Must read from @vermontgmg.bsky.social to fully understand Trump's thinking (or lack of it) behind his assault on Venezuela www.wired.com/story/3-keys...

CAMBODIA/CHINA: Reports are trickling out that Prince group kingpin Chen Zhi has been arrested in Cambodia and repatriated to China. No official confirmation yet. cc-times.com/posts/30900

New with @regret.bsky.social: Grok’s creation of harmful “undress” images is relentless. Even today, after days of scrutiny, Grok was churning out ‘bikini’ and underwear images of women every few seconds. Researchers estimate that Grok has become the biggest creator of sexualized deepfake images

New with @regret.bsky.social: Grok’s creation of harmful “undress” images is relentless. Even today, after days of scrutiny, Grok was churning out ‘bikini’ and underwear images of women every few seconds. Researchers estimate that Grok has become the biggest creator of sexualized deepfake images

xAI, the creator of Grok, has just announced it’s raised $20 billion in a funding round. That’s the same Musk-owned chatbot that’s been producing hundreds of sexualized AI images of women and girls this last week x.ai/news/series-e

There we go. That there’s a headline.

My new @wired.com essay about how Trump's coup in Venezuela follows two particularly troubling patterns — Our long, poor history of interventions in Latin America, and Trump's uniquely crazy lack of planning: www.wired.com/story/3-keys...

❄️ SNOW ❄️ IN ❄️ LONDON! ❄️ (well, only a little bit but still)

last month, @wired.com broke the news about ai image generators being used to undress photos of women. my reporting resulted in a 200K+ subreddit getting banned for nonconsensual deepfakes. doing more software accountability reporting this year. reach out to me on Signal with tips! reece_rogers.01

It's not just Grok folks. OpenAI's Sora and TikTok are both being used to distribute sexualized images of minors, often with links to platforms like Telegram where actual CSAM is distributed. www.wired.com/story/people...

One example of how Grok is being used to target women. Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch being sexualised, degraded, and humiliated step-by-step by Grok. All the images accurately reflect the prompts provided.

The UK's communications and online safety regulator Ofcom says it has made "urgent contact" with Elon Musk's X and xAI about how Grok's image generator has been used to create sexualized images of child and "undress" photos

“If the system has access to all of your contacts and your emails and your calendar and you’re calling me and you have my contact, they're accessing my data too, and I don't want them to.” #privacy #AIEthics. Thanks for the quote, @mattburgess1.bsky.social . www.wired.com/story/expire...

Trump views energy geopolitics “almost like the world is a Settlers of Catan board—you kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the oil,” @roryjohnston.bsky.social told me i took a look at why Trump's plans to pump more Venezuelan oil are a lot harder than he thinks

Large part of Maduro's security team killed in U.S. action-Venezuela defense minister reut.rs/3YogK7K

My latest with @ichotiner.bsky.social.

From repurposed footage filmed years ago in different parts of the world, to AI images and videos of Maduro's arrest, social media platforms like X, Instagram and TikTok were flooded with disinformation within minutes of America's assault on #Venezuela www.wired.com/story/disinf...

“The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself”

Maduro has been captured by the U.S. according to Trump

I wrote this before grok even existed

French authorities to investigate Grok nude deepfakes www.politico.eu/article/fran...

NEW: People are using Elon Musk's chatbot, Grok, to alter images to depict real women being sexually abused, humiliated, hurt, and even killed. futurism.com/future-socie...

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

We got Meta’s “general global playbook” for defeating advertiser verification regulations, which the company knows would reduce scams. It includes making scam ads “not findable” for regulators searching Meta’s ad library through targeted scrubbing. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Another great @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social investigation into Meta, this one about the company's secret playbook for deceiving and manipulating the regulators investigating its massive scam problem www.reuters.com/investigatio...

New: We got an internal ICE document revealing its $100 million ad plan to bring in 14,000 new hires: deals with "tactical" influencers; ads to gun & military buffs; and geo-targeting phones around NASCAR races and gun shows. A "wartime recruitment" mode with paramilitary branding: wapo.st/44QrP5j

Sunset in London has pushed back to after 4pm again now and honestly I could not be more relieved

as a result of my reporting, Reddit fully banned the 200K+ member sub where users generated nonconsensual bikini deepfakes and shared tips for stripping women using AI last investigation of the year for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/google...

Incredibly cool series of photographs showing how infrared tech enables surveillance systems

NEW: Meet the folks at AccessNow's Digital Security Helpline, who have been investigating government spyware for more than a decade, helping journalists and dissidents all over the world. I spoke to Hassen Selmi, who heads the incident response team, to learn how his team fights spyware abuses.

Wrote about the State Department's made up censorial rationale for banning visas for some folks based on their speech. It's nonsense. www.ms.now/opinion/marc...

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

We need to start talking about the radicalisation of the older generation by the internet: perhaps we should have upper age limits on social media like Facebook, or an age-related ban on owning mobile phones.

US judge blocks Trump administration from deporting UK anti-disinformation campaigner

There’s a real sharp contrast between the UK and France/EUs statements on the US visa bans 🧐 From BBC story: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When people make such a big deal calling out the dehumanizing language that is used towards immigrants, this is why: that language lets people do terrible things to other humans. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

'The modern AI industry has never really been respectful of data rights.' Frustrating truth from @mattburgess1.bsky.social in @wired.com as he explains 'The Age of the All-Access AI Agent Is Here' and to hell with privacy. www.wired.com/story/expire...

I’ll just note that the US didn’t do this to China, which outright bans US social media websites

The US just banned a guy from the country (Imran Ahmed) for pointing out that X is full of hate speech

“Imran Ahmed, chief executive of Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs; and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index.”

Users of AI image generators are offering each other instructions on how to use the tech to alter pictures of women into realistic, revealing deepfakes. www.wired.com/story/google...

“BBC Verify has found multiple instances from Florida to Oregon of CrimeRadar sending misleading and inaccurate alerts about serious crime to local residents” 🤦🤦🤦

Double checked and they definitely have removed image 468, and it was definitely this one – but that photo of Trump and Melania with Ghislaine and Epstein is a well known one. My guess would be that another photo in the image contains a victim who should’ve been redacted.

We are doing the annual play through of Overcooked (and Overcooked 2), so it’s safe to say that tensions are… high

www.bbc.com/news/article... Polar bears miss out on Christmas Dinner

New from @mattburgess1.bsky.social, @lhn.bsky.social & @zeyiyang.bsky.social : 'Haotian is a robust & versatile platform, researchers & @wired.com’s own analysis have found that the service has been marketing to so-called “pig butchering” scammers and...online fraud...' www.wired.com/story/the-ul...

Haotian, a Cambodia-based company by Chinese founders, blatantly markets its face-swapping tech to pig-butchering scammers in the region. After WIRED contacted Telegram about it, Haotian's Telegram channel suddenly became unavailable today. New story by @mattburgess1.bsky.social @lhn.bsky.social

AI slop all the way down: "Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+" openai.com/index/disney...