#misinformation

#misinformation

Earlier this week, the Washington Post announced that it would be launching "personalized" AI powered podcasts that would let users choose their own AI host to regale them on their choice of topics. And now for an entirely unsurprising update: the AI podcasts have turned out to be complete, error ridden disasters. Semafor reports that less than 48 hours after launching, the AI podcasts have sparked outrage among the WaPo's rank and file and editors alike.

AI Overviews are AI-generated answers to the questions you ask on Google search. Google said AI Overviews would start appearing at the top of Google search starting May 14 whenever Google's search systems determine that these types of AI-generative responses can quickly provide useful information. For example, if you typed, "What's the shortest war in history?" in Google search, you may see something about the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, thanks to AI Overviews.

This was the year when artificial intelligence's full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out,

As such, the Washington Post announced this week that it's launching an AI-based podcast service that allows listeners to pick their own format and even their own disembodied AI host. The "Your Personal Podcast" is now available to users on the newspaper's mobile app as of today - but whether anybody will pick up on the company's offer to be inundated with potentially misinformed AI slop remains to be seen.

AI will help us navigate the immense amounts of information and data created every day in the modern world, but it will also make it easier for bad actors to swamp the infosphere with disinformation. AI can enable real-time translations to spread ideas seamlessly across language barriers, but it may also make the marketplace of ideas less pluralistic by concentrating power in a few individuals.

Across Europe we are witnessing an escalation in hybrid threats - from physical through to cyber - designed to weaken critical national infrastructure, undermine our interests and interfere in our democracies all for the advantage of malign foreign states,

As we spend more and more time online, we run the risk of encountering larger and larger amounts of online disinformation. This can have a significant impact on politics: at the end of 2024, the U.S. government sanctioned groups based in Iran and Russia over their efforts to mislead voters in the lead-up to that year's election. Darren M. West of the Brookings Institution argued that disinformation efforts "were successful in shaping the campaign narrative" in part due to numerous avenues of online dissemination.

If the moon were to suddenly turn to cheese, the movie pitches would be insufferable. Astronauts would be irritated, grad students would be demoralized and news articles would overflow with terrible puns. The great jaws of the Internet would get hold of the details, churning out doomsday scenarios, memes and conspiracies. And that's even before the moon cheese would start to compress, creating geysers of material and a dangerously unstable lunar landscape.

A study published today in Nature found that participants' preferences in real-world elections swung by up to 15 percentage points after conversing with a chatbot. In a related paper published in Science, researchers showed that these chatbots' effectiveness stems from their ability to synthesize a lot of information in a conversational way. The findings showcase the persuasive power of chatbots, which are used by more than one hundred million users each day,

Because AI is garbage. It's an inherently antihuman technology that is doing active harm to the now hundreds of millions of people who consume it. A recent MIT study showed that using AI bots, like ChatGPT, can deaden your cognitive skills. Multiple parents have filed suit against ChatGPT's parent company, the former nonprofit outfit OpenAI, accusing the product of encouraging their children to (successfully) die by suicide.

A significant number of NFL fans fell for a fake report about New York Giants rookie Abdul Carter from a known parody account. Ahead of Monday night's game between the Giants and the New England Patriots, self-proclaimed insider Wesley Steinberg claimedthat Carter would be benched for the Giants' first defensive drive because he was caught watching porn in a team meeting when his headphones disconnected.

A renewed bout of misinformation online, a rumour dating back to 2017, is claiming that Slater starred in gay adult movies. Slater, known for playing the character SpongeBob SquarePants in the 2016 musical of the same name, for which he received a Tony nomination, shot to wider fame after starring in Wicked and the newly-released Wicked: For Good. The clip featuring Slater, which is circulating on X, shows him shirtless, with his muscular arms behind his head.

In a video posted online last week, the lawmakers said, "Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home." "Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal order. ... You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution," they added. US President Donald Trump called the lawmakers' actions "seditious" and "treason."

So Slosberg was in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. earlier this month as town officials planted a plaque at Las Olas Beach to honor Nyad, a local kid who grew up to be as famous as any female American swimmer of the pre-Ledecky era. Slosberg says he hadn't flown in 10 years, but when he heard that the woman who Slosberg calls "swimming's greatest fraud," was going to be commemorated by public servants, he had to get on a plane.

Wicked protagonists Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are at the centre of a case of online misinformation claiming that they are in a "semi-binary" relationship. The duo, who were recently confronted by a "serial intruder" at the premiere of Wicked: For Good in Singapore, have continued to remain close during the promotional tour of the second film. Their intimate friendship, which tends to include a lot of touching, has led to online speculation that the pair are dating, with some even labelling them "creepy" online.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk's X rolled out a feature that had the immediate result of sowing maximum chaos. The update, called "About This Account," allows people to click on the profile of an X user and see such information as: which country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed.

I fall down YouTube rabbit holes sometimes as a way of unwinding. Lately, the algorithm has been sending me videos of teenagers covering rock songs from the '70s and early '80s, and some of them are better than they have any right to be. I've been particularly struck by how many of these bands choose to do covers of Rush songs.

The "Solidarity pool," an important part of the European Union's new Migration and Asylum Pact, will come into effect mid-2026. Under this framework, member states that face high migration pressures qualify for help from the pool. A recent assessment by the European Commission indicates that Germany, amongst other countries, can request an exemption from taking more asylum seekers until the end of 2026.

Grok, built by Musk's company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for "disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus" rather than for mass murder - language long associated with Holocaust denial. The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, saying that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform's rules.

A document circulating online, an iTunes-style metadata export contained within the House Oversight Committee's publicly released files, includes several TV show titles, among them RuPaul's Drag Race, Pose, and Shadowhunters. These references simply show that the titles appeared in an exported media library; they don't indicate that RuPaul, the show's creators, or any performers had any connection to Jeffrey Epstein or his crimes, no matter how much anti-LGBTQ+ pundits may wish to spin it that way.

When then-President Bill Clinton and real estate mogul Donald Trump crossed paths at the 2000 U.S. Open in New York, White House photographer William Vasta snapped a picture as the men smiled widely side-by-side in a half embrace. He caught them in mid-motion, with Trump's right arm extended toward Clinton, as if he were coming in for a full hug or finishing a handshake.

The Trump White House "inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration," Vance said.