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.
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- 7h 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
It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests 404media.co
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop 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
The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI 404media.co
Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI 404media.co
Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case 404media.co
Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search 404media.co
‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access 404media.co
We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’ 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...
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...
“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 →
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 →
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...
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-...
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...
"We’re also seeing this alongside incredibly risky sourcing, teens posting about wanting to grow an extra few inches. And then we’re seeing AI manipulation from vendors trying to promote these peptides.” www.404media.co/companies-ar...
The plan will essentially transform school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles. www.404media.co/buspatrol-pu...
“It might feel like you’re ‘saving time and money,’ but you’re actually slowly turning your brand into something generic like all the other brands out there using AI tools.” www.404media.co/we-are-livin...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- 404 Media's Jason Koebler documents ChatGPT-designed flyers for surf lessons, skate shop closeouts, drug deliveries, World Cup parties, junk hauling and fundraisers.
- The shared look — bright text on dark backgrounds, generic icon boxes, decorative lines, arrows and checkmarks — has become so recognizable it reads as a template.
- A viral Threads post asking 'ain't nobody gonna address this ChatGPT flyer pandemic' has spread to Instagram and Facebook among designers, musicians and bar owners.
Read full analysis →
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.