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
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: joseph@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
Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to its New AI Assistant, Internal Documents Reveal 404media.co
Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI 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
Internet of Shit: AI Poop Analysis App Offered to Sell Me Database of Its Users' Poops 404media.co
Microsoft Hacked to Deliver Malware to Claude and Gemini Users 404media.co
'Sloppenheimer:' Amazon Employees Mock the Company’s AI on Slack 404media.co
ArXiv to Ban Researchers for a Year if They Submit AI Slop 404media.co
Amazon Shuts Down Internal AI Leaderboard After Employees Cheated 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: 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'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 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…
New from 404 Media: companies are using Reddit manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search. The strategy is to systematically manipulate answers provided by chatbots by manipulating the underlying source material those chatbots scrape—in this case, a popular subreddit www.404media…
NEW: 'BusPatrol' put AI cameras in tens of thousands of school buses to catch people who overtake parked buses. Now, according to leaked documents, BusPatrol plans to scan all license plates buses pass and give that data to law enforcement. Think, Flock on wheels www.404media.…
An app that uses AI to analyze photos of your poop and give a "daily gut health score" is now trying to sell that dataset of annotated photos of peoples' poop. Highlights the underground sale of highly sensitive, app-collected user data for AI training www.404media.co/ai-poop-…
New: Microsoft was compromised to deliver malware to users of AI coding agents like Claude and Gemini. In response, Microsoft took the highly unusual step of shutting down dozens and dozens of its own GitHub repos. The malware would steal login credentials from users www.404me…
We got a bunch of internal Amazon memes in which employees mock Amazon's own AI, refer to its output as “slop,” and joke about the company’s failed attempt to motivate employees to use AI tools effectively. More here: www.404media.co/sloppenheime...
ArXiv is going to ban researchers for a year if they are caught submitting AI slop. ArXiv told us it's a one strike rule: do it once, you're out. www.404media.co/new-arxiv-ru...
New: Amazon had an internal leaderboard for tracking employees' AI usage. We spoke to multiple Amazon employees who acknowledged they cheated to rise on the leaderboard; one did so after a manager said they weren't using AI enough. Amazon has now closed the rankings www.404med…
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