assistant will share personalized suggestions for your profile, to help you stand out and get noticed,” the company’s website reads. “The AI-powered suggestions are personalized based on your profile information and incorporate insights from analyzing millions of profiles.”

The company also started scraping user data without permission to train so-called AI “coworkers” last year, a dubious experiment that was shut down almost immediately.

It’s clear that the subject of AI is proving divisive in the LinkedIn c-suite. In a May 20 update, LinkedIn promised that it was looking to keep “conversations real” by keeping “AI slop” at bay.

“When AI is overused, especially at scale and in an automated way, it dilutes the valuable insights that real human conversations can spark,” LinkedIn executive editor Laura Lorenzetti wrote in the update. “It’s ok to use AI to help you write, but your posts and comments need to represent your voice and your perspectives. The ultimate value comes from the human behind the tool.”

To allegedly “strengthen authenticity,” LinkedIn is working on “technology systems” that “have been trained to recognize signals of AI slop,” according to Lorenzetti.

Judging by the latest news, it’s looking to leverage its own frustrated user base to stop LinkedIn from drowning in a bot-infested sea of slop. Only time will tell if it’s too late.

More on LinkedIn: AI “Coworkers” Profiles Prove Too Stupid Even For LinkedIn

The post LinkedIn Adds Button on Every Post to Report “Seems Like AI Slop,” Which Is Definitely Going to Get a Real Workout appeared first on Futurism.

It only took them three and a half years, but the powers that be at OpenAI have apparently directed ChatGPT to start refusing requests to copy a specific author’s style, Ars Technica reports. And it’s causing an absolute meltdown among “writers” who had grown accustomed to using the chatbot to churn out stories.

Word spread quickly on the r/WritingWithAI subreddit, where one person using ChatGPT to write an entire novel made a post fuming that the chatbot is “not letting you emulate specific authors anymore.”

“Now Ms. GPT says she can’t generate content in the style of specific authors,” the user complained, using what appears to be an eyebrow-raising nickname for the chatbot. “My prompts were soooo specific and I got exactly what I wanted out of them. For example, ‘rewrite in the literary style of ‘author here’ with abundant dialogue and detail avoiding staccato prose.'”

“I have no idea how to get around this,” they added, “other than maybe feed it prose I already edited that’s technically mine? F**k.”

The thread, posted last week, has generated quite a bit of discussion by the subreddit’s standards, racking up over a hundred comments. Evidently, some of it was pretty heated, with dozens of replies removed by moderators. (“If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you,” a mod replied to some of the removed posts.)

Some shared their own workarounds for the AI’s refusals — which included just using another model, like Claude or Gemini.

Other more noble-minded AI writers pushed back on the idea of using the tech to mimic famous creatives.

“But why emulate any single author? Or a group for that matter. Why not understand the prose you want to achieve and use that?” one wrote.

“Try writing your own words,” read a heavily downvoted comment which apparently survived the moderator purge. “People have been copying styles for centuries without AI.”

Using AI to write is already controversial, and asking it to mimic authors even more so, given that the models were trained on millions of books without permission from the copyrightholders in the first place. Last year, the romance novelist Lena McDonald sparked a wave of backlash after readers noticed she accidentally left in an AI prompt asking it to crib the style of J. Bree, a popular author working in the same genre.

According to Ars, ChatGPT is now refusing style requests for both living and deceased authors. Now, the AI suggests users to capture an author’s “feeling” by integrating some of the hallmarks of their stories.

Given the backdrop of lawsuits the company is facing, it’s an important distinction, the reporting notes. Currently, copyright law doesn’t explicitly protect an artist’s “style,” which is nebulous and hard to define, but AI outputs generated with the explicit intent of mimic style could potentially cross the line into becoming more blatant theft. At least one proposed act would make an artist’s style copyrightable, ostensibly to protect them against AI.

More on AI: AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale

The post Hack “Writers” Fuming After ChatGPT Starts Refusing Prompts to Copy a Specific Author’s Style appeared first on Futurism.

As dozens of cities across the US are forced to scrap their plans to build power-hungry data centers, some civic leaders are no longer asking.

According to new reporting by Fortune, the state of Georgia’s for-profit utility company, Georgia Power, is looking to demolish and pave over some 30 homes — and 330 parcels of land — that currently block the route of a 1,000 mile transmission line.

When it goes live, the line will distribute nearly 10,000 megawatts of energy from a newly constructed power plant, “approximately 80 percent of which is expected to power data centers,” according to a fact sheet provided by the Georgia Public Service Commission (the rest will presumably be split between local businesses, homes, and other customers.)

Backed by the state, Georgia Power is now working on paying landowners to move, or else face the seizure of their property by eminent domain. As one can imagine, the predominantly rural homeowners affected aren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of clearing out to make space for more infrastructure to power AI.

One woman whose childhood home is in the utility company’s war path has taken to social media to raise awareness about the impending takeover of her mother’s house.

“We don’t have a choice in this. They are going to be expanding power lines,” the woman, Ansley Brown, said in one video posted on Instagram. “Why? For the data centers. All of this is for the data centers.”

Speaking to Fortune, a spokesperson for Georgia congressman and former White House Political Director under Donald Trump Brian Jack — whose district encompasses many of the properties in Georgia Power’s crosshairs — said the lawmaker’s office has “received multiple requests for help and support from constituents.”

For Brown, the fight appears to be over. As Fortune reports, Georgia Power says they’ve “concluded” negotiations with the family, though the exact deal has not been disclosed, possibly due to a non-disclosure agreement. It also wasn’t clear to what extent the congressman intervened, though Georgia Power told the publication they appreciate “his advocacy on behalf of his constituent.”

As for the other homeowners, it remains to be seen how much patience Georgia Power has left, as the tech industry’s demand for AI compute only grows more urgent.

More on data centers: You Are Entirely Unprepared for the Noise This Data Center Constantly Blasts at Neighbors’ Homes

The post Residents Furious at Plan to Seize and Destroy Their Homes for AI Data Centers appeared first on Futurism.

Earlier this month, we brought you the story of a data center in the sleepy Michigan town of Dowagiac. Beset by the 30 megawatt tech facility, residents in the otherwise quiet burg were forced to live under the relentless screech of a massive cooling operation, prompting a lawsuit over excessive noise.

At the time, footage from a TikTok video — showing volume readings reaching 60 decibels in one resident’s front yard — captured a portion of the noise, a horrible whine emitted by the data center 24/7.

Now, fresh audio recorded by ABC7‘s apparently more sensitive noise equipment demonstrates the full extent of the screech, which you really have to hear with your own ears to believe:

Asked to put the noise into words, one resident told ABC7 it “sounds like someone set up a vacuum, like in your living room… and they just left it on and walked out.”

One Michigander named Billy Finn compared it to Hollywood-style torture scenes.

“You’ve seen movies and stuff where they have somebody in a cell, torturing them with sound,” Finn said, “and that’s basically what it is.”

While some would no doubt leave after the first week of dealing with the horrible screeching sound, Billy Finn’s wife Marjorie says it isn’t that simple. They’ve built their whole lives around that house, which has been in the family for generations.

“I love this house because it has so much feel of my past,” Marjorie told ABC7. “All our friends are here, all our support system’s here… it’s just amazing how it’s changed our lives.”

More on data centers: Eminent Domain Could Be Used to Seize Your Land for AI Data Centers

The post You Are Entirely Unprepared for the Noise This Data Center Constantly Blasts at Neighbors’ Homes appeared first on Futurism.

If you’re among the millions of US citizens against power-hungry data centers going up in your town, you may want to be careful about how you exercise your First Amendment right to protest.

Last week, high school physics teacher Lux Claridge was hauled out of a public meeting by four police officers for the baffling crime of clapping in support of an anti-data center speaker. During the public comment portion of the meeting, held by the Emporia City Commission in Lyon County, Kansas, residents who showed up to voice opposition to a 1,000-acre data center project were warned against “clapping” and “snapping” in support of speakers.

“It was very clear at the beginning that each person is given their two minutes, and we’re trying to be respectful of that,” Emporia commissioner Monica Duncan warned those in attendance, footage of the meeting shared on social media shows. “Snapping, clapping, any other rude comments or anything — we will ask you to leave.”

As one speaker later wrapped up her two-minute comment period, stating “we are the people, and the table belongs to us,” Claridge was filmed clapping his hands together a total of six times.

“Chief, will you take the next person out that claps or anything?” an unidentified commissioner, likely Duncan, then asked Emporia police chief Ed Owens.

At the commissioners’ request, four police officers then swarmed Claridge, who challenged them to “drag me out,” which they did after placing the physics teacher in handcuffs.

A man clapped once during public comment at a data-center zoning meeting in Emporia, Kansas.

They arrested him.

Remember… no dissent allowed!

Just be silent like an obedient domesticated taxpayer while they fast‑track a data center in your backyard. pic.twitter.com/2iEE41Akwq

— Jason Bassler (@JasonBassler1) July 26, 2026

Speaking to local channel KWCH after their arrest, an undeterred Claridge said they are “glad to be out,” but that it was just an “inconvenience, really.”

“It’s not really deterring me from speaking out or I guess, clapping,” Claridge continued.

Other attendees were understandably shaken after witnessing the brazen escalation against a citizen expressing themselves at a public hearing. Interviewed by KWCH, Claridge’s brother David said he’s “looking at avenues to get these people recalled,” calling the level of force used “insane.”

“We are citizens of this community; we have a right to do our constitutionally protected activities, which is exactly what they’re violating at this time,” another anonymous local told the outlet. “I think we’re all in a state of fear because of what this government’s doing to us.”

The data center in question, known as the “Flint Hills Digital Campus,” is a planned hyperscale data center. If it ever gets built, could easily be the largest data center in the state of Kansas.

The hypocrisy on display at the meeting where Claridge was arrested — where procedural rules are clearly being weaponized against concerned citizens — may be particularly acute in the small Kansas town, but it’s also part and parcel of the situation unfolding all across the United States as distrust with the tech industry soars to unprecedented heights.

When big business interests march into town, civic leaders and their watchdogs on the local police force roll out the red carpet — Emporia commissioners voted unanimously to annex over 1,000 acres for Pinkston’s data center just one day after it was announced — yet when the people who live there ask to be included in the process, they’re insulted by officials, surveilled by police, and hauled off to jail.

Data centers aren’t new in that regard, but they do reflect the growing imposition of moneyed tech interests into the everyday lives of common people. As Emporia journalist Max McCoy wrote: “The system is built to reward money and influence, and nothing is likely to change as long as wealth is prized over humanity. But every so often we get a glimpse behind the curtain, and we are rightly appalled.”

More on data centers: Eminent Domain Could Be Used to Seize Your Land for AI Data Centers

The post High School Teacher Arrested for Clapping in Support of Anti-Data Center Activists appeared first on Futurism.

Robotics company Realbotix LLC has long struggled to beat the allegations that its voluptuous humanoid robots are designed with prurient interests in mind.

Its $175,000 robotic companion, dubbed Aria, is platinum blonde, well-endowed, and tends to be decked out in tight-fitted sportswear at tech conventions. Yet the company has insisted she’s not a sex doll, leading to plenty of incredulity online.

Adding to the drama is the company’s corporate structure: Realbotix LLC is owned by Realbotix Corp, which also owns Intima LLC — a venture that holds an ownership stake in Realdoll, one of the best-known manufacturers of sex robots.

Those eyebrow-raising optics burst into view this month when, as New York Focus reports, the Salamanca City Central School District in western New York announced plans to deploy one of Realbotix LLC’s humanoid robots, dubbed Sally, in the classroom. The AI-enabled robot would reportedly serve as a teaching assistant for high school students enrolled in STEM and arts courses.

It’s hard not to see the company’s sex robot roots in Sally’s visage. The $57,000 android has smooth silicone skin, a dazed expression on her face, and an ill-fitting wig made of long brown hair. But after this story was first published, an attorney representing Realbotix reached out to emphasize what he said was a total divide between Realbotix LLC and Intima LLC.

“Realbotix Corp is a holding company with two separately operated businesses: Realbotix LLC, which focuses on AI-powered humanoid robotics for commercial service sector applications, and Intima LLC, which focuses on direct-to-consumer products,” the attorney said, in a statement echoing a press release the company issued last week. “Realbotix LLC and Intima LLC have different product offerings with no crossover. As a holding company, Realbotix Corp does not in itself have business operations but is responsible for managing capital markets, shareholders, listing requirements and accounting needs. The two subsidiaries maintain their own management, personnel, payroll, facilities, manufacturing operations, product development, and market strategies.”

“Realbotix LLC does not design, manufacture, or sell adult products,” the statement continued. “No Intima LLC or RealDoll employees, contractors, products, inventory, blueprints or technology are involved in Realbotix LLC’s design, engineering, manufacturing, deployment, or customer support whatsoever.  All education, healthcare, wellness, and enterprise initiatives are conducted exclusively through Realbotix LLC. Realbotix LLC and Intima LLC are different legal entities that are independently operated. The two entities do not share employees, products, inventory, manufacturing resources, or technology.”

Also after this story was first published, the Salamanca City Central School District announced that it was putting the deployment on hold after feedback from the community.

Prior to that reversal, district superintendent Mark Beehler told New York Focus that he was willing to give up banning AI in the classroom since “students will find a way around most rules that schools put in place.”

“I also believe it is critical for schools to teach proper use of technology, not simply exclude it,” he said.

Sally’s onboard AI can be used to generate lessons, provide translations in real-time in over 100 languages, and provide human teachers with guidance if a “teacher loses their place during a lesson or needs a prompt on what comes next,” according to New York Focus.

To us, that sounds like a pretty cynical take on the future of education. Teachers are already facing a major uphill battle thanks to the advent of the tech, with students suffering from declining cognitive abilities.

Of course, Realbotix LLC argues that it’s done its homework. Instead of hallucinating facts, a major shortcoming of the tech that makes it arguably unfit for most classroom use, Sally will allegedly say “I don’t know.” The company also said its robot won’t be directly connected to the internet to keep highly sensitive information about students from prying eyes.

Still, it’s a bizarre investment for the school district that comes at a particularly tough time for human educators. The reality is that teachers across the country are woefully underpaid. There’s a massive shortage of instructors, with tens of thousands of teacher positions going unfilled.

In a press release, the Salamanca City Central School District stressed that the “Realbotix educational robot will never replace teachers, staff members, or meaningful human interaction.”

But whether Sally will actually serve as “another instructional tool that educators can use to engage students, reinforce classroom learning, and spark curiosity about emerging technologies,” remains to be seen — especially considering its steep price tag and lascivious origins.

Updated to clarify the relationship between Realbotix Corp, Realbotix LLC, and Intima LLC.

More on Realbotix: “Companionship” Robot That Its Creator Says Is Definitely Not a Sex Robot Looks Around With a Dazed Expression

The post School District Pauses Plans to Deploy Humanoid Robots in Class After Outcry appeared first on Futurism.

Traditionally, books have been good for two things: reading, and looking nice on a shelf.

But AI companies are interested in neither.

To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books — or even better, pirated digital books, as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for also doing.

But many companies, including Anthropic, have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.

This process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use.

Now, as 404 Media reports, this practice has become prevalent enough that even well-established book sellers are looking to cash in on the AI boom. One called ISBNdb, which boasts the “world’s largest book database,” extolls that the “world’s best AI training data is setting on a shelf,” upholding these physical texts as uncorrupted by shoddy AI writing that’s already polluted so much of the internet (and indeed, newer books).

“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage,” it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by 404. “Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.”

Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.

As an added bonus, it also promises AI companies that it’ll keep their purchases under wraps — nobody wants to end up in the spotlight like Anthropic and Meta, obviously — while clearly sounding aware about how incredibly shady the practice sounds.

“The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site says. “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found.

“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” the bookseller told 404. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell. I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand, I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”

More antique books may be endangered. 404 noted how rare booksellers in the Netherlands are being inundated with bulk purchases they believe are being made by AI companies, though they can’t know for sure.

Similar suspicions are being felt all throughout the industry. Services like ISBNdb facilitate these bulk orders, keeping the AI buyers anonymous as promised. There may be strong hints thats a bulk order is for an AI lab, but booksellers can, for the most part, merely speculate.

More on AI: Author Invited to Give Speech at OpenAI Headquarters, Uses Opportunity to Trash AI to Their Faces

The post AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale appeared first on Futurism.

AI is upending the way voters take part in the democratic process. The worst part? You might not even know you’ve been affected.

In the county of St. Charles, Missouri, a race for county executive has devolved into slop-slinging of the AI variety. According to local channel First Alert 4, conservative candidate Jason Law is flooding the airwaves with an AI-generated video depicting his two rivals Steve Ehlmann and Bill Eigel as co-conspirators in a nefarious plot against voters.

“Steve, wake up, I’ve been telling people for 12 years that I’ll cut their personal property taxes, and they still believe me” the AI-Eigel declares in a generic AI-generated voice, rubbing his palms in glee.

“Property taxes have risen by 300 percent over the past 20 years and I just tell people there’s nothing I can do about it!” a grinning Steve Ehlmann replies.

Near the end of the ad, Law himself appears — also as an AI-approximation, with a stock text-to-speech voice — to declare that “we need a fresh start.”

Per First Alert, Law says the noxious campaign ad was inspired by a similar AI-generated smearjob by conservative reality TV star-turned Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt. Those ads take a similar tone, painting a sloppified Pratt as a superhero, and his opponent as a cartoon villain.

These are far from the only examples. Back in May, similar deepfake attack ads emerged in the race between incumbent Republican congressman Thomas Massie and the Trump-backed candidate Ed Gallrein. Unlike the local races in Missouri and California, both candidates were the targets of AI commercials, which were funded by independent PACs, rather than the candidates directly.

In Massie’s case, AI deepfake ads depicted the long-time representative in fake CCTV footage checking into a hotel with progressive Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, declaring “Thomas Massie caught in a throuple!”

During the race, Massie raged that “it’s always the losing campaign that does the crazy crap,” adding that it’s “frankly an insult to older voters who don’t know that AI exists,” Louisville Public Media reported.

Unfortunately for Massie, the ads — not to mention the Trump endorsement — appear to have worked out in Gallrein’s favor, as the challenger triumphed with 54 percent of the vote.

More on AI: AI Companies Are Trying to Seize Control of Elections

The post Voters Are Being Inundated by a Barrage of AI-Generated Election Ads appeared first on Futurism.

It’s become strangely difficult to attend a work meeting without the presence of an AI recording tool that’s carefully jotting down what every single participant is saying.

Some people in tech circles are taking the trend to perverse ends by recording every single conversation they’re having — not just at work but in their private lives as well, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

Worse yet, many of them aren’t even asking for permission first, which could technically put them at risk of violating state laws, depending on where the conversation is taking place.

It’s a bizarre extension of our newfound obsession with keeping track of every single thing that’s being said around us, a trend that could have severe privacy implications, from people being shocked to find their therapist has been recording them to wearers of Meta’s AI glasses harassing strangers.

Apps like the transcription service Granola have seen a steady rise in popularity. AI tech executives are growing increasingly reliant on these tools — sometimes to an astonishing degree.

“In the office, we actually get really bummed when we realize we’re having a conversation and we forgot to turn on Granola,” AI marketing platform Flint CEO and cofounder Michelle Lim told the WSJ. “I wish there was a Granola in every room.”

Lim admitted that she simply assumed she was being recorded, noting that being asked “almost kills the mood.”

Others, like AI sales company Yuzu Labs founder Emmie Chang, go even further. Chang admitted to the WSJ that she records most of her first dates by putting her phone on the table or chair. Afterwards, she asks Anthropic’s Claude how the date went, wondering if she could be “more engaging or empathetic.”

It’s a baffling new trend that highlights how pervasive AI and surveillance have become in our daily lives, particularly for those working in tech. And while researchers are still investigating the effects on our lives, there are reasons to be concerned. For instance, experts warn of the dangers of “cognitive offloading” through the extensive use of AI chatbots, a trend that can have corrosive effects on our mental abilities.

Then there are the glaring privacy implications of recording every single conversation, not just with colleagues but with strangers on dates. Unlike Zoom’s built-in recording feature, which announces itself with a robotic voice, Granola does not make its presence known at all.

In the workplace, workers have little recourse, and will likely have to accept being recorded, as privacy law expert Alex Alben told the WSJ.

Nonetheless, “companies need to be careful about technologies that are automatically recording, especially when it involves third parties,” he said.

Other experts put it a lot more bluntly, pointing out the risk of leaking confidential personnel information, the possibility of remarks that could later be interpreted as incriminating, or even trade secrets.

“There are huge risks to the organization on AI note takers,” human resources firm HRCI executive Amy Dufrane told the Associated Press earlier this month. “I don’t think companies should use it at all.”

More on recording and AI: Woman Alarmed When Her Trusted Therapist Starts Recording Her With AI

The post People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It’s Gross appeared first on Futurism.

By now, it should be pretty clear that the corporate executives of the world aren’t exactly into AI because they think it’ll cure cancer.

They’re making a different calculation, motivated by simple economics: pretty soon, they believe, AI will be efficient enough to do many or even all workers’ job, removing employee payroll from the corporate equation. That means more money for those at the top, and less time dealing with pesky annoyances like labor rights and health coverage.

For that to happen would take a series of technological miracles — as a recent study out of the University of California Berkeley shows, today’s cutting-edge AI tools are still incapable of completing the bulk of real-world tasks at a level comparable to humans.

Still, it’s clear executives are hungry for the kind of cost-savings AI could provide. Luckily, a new AI site offers a solution: OverpAId, a distinctly tongue-in-cheek project that facetiously claims to offer an AI-powered replacement for your company’s CEO — or as the site’s landing page puts it, the “world’s first Chief Executive Replacement Engine”.

“OverpAId is an Artificial Intelligence built from the ground up to do your CEO’s entire job — strategy, ‘vision,’ motivational all-hands emails — better, faster, and without ever once asking the board for a bigger jet,” the site exclaims.

The parodic offering claims to offer helpful features to help your team transition from an expensive human executive to a cheap AI equivalent. These include a “jargon bingo,” an AI-hype press release translator, a “talk to a real executive” chat widget (currently busted), and an ROI calculator that helps users distribute CEO pay packages equally across every remaining employee.

It hammers that point repeatedly, pointing out the fact that the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio is an astonishing 290 to 1 at large public companies (which is actually true, incredibly.)

While OverpAId is clearly a piece of satire, it gets at something very real: the fact that CEO pay has grown at an astonishing rate, while rank-and-file wages and salaries have crawled at a snails pace, in many cases not even keeping pace with inflation.

“Somewhere along the way, the story became: pay the person at the top enough, and the value will trickle down to everyone else,” the site explains. There’s just one problem with that telling: “It hasn’t. It doesn’t. It never really did.”

More on AI automation: AI Is Pushing Older Employees Straight Out of the Workforce, New Report Finds

The post New Parody Site Threatens to Replace CEOs With AI for Tiny Fraction of Their Bloated Salaries appeared first on Futurism.

Amazon now requires sellers to label photorealistic AI-generated people in product images to comply with New York's synthetic performer disclosure law.

Publishers have watched in horror as Google continues to double down on AI features that discourage users from actually clicking on links — a once-steady source of readership that’s causing a crisis in the media now that the search engine is cutting it off.

The situation has become so dire that some publications are now debating whether to cut Google off entirely, as the Wall Street Journal reports, illustrating an increasingly fraught relationship between the tech giant and the publishers that are creating content its AI models are regurgitating.

According to the newspaper, prominent outlets including USA Today, Politico, the Economist, People, and Reuters are all reexamining their relationship with Google. Some are debating whether to continue to work with the tech giant at all.

“This is existential for some categories of publishers,” media consulting firm media consulting firm DJB Strategies CEO David Buttle told the WSJ. “They are looking at more radical things.”

Even Reddit executives are reevaluating the company’s $60 million-a-year contract that allows Google to train its AI models on user-submitted content on the platform. They’ve similarly watched as Google’s AI features discourage users from navigating to Reddit.

Last month, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince noticed that automated bot traffic had overtaken human traffic for the first time in the internet’s history, a sobering turning point and concerning inflection point for anyone in the attention economy.

USA Today has seen its traffic from US users drop by almost half over the last year, leading executives to ponder whether to cut off Google’s access entirely.

“It’s time to take a stand and say enough is enough,” USA Today CEO Mike Reed told the WSJ.

Naturally, Google doesn’t see itself as the one to blame, arguing that it’s still sending “billions of clicks to the web every week” and helping “creators and publishers grow their audiences” with the help of AI, as a spokesperson told the newspaper.

Those reassurances, however, are seemingly falling on deaf ears. Beyond pondering whether to cut Google off, other publishers have resorted to suing the company, accusing it of illegally rehashing their intellectual property via AI summaries.

It’s an extremely undesirable position for publishers. By severing ties with the search giant, they could face even steeper declines in traffic. At the same time, there’s seemingly little to gain from having Google’s AIs crawl their content — and in the long term, it could guarantee their destruction.

In some ways, Google is biting the hand that feeds it. AI companies are desperately trying to find new training data that doesn’t include AI-generated slop. By actively discouraging users from visiting websites that source new information, the company is cutting off a fresh supply of the data it so desperately needs.

More on Google: Google Admits It Missed Its Climate Goals — Again — Because of AI

The post Google’s Immense Greed Is Destroying the Open Web appeared first on Futurism.

Over four months after the deadly US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Southern Iran, which killed 120 children and dozens of teachers and parents, questions still remain over how the horror unfolded.

All available evidence suggests that the US military was behind the bloodbath. Images that show fragments of US Tomahawk missiles on the site, leaked commentary from military analysts, and operational profiles of the military forces involved in the region make a pretty air-tight case that the Pentagon bears responsibility for the horrific attacks.

Adding to the mountain of evidence is a new in-depth analysis conducted by Sky News and the publication Forensic Architecture. Reconstructing the school as a 3D model, the team verified that the site had been a school for years prior to the attack, refuting the claim that old intel was they key factor behind the attack.

US president Donald Trump isn’t satisfied with that answer. Speaking to Fox News anchor Trey Yingst, Trump avoided saying whether he would release the findings of the investigation, saying he still has to “speak to the generals.”

“Y’know, I don’t think anybody’s ever going to be able to say what happened there,” Trump opined.

“There are images from this site that show fragments that appear to be from US Tomahawk missiles,” Yingst gently prompts. “Is it possible that old intelligence, or a mistake from a very active time in the war lead to this event?”

“It is,” Trump replied, “but it’s also possible that those images you have are AI generated. I know you’re waiting for a conclusive report but I don’t think there can be a conclusive report.”

The dodge is a perfect illustration of the deleterious effects of AI on civic society: not only can peddlers of disinformation use the technology to fabricate evidence, but dishonest power players can point to the existence of AI to discount actual documentation of misbehavior or crimes.

That Trump refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of his war on Iran is hardly shocking at this point, but the pressure is mounting.

In a recent statement, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International Amanda Klasing wrote that the “public and the victims’ families must have transparency and accountability, and families must get truth, justice and reparations.”

“President Trump has given contradictory statements, the Pentagon is stonewalling Congress, and lawmakers and the public are growing increasingly frustrated by the rote response of secretary Hegseth and others that the incident is still under investigation,” Klasing continued. “What we do know is this: the US military was responsible for killing over 150 people in an attack with precision-guided Tomahawk missiles on a school packed with children.”

More on AI: SpaceX Eager to Support the Pentagon’s Lethal AI Models

The post Trump Says Images of the Iranian Elementary School His Lackeys Obliterated Could Be “AI Generated” appeared first on Futurism.

AI companies are pouring untold billions of dollars into enormous data centers in their efforts to sustain increasingly complex and resource-intensive AI models.

It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.

Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. Like Enron, they’re using special purpose vehicles, or off-balance sheet arrangements such as legally distinct subsidiaries, as a way to make their financial reporting look healthier than it actually is — often a glaring sign that something is deeply amiss behind the scenes.

“The accounting treatment itself is in fashion,” technical accounting consultant Tom Selling told Bloomberg. “But what if one of these companies was a house of cards and was propping itself up with this accounting treatment? To me, that’s the risk.”

Experts continue to warn of an AI bubble, noting the enormous and widening gulf between company valuations and their comparatively measly profits. The latest news will do little to quiet critics who say the situation is more dire than the companies’ official balance sheets suggest.

To keep up with the ongoing AI race, tech giants are committing vast sums to build out large-scale data center projects, a long-term bet that may — or may not — pay off. They’re also selling new shares to raise new funds, as Nikkei reports, which could lead to equity dilution and a drop in investor confidence.

That could make them even more vulnerable if the AI bubble does pop, or the industry fails to generate enough demand to justify the data center construction frenzy.

The pressure is on: four of the five companies Nikkei analyzed are set to report second quarter earnings in the coming days and weeks. We’ll be watching.

More on the AI bubble: There’s a Gigantic Problem at the Heart of the AI Industry That Could Cause the Whole Thing to Collapse

The post AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt appeared first on Futurism.