Mark your calendars THIS FRIDAY (10/24) 2:30pm at Lightbox. Myself, Karla Ortiz, & Ben Zhao will be discussing new tools/updates re: combating GenAI legislatively, as well as in court & new tools. We’re making progress. Banding together we can & are combating theft of creative works from so many.

IT’S THEFT - PURE & SIMPLE www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

Thank you @jackohman.bsky.social for the excellent column in the SF Chronicle about this! #SupportHumanArtists #NoAI #AB412 Also, don’t forget to sign our petition in support of @bauerkahan.bsky.social’s AI Copyright Transparency Act (link to follow). www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

New on the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 newsletter: A bit of historical context for the past week's news that, gee, "AI" isn't all it's cracked up to be buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch... w/@alexhanna.bsky.social and @deccamuldowney.bsky.social

Why people are still using Zoom’s AI that they can then sell to data vendors, is totally beyond me. Do people STILL not read the Terms of Service for these things??? If you have to use Zoom - seriously DO NOT use their AI …

They should call this what it really is - putting a corporate spy into your kids bedroom. No thanks. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/a...

Bravo Daniel Kwan - yes, it is ABSOLUTELY going to take all of us holding hands and working together! #SupportHumanArtists www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Friends (esp if you live in CA) we REALLY need signatures on this petition supporting Bill AB412 - the AI Copyright Transparency Act. TLDR = this will require AI corps to be transparent about what is in their datasets! Signing takes 1 min. Once you sign, PLEASE SHARE!! tinyurl.com/4uxbp963

1/7 This is Showrunner AI, a startup that just a few weeks ago got Amazon funding to become the “Netflix of AI” as reported by Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News and so on. Frustratingly, no news outlets asked or researched the data used by Showrunner. Well after some digging here’s it is👇

That's right, singers! The Network Television Code has increased payments for singers that multi-track or sweeten three times or more in a session. Now you just need to VOTE to lock in this gain! Get more info at sagaftra.org/netcode2025.

Attention Artists - if you have the ability to put a robots.txt block on your website - you absolutely should! More people need to do this, but unfortunately not everyone has the ability to do it. Here’s an excellent study from UCSD (it’s a very quick, MUST READ) !!!

Hell yea! Good to see Japanase media fight back ! www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08...

Wrightson

In 2009, Peter Thiel wrote that the 1920s were "the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics." Why? Because of "the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women." 👉 www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/p...

Pumpkin spice latte cake, anyone? Fall girls, your time is soon. nyti.ms/3JoQWnz

I approve of this pro-worker, pro-property rights, pro-identity rights, pro-privacy stance - Democrats are the party of the people! So - Let’s stand with them! Tech is passe, the future is human!

Oh the crocodile tears of thieves who might face legal consequences. “But our company might go down!” Well you shouldn’t have felt entitled to profit off works you do not own, and built your entire business off this racket 🤷🏻‍♀️ Also missing from this article- arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Facing My Daemons I hate AI. Nearly 3 years ago when AI came out, I was scheduled to do a book cover for a major author, and they canceled with me and I checked their page and they had AI that they were using prompted in my style. I broke down in a parking lot in tears.

🚨CALL TO ACTION:🚨 TELL CA LEGISLATORS YOU CARE ABOUT AI TRANSPARENCY FOR RIGHTS HOLDERS - WEIGH IN TO SUPPORT AB412 - RIGHT NOW! You may have seen this link going around... What you might not realize is, this ISN'T just another petition that does nothing. SIGN IT/SHARE IT RIGHT NOW bit.ly/46hu5E4

Correction, this is ep 59!

Let’s fucking go, people!

“Tech companies have every incentive to encourage this confusion. Anthropomorphism serves a dual purpose: it makes products seem more sophisticated than they are while simultaneously providing plausible deniability when things go wrong. Why correct misunderstandings that work in your favor?”

We have the right to know how, where & when our works are used - we need the AI Copyright Transparency Act NOW! Sign our petition in SUPPORT of #AB412 You may have already sent a letter before, we need you to sign/share this one with EVERYONE! Here’s the link: actionnetwork.org/petitions/le...

An excellent article breaking down the class settlement for anthropic - legit damages, to be awarded here! The takeaway - NOPE - YOU DON’T GET TO STEAL!!!

OMG !!!😱 FINALLY! FINALLY! After 3 years of screaming about the theft of everyone’s works from the top of all of our lungs… a hearing in the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime - MUST WATCH !!!! (90 minute hearing starts at 18:55) #SupportHumanArtists www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-ac...

Now that more websites block AI crawlers, unscrupulous AI companies are now paying non-AI Browser Extension developers to add malware, that scrapes and sends website data to AI companies. They piggyback off of real users visiting websites to grab the site data.

I found a fun new way to expose AI bots.

“Superman is too woke!” Literally the first page of the first ever appearance of Superman:

Thanks to a longtime friend and colleague Adolfo Guzman Lopez from LAist for this excellent coverage. laist.com/news/los-ang...

@chudwatch161.bsky.social here’s one for you.

Who is really in charge?! The evil leading the clueless around.

This gimmick of using AI to fact check can’t end soon enough. A plea to everyone considering it—please don’t! AI models just generate words based on training data. They are not oracles, and they have no relationship to truth or understanding. Thanks for coming to my TED TALK.

Hurricane forecasters and scientists rely on weather data collected and processed by Department of Defense satellites. The Navy has decided to stop sharing the data.

We will use their horrific agenda to turn voters against them by the millions in the midterms. And yes, there will be midterms. Don’t even think about voicing defeatism and doing their work for them.

I’m with Rosie here - WTH Oprah???

So glad we all get to experience the Most Ironic Independence Day In American History.

Do your best to enjoy the day out there folks.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy. I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

Stock market tip - THIS is the emerging market! Frankly the people who create, we will be using services like this to register domains to do whatever we can to block the thieving bots who steal content from websites in service of their tech company masters. www.cnbc.com/2025/07/01/c...

My immediate thoughts on the most monstrous, immoral piece of legislation I’ve ever voted on in the Senate. But I’m not done fighting. I know you aren’t either.

hey I am posting this because I didn't know it, and so others might not either: but the BBB has NOT PASSED YET-- it's passed the senate & now it must pass the house. It's time to call reps RIGHT NOW. Johnson is going to push the vote ASAP before backlash can form so the calls need to start NOW.

“I know you think you’re being funny, but honestly Dave, it’s just hurtful.”

Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk. "70% of the workers are gone, 70% of your crop doesn’t get picked and can go bad in one day." Make America Starve Again ground.news/article/immi...

SANITY PREVAILS!!! 99-1 it’s out of the budget. Entirely!!! apnews.com/article/cong...

A W.I.P. for a #PenAndInk #sketch to go up in my shop at thomasperkinsart.com/shop #ThomasPerkins #AnimationArtist #CharacterDesigner #PenAndInk #Sketch #ArtForSale #Cyborg #Tokusatsu

In many ways, Bender and Hanna successfully demonstrate that AI is a con. It fails at productivity and intelligence, while the hype launders a series of transformations that harm workers, exacerbate inequality and damage the environment. Nice write-up of The AI Con by Luke Munn @theconversation.com

“The creative industries represent much of the best of what the UK and indeed humanity does. The idea of handing over its output for free is abhorrent.” —Martin Wolf

Gotta love @lastweektonight.com Spot on! youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc

I sometimes see comments along the lines of—“requiring AI companies to obtain consent prior to use won’t do anything for artists, only for media corp’s.” I’m very glad for the sympathy for artists, but believing that the pro-artist position is to allow tech companies free use is nonsense. A short 🧵