The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI. www.404media.co/hackers-simp...
Who's Who of AI
404 Media
Why they matter
Tracked through public AI activity and peer connections inside the directory.
- AI signals
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- 19h ago
it's a website (and a podcast, and a newsletter) about humans and technology, made by four journalists you might already know. like and subscribe: 404media.co
What they're sharing
Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked 404media.co
Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Lighthouse Keeper 'Elias Thorne'. We Might Know Why 404media.co
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop 404media.co
It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests 404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility 404media.co
The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI 404media.co
Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to its New AI Assistant, Internal Documents Reveal 404media.co
Hack Reveals Suno AI Music Generator Scraped YouTube, Deezer, and Genius 404media.co
Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case 404media.co
LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button 404media.co
Google Earth’s New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Completely Bullshit Satellite Images 404media.co
Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI 404media.co
Articles & links
LLMs including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are obsessed with telling stories about lighthouse keepers and clockmakers, and one character named 'Elias Thorne.' Who is he? www.404media.co/elias-thorne...
“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination." www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- ISBNdb is brokering bulk purchases of printed books published before 2022, pitching them as training data structurally guaranteed to be free of AI-generated slop.
- The service advertises strict NDAs on every engagement, conceding that 'AI company destroys two million books' is not a sympathetic headline.
- Judge William Alsup already ruled that Anthropic's practice of buying, scanning, and destroying print books was 'clearly transformative' fair use.
Read full analysis →
A tiny snippet of user-generated text as short as 13 words long is often enough to manipulate the AI agents that power tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search, new research shows. www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...
EXCLUSIVE: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Investigation by @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social here: www.404medi…
AI Weekly's analysis
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- 404 Media hid an Apple AirTag in a roughly 1,000-book order sold on Biblio and followed it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas.
- The shipment terminated at Amazon's LAS8 site at 5801 Nicco Way, home to a team called VGT3 whose logo is a Tyrannosaurus rex clutching an open book.
- Amazon told the outlet it 'purchases books through commercial channels'; the company classes its Nova family of models as 'frontier.'
Read full analysis →
Some companies who told their staff to use AI now are asking employees to reduce usage after, for example, Accenture found that non-technical workers were using it to convert PDFs into different file types. www.404media.co/the-tokenpoc...
An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned. www.404media.co/microsoft-wa...
Hacked source code reveals how Suno scraped decades worth of music and podcasts from the internet to train its AI tool. www.404media.co/hack-reveals...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- Leaked logs quantify scraping per platform: 2M+ YouTube clips, 62,117 Pond5 hours, 12,287 Deezer hours, 17,615 Genius hours, and roughly 1M podcast hours.
- Suno publicly called the breach 'limited' and 'quickly contained' while withholding notification from customers whose emails, phone numbers, and Stripe records were exposed.
- TechCrunch flags a distinct DMCA angle: deliberately circumventing YouTube's anti-scraping protections is a separate violation from copyright infringement in the underlying suits.
Read full analysis →
Two of the lawyers were barred from appearing before the court for two years; all lawyers received a fine of between $1,000 and $3,500. www.404media.co/judge-learns...
Following 404 Media's reporting on how LinkedIn is full of AI slop, the platform is giving users a chance to report it when they see it. www.404media.co/linkedin-int...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- LinkedIn added a 'seems like AI slop' option to the three-dot menu on posts; selecting it hides the post from the user's feed.
- Chief product officer Hari Srinivasan said user flags will feed classifiers LinkedIn is 'ramping up' to detect slop and low-quality content.
- Detection service Pangram estimated 41 percent of long-form and 30 percent of short-form LinkedIn posts are likely AI-generated.
Read full analysis →
After the publication of this piece, Google sent 404 Media a statement saying it was “rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails.” www.404media.co/google-earth...
AI Weekly's analysis
→
- Google launched an AI image feature in Google Earth on Thursday and pulled it within a day after 404 Media showed fabricated scenes.
- The tool used Nano Banana 2 to render text prompts onto real satellite data, generating fake bomb craters, nuclear sites, and protests.
- Named experts including Henk Van Ess and Ross Burley warned the launch could erode decades of built-up trust in Google Earth imagery.
Read full analysis →
And more crucially, it was opt-out, instead of opt-in. Meaning if you wanted to make sure your child wasn't being recorded and processed by AI, you needed to take your own steps. www.404media.co/researchers-...
Their own posts
Recent commentary
Quick tutorial on how to opt out of Meta's new feature which allows anyone to tag your Instagram handle to generate AI images of you. @evystadium.bsky.social on Muse Image in 40 seconds:
A Canadian lawmaker is facing backlash online after delivering a speech in New Brunswick's Legislative Assembly that seemingly included an AI prompt. "I'm Ron Burgundy?" some commenters reacted on Reddit.
Their network
In 404 Media's orbit
Center = 404 Media. Left = members they follow (green edges). Right = members who follow them (blue edges). Top = mutual follows (orange edges, slightly larger). Drag any node to reposition; click to open that profile.