This is absolutely nuts: hackers are hijacking high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI chatbot to change the email on the account. Meta's AI does it, hacker gets password reset code, they're in. A staggering security issue www.404media.co/hackers-simp...
Who's Who of AI
Joseph Cox
Why they matter
Directory member with public evidence across AI business.
- AI signals
- 12 past 30d
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- 2 distinct domains
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- Latest signal
- 4d ago
Hacking/crime/privacy journalist. Author of DARK WIRE, buy here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joseph-cox/dark-wire/9781541702691/#preorder Co-founder of 404 Media. Signal: joseph.404 Email: [email protected]
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
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
‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit 404media.co
Articles & links
This is wild: essentially every LLM—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—keeps using the same character when asked to make up a story, a guy called 'Elias Thorne'. He appears so much it's impacting Google Trends data and the self-published book market. Now we might know why www.404media.co…
New from 404 Media: a company is selling tons of old books specifically to AI companies and says they have a strong NDA to never reveal which AI company bought all of the books. They don't want headlines of 'we scanned and destroyed millions of books for AI' www.404media.co/ai…
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 →
New: A tiny snippet of user-generated text as short as 13 words is often enough to manipulate the AI agents that power tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search. Shows trivially easy for companies/brands to manipulate ChatGPT results by posting on Reddit, Quora, etc www.404med…
New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media…
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 →
New: the tokenpocalypse is here, companies scrambling to stop spending so much on AI. I got leaked audio from consulting giant Accenture showing AI token spend/'chewing' is not from supercharged engineers. It's non-technical workers converting PDFs to presentations! www.404med…
New from 404 Media: we've seen internal documents that show Microsoft is explicitly planning to "make people addicted" to its new AI assistant 'Scout' which the company just announced. It is a clear goal according to the documents, with addiction being the first phase www.404m…
New: the highly controversial AI music generator Suno was hacked. The hacker sent us Suno source code; it shows the company scraped YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius. In all, Suno scraped *decades* worth of music from the internet. Obviously didn't pay artists www.404media.co/…
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 →
New: LinkedIn just introduced a "seems like AI slop" button. That's literally what the button says. The thought leaders are going to have a meltdown 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 →
New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.c…
AI Weekly's analysis
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- 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 →
New from 404 Media: researchers planned to stick cameras on preschool teachers to then train AI models. Cameras would capture everything the teacher saw, including, obviously, the children. Here's the document given to parents, left many questions, like how to opt out www.404m…
An expert witness in a lawsuit a Houston explosion that killed three people used ChatGPT to write significant portions of his “expert report.” Said the report should “show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion” Judge not taking it www.404media.co/show-how-3m-...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- The Harris County jury assigned 3M 30% liability and awarded $61.5 million, the third plaintiff-favorable verdict across four Watson Grinding trials, with nearly 2,000 additional plaintiffs and a next trial set for October 2026.
- 350 pages of ChatGPT session logs became the primary evidence against the defense's own expert, establishing AI chat histories as discoverable work product in U.S. mass tort proceedings.
- KnightHawk Engineering's formal public response called the coverage a 'selective and negative snapshot' and 'Fake News,' the first on-record denial from a defense engineering firm caught using AI-generated expert testimony.
Read full analysis →
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