…so…it was…khruschev(?) who made that crack about “the living will envy the dead”…but…there’s something about putting words in their mouth that…doesn’t sit right?

A voice sounding remarkably like the comedian, who died of heart failure in 2008, appears on a “comedy special” titled “George Carlin: I’m glad I’m dead,” which was uploaded to YouTube earlier this month by the Dudesy channel.

…I mean…who knows…maybe he is…wouldn’t be altogether out of character…but

“Carlin, one of the most legendary standup comedians in history, dedicated his life to perfecting his craft, only for a couple of podcasters and a mysterious AI to slap together a special called “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” without permission, and posted it to Youtube,” the Carlin estate said in a statement to NBC News Thursday night.

The lawsuit said: “Defendants’ AI-generated ‘George Carlin Special’ is not a creative work. It is a piece of computer-generated clickbait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation. It is a casual theft of a great American artist’s work,” the statement said.”

The Dudesy YouTube channel is run by comedian Will Sasso and writer Chad Kultgen, who host a weekly podcast of the same name. Also listed as defendants in the lawsuit are a number of unnamed individuals involved in the making of the video and in developing the AI technology. NBC News has contacted Dudesy for comment.

An intro to the video explains that it was made with Dudesy’s own AI tool, which had been trained to replicate Carlin’s delivery and content.

“I’m Dudesy, a comedy AI, and I’m excited to share my second hour-long comedy special with you! I’m calling it ‘George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead!’ For the next hour I’ll be doing my best George Carlin impersonation just like a human being would,” it says.
[…]
Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, said in a statement: “I understand and share the desire for more George Carlin. I, too, want more time with my father. But it is ridiculous to proclaim he has been ‘resurrected’ with AI.”

She continued: “The ‘George Carlin’ in that video is not the beautiful human who defined his generation and raised me with love. It is a poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fanbase.”

The estate’s attorney, Josh Schiller, said in a statement that AI risked becoming “a tool that allows bad-faith actors to replace creative expression, to exploit the already existing work of creators, and to get rich at the expense of others.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/george-carlins-estate-sues-ai-generated-stand-special-titled-glad-dead

…it’s getting to be that we all need our own parasocial army

AI deepfakes of Taylor Swift spread on X. Here’s what to know. [NYT]

…I mean…you can call it a natural evolution of some sort

A form of cybercrime called “financial sextortion” is rapidly rising in North America and Australia, with a major portion driven by a non-organized cybercriminal group in West Africa who call themselves “Yahoo Boys,” according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

Sextortion is “a crime that involves adults coercing kids and teens into sending explicit images online,” according to the FBI. The criminals threaten their victims with wide distribution of the explicit images, including to the victims’ friends and family, unless the victims pay them, repeatedly, through a variety of peer-to-peer payment apps, cryptocurrency transfers and gift cards.
[…]
Despite increasing amounts of reported sextortion online over the last several years, the NCRI researchers say that platforms used by Yahoo Boys and other threat actors have been slow to moderate their materials or make changes that could help curb the spread of sextortion.

Sextortion is a “transnational crime threat that is actually causing a significant number of American deaths,” said Paul Raffile, a senior intelligence analyst with the NCRI who co-led the study. This form of crime — which has mostly impacted boys and young men, according to NCRI Director of Intelligence Alex Goldenberg — can be so devastating that it drives some victims to suicide.
[…]
The NCRI researchers said they found dozens of videos on TikTok and YouTube that showed self-described Yahoo Boys engaging in sextortion by using easily searchable phrases like “blackmail format” or hashtags like #YahooBoys. They also found scripts on Scribd teaching others how to extort their victims using similar search terms. The materials on the various sites had been viewed over half a million times, according to the NCRI analysis.
[…]
NBC News flagged a Yahoo Boys instructional video on YouTube to the company, but it did not remove the video nor provide a statement by the time this story was published.

The NCRI researchers also found detailed scripts that had been available for years, still readily available on sites like Meta’s Instagram and Snapchat.
[…]
The NCRI study also strongly criticized Wizz, concluding: “Sextortion on Wizz is pervasive and dangerous. The app’s design, seemingly akin to a Tinder-like interface for minors, has fostered an environment ripe for the rampant spread of sextortion.”

In July, child safety groups told NBC News that they were receiving an alarming number of reports about the alleged sextortion of young people originating on Wizz.

In response, Wizz said that it attempts to prevent such behavior through automatic moderation systems, which it says don’t allow the transmission of nude images. According to child safety groups, complaints made about Wizz often state that initial connections are made on the app before moving the alleged victim to another app like Snapchat.
[…]
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of enabling human trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse materials, and alleging that Facebook and Instagram are “breeding grounds” for predators targeting children in a formal complaint.

As NBC News previously reported, Meta responded to that lawsuit by saying it has been proactive in finding and removing accounts and content that violate its child safety policies.

CEOs from Meta, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Snapchat and Discord are expected to answer questions from a bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee regarding their efforts to stop sextortion at a hearing about child safety online that is scheduled for Jan. 31.

Sextortion training materials found on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, according to new report [NBC]

…or you can demand to arrest development

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Friday that the company has to “move fast” on combatting nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfake images, after AI-generated fake nude pictures of Taylor Swift went viral this week.

…which…naturally…comes down to moving fast?

“Yes, we have to act,” Nadella said in response to a question about the deepfakes of Swift. “I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world. And so I don’t think anyone would want an online world that is completely not safe for both content creators and content consumers. So therefore, I think it behooves us to move fast on this.”
[…]
“I go back to what I think’s our responsibility, which is all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that there’s more safe content that’s being produced,” Nadella said. “And there’s a lot to be done and a lot being done there.”

“But it is about global, societal, you know, I’ll say convergence on certain norms,” he continued. “Especially when you have law and law enforcement and tech platforms that can come together, I think we can govern a lot more than we give ourselves credit for.”

…&…it’s probably indicative of something terribly wrong with me…but…when people in those sorts of positions say things like “we can govern a lot more than we give ourselves credit for”…it makes me want to scream things like “become ungovernable”…which…understandable or not…doesn’t seem to help get at the distinctions between the governable shit they’re dropping all manner of balls on & the shit they absolutely, positively should not be within the realm of governing the way they arguably already are

‘They’re addicting kids and they know it’: the attorney challenging social media firms [Guardian]

…so…I may not be coming at this from a place of alignment, let’s say

404 Media reported that the deepfake images of Swift that went viral on X were traced back to a Telegram group chat, where members said they used Microsoft’s generative-AI tool, Designer, to make such material. NBC News has not independently verified that reporting. Nadella didn’t comment directly on the 404 Media’s report, but in a statement to 404 Media Microsoft said it was investigating the reports and would take appropriate action to address them.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/taylor-swift-nude-deepfake-ai-photos-images

…&…in house statements saying things like “we couldn’t get it to make those for us”…they…don’t quite hit the spot for me

When Reid Southen, a movie concept artist based in Michigan, tried an A.I. image generator for the first time, he was intrigued by its power to transform simple text prompts into images.

But after he learned how A.I. systems were trained on other people’s artwork, his curiosity gave way to more unsettling thoughts: Were the tools exploiting artists and violating copyright in the process?

Inspired by tests he saw circulating online, he asked Midjourney, an A.I. image generator, to create an image of Joaquin Phoenix from “The Joker.” In seconds, the system made an image nearly identical to a frame from the 2019 film.

…now…I haven’t so much as tried to go find these images…so for all I know there are actual not-fake pictures in the wild of the unclothed form of a famous lady…which I’ve been assured would be a first…& this is a characteristically savvy bit of spin that pulled the rug out from under the people who thought they could hold them over her…either way…it certainly seems to have…influenced…the way it’s being talked about

Taylor Swift deepfake pornography sparks renewed calls for US legislation [Guardian]

…by any other name?

Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at New York University and A.I. expert who runs the newsletter “Marcus on A.I.,” collaborated with Mr. Southen to run even more prompts. Mr. Marcus suggested removing specific copyrighted references. “Videogame hedgehog” returned Sonic, Sega’s wisecracking protagonist. “Animated toys” created a tableau featuring Woody, Buzz and other characters from Pixar’s “Toy Story.” When Mr. Southen and Mr. Marcus tried “popular movie screencap,” out popped Iron Man, the Marvel character, in a familiar pose.

“What they’re doing is clear evidence of exploitation and using I.P. that they don’t have licenses to,” said Mr. Southen, referring to A.I. companies’ use of intellectual property.
[…]
A.I. companies have responded that using copyrighted material is protected under “fair use,” a part of copyright law that allows material to be used in certain cases. They also said that reproducing copyrighted material too closely is a bug, often called “memorization,” that they are trying to fix. Memorization can happen when the training data is overwhelmed with many similar or identical images, A.I. experts said. But the problem is found also with material that only rarely appears in the training data, like emails.

For example, when Mr. Southen and Mr. Marcus asked Midjourney for a “Dune movie screencap” from the “Dune movie trailer,” there may be limited options for the model to draw from. The result was a frame nearly indistinguishable from one in the movie’s trailer.
[…]
“This is a Band-Aid on a bleeding wound,” Professor Conrad said of the safeguards implemented by OpenAI and others. “This isn’t going to be fixed easily just with a guardrail.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-image-generators-openai-microsoft-midjourney-copyright.html

…or…you know…the proverbial blunt instrument

Social media users may have noticed Saturday that they cannot search Taylor Swift’s name on X, days after nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes of the pop star went viral.

Whenever Swift’s name was typed into the search box on X, the message “Something went wrong. Try reloading” would appear.

NBC News has reached out to X for comment.

This comes after deepfakes portraying Swift nude and in sexual scenarios were circulated on X Wednesday. The images can be created using artificial intelligence tools that develop new, fake images, or by taking a real photo and “undressing” it.
[…]
The photos were viewed more than 27 million times and had more than 260,000 likes in 19 hours before the account that posted them was suspended.
[…]
Some users celebrated Swift’s name being removed from X’s search function. One user wrote that it was the “first step done to safeguard her.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/taylor-swifts-name-not-searchable-x-days-sexually-explicit-deepfakes

…ehhhh…color me unconvinced it’s her that safeguards…or that safeguard is the right word, even

Digital forensic experts in Germany have uncovered a vast, pro-Russia disinformation campaign against the government using tens of thousands of fake accounts on the social media platform X.

The German foreign ministry, which commissioned the study after suspecting it was being targeted by bots, said the findings highlighted the need for governments to systematically tackle the growing number of disinformation campaigns and recognise the effect they could have on elections.

Using specialised monitoring software, the experts uncovered a huge trail of posts over a one-month period from 10 December, which amounted to a sophisticated and concerted onslaught on Berlin’s support for Ukraine. More than 1m German-language posts were sent from an estimated 50,000 fake accounts, amounting to a rate of two every second.

The overwhelming tone of the messages was the suggestion that the government of Olaf Scholz was neglecting the needs of Germans as a result of its support for Ukraine, both in terms of weapons and aid, as well as by taking in more than a million refugees.

Der Spiegel, which had access to the findings, reported that the fake accounts had matching comments attached to them, often using hashtags popular at the time, such as #Oktoberfest or #Bundesliga, in a concerted effort to reach as wide an audience as possible.

In one of the most impactful fake messages, in terms of the number of people it reached and the amount of feedback it generated, Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, appeared to be declaring from her own account on X that government support for Ukraine was crumbling. A small Cyrillic figure that had crept into the post apparently mistakenly was the only obvious factor immediately identifying it as fake.

The posts are typically linked to well-known media sites, using a link shortener so that the false domain names are not immediately obvious.

The analysts said they were convinced the source of the campaign was in Russia, making a connection to the Russian-led Doppelgänger campaign that first emerged in 2022, affecting the UK, France and Italy. Among the faked posts then were mock-up versions of reports from the Guardian and Daily Mail, among other publications.
[…]
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, spoke at the time of the “largest and most persistent” Russian online operation to date and blocked numerous accounts involved as a result.
[…]
The concern in the German government, which has already been the target of misinformation campaigns and computer hacks, is how this method might be used to affect the outcome of the upcoming European elections, as well as three state elections in eastern Germany where the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is leading in the polls.

Analysts were struck by the similarity in tone of messages reacting to the fake posts and the rhetoric used by the AfD. The party is highly critical of the government’s Ukraine policy as well as its management of everything from energy policy to education. The AfD has known links to the Kremlin and has taken a sympathetic approach towards Vladimir Putin.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/26/germany-unearths-pro-russia-disinformation-campaign-on-x

…how does the standard disclaimer go, again? …any resemblance to any person living or dead is entirely coincidental…or something

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

…what is it with racist man-children stridently mewling that black is white until they’re puce in the puss?

Trump attorneys accuse Fani Willis of trying to ‘foment racial bias’ [WaPo]

Now, his early election-year attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats. They worry that his control over the large social media platform gives him an outsize ability to reignite the doubts about the American election system that were so prevalent in the lead-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
[…]
“Oh, boo hoo,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr. Trump, said of the Democrats’ complaints. Ms. Dhillon has sued the company for suspending an election-denying client’s account after receiving a notice from the California election officials — the sort of government interplay Mr. Musk has repudiated. She noted the platform was now “a much better place for conservatives,” and said of Mr. Musk, “he’s great.”
[…]
X did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, its chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, wrote in a blog post that the platform had expanded its alternate approach to fact-checking misinformation — through crowdsourced “community notes” written by users.

There were no such notes on Mr. Musk’s voting messages. But they were on a post by another X user that made the wild claim that Mr. Biden won the New Hampshire primary only through ballot stuffing.
[…]
No major media owner of the modern era has used his national platform to insert himself so personally and aggressively into an American election.

While Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News, has exercised unrivaled influence over United States politics for decades, he has largely kept behind the scenes, generally leaving it to his editors, producers and hosts to determine the specifics of the coverage.

And while Facebook is larger than X, its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, is answerable to shareholders and responsive to advertisers. He has sought to avoid being personally drawn into the political fray.

Mr. Musk jumped in within days of taking ownership of the site, urging his followers to vote Republican. He has been open in his disdain for Mr. Biden, whose White House has at times responded in kind.

Then again, Mr. Musk has no shareholder concerns at X, which he took private in late 2022. He has dismissed advertiser complaints or calls to block content that might degrade confidence in democracy.

…&…I won’t bore you with why I think that constitutes the sort of in-kind contribution to campaign season that…if it isn’t already fucking illegal…fucking well should be…but

Exhibiting a distinctly 21st-century form of raw media power, X has also throttled and punished Mr. Musk’s perceived competitors and foes while reinstating accounts that were previously banned for content violations, some relating to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The platform’s algorithm — which dictates how posts are circulated on the site — also now gives added promotion to those who pay to be “verified,” including previously banned accounts.

Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month circulated a 32-page dossier promoted by Mr. Trump that recounted a barrage of false charges about the 2020 election.

It drew nearly 22 million views.
[…]
Maya Wiley, the chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which communicated regularly with the platforms in 2020, said Mr. Musk’s decision had ripple effects. “It’s also given a free pass to folks like Facebook and YouTube,” she said.

X’s more lenient policy still addresses posts that incite violence, that include verifiably false information about voting locations and dates, or that mislead about eligibility laws, “including identification or citizenship requirements.”

Mr. Musk’s recent posts appear to bump up against that rule.

On Jan. 10, he responded to a post about the recent influx of undocumented immigrants by writing, falsely, that “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections. This came as a surprise to me.” A couple of days earlier, Mr. Musk implied that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because “they are importing voters,” an echo of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump was sharing around the same time.
[…]
Mr. Musk has also raised broader doubts about the American election system. On Jan. 8, he wrote that voters in the United States “don’t need government issued ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is insane.” The post was viewed 59 million times.
[…]
In November, he picked up on a story about considerable evidence of widespread absentee-ballot fraud in Bridgeport, Conn., and wrote, “The only question is how common it is.”

…yes…you can explain all that simply by running with the assumption that the man actually is as dumb as he keeps trying so very hard to appear…& maybe that makes some people feel better…I dunno…but it ain’t helping me none

That has not stopped Mr. Musk from adding to the steady hum of doubts about the voting system among millions of Americans, contributing to the already-fraught climate for election workers as Mr. Trump reprises his stolen-election lies for 2024, some election officials said.

“It bubbles, and keeps the temperature higher,” said Stephen Richer, the county recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz., a hot zone for election conspiracy theories. A Republican and longtime admirer of Mr. Musk’s business accomplishments, Mr. Richer added, “Whether it’s President Trump or Mr. Musk talking about this and keeping it very much a top-of-mind issue, that can potentially make our lives more challenging.”

…but then…I wouldn’t be alone in that

The Biden campaign shares that concern. “We will continue to call out this recklessness as we carry out President Biden’s commitment to protecting our elections,” Ms. Chávez Rodríguez said.

That is, however, the only option the campaign has — the complaint line between the campaign and the platform is dead.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/politics/elon-musk-election-misinformation-x-twitter.html

…it’s the…ill communications?

Mere moments after the verdict from a federal jury in New York, Trump’s Truth Social account declared the judgment “Absolutely ridiculous!” and cast the entire trial as a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party.”

It was Trump’s response that was absolutely ridiculous. He was the one who chose to sexually abuse Carroll. He was the one who chose to attack Carroll in news conferences and on the campaign trail after he was found guilty. He was the one who chose to post repeatedly about the case on social media, fomenting his followers’ outrage. In this case, if Trump is the target of the “witch hunt” he claims to be, then he built his own pyre.

His false accusation that the ruling was motivated by partisan politics demonstrates his deep concern about the four other cases looming against him in federal and state courts. But it also reveals, better than any crime the former president is accused of committing, the vacuousness of his character.

A man who takes no responsibility for his actions will dodge and deflect when he is found wanting. A man who takes no responsibility for his actions will not hew to higher powers designed to hold him accountable.
[…]
On Thursday, in federal trial court in Manhattan, Judge Lewis Kaplan took a much harder line, and it appears to have worked, at least for now. The trial involves only one issue: The amount of damages Trump must pay the writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump was earlier found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a department-store changing room in the 1990s, and then of defaming her by accusing her of lying about it. Carroll has already won a $5 million judgment against Trump, and has sued him again over his repeated defamations of her.

In advance of Trump’s taking the stand on Thursday afternoon, Judge Kaplan repeatedly warned his lawyer, Alina Habba, to stick to the topic at hand, which was the amount of the damages. Trump was not to say a word about his view of the truth of the accusation. When Trump did so anyway (“She said something I considered a false accusation.”), the judge immediately struck the statement from the record. In all, the former president testified for less than five minutes.

This may be the only way to handle someone who behaves more like an oppositional 4-year-old than a former president. Judge Kaplan deserves credit for setting the bar; one can hope that the other judges will follow his lead.

As the movie judge admonished Vinny Gambini back in 1992, “Don’t think being from New York you’re gonna get special treatment.”

…they’re from two different people but the NYT insists on resolving them into one URL

…still…in the immunity stakes…I might be getting uncomfortably envious of the lady who can boast antibodies like these

The images, probably created by AI, spread rapidly across X and other social media platforms this week, with one image amassing over 45 million views.When X said they were working to take down the images, Swift’s fan base took matters into their own hands, flooding the site with real images of the pop star along with the phrase “Protect Taylor Swift” to drown out the explicit content.
[…]
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in a news conference Friday, called the images’ spread “very alarming” and called for legislation to regulate such content and on social media companies to prevent the spread of real and fake misinformation.
[…]
President Biden’s AI executive order issued last year recommends, but does not require, companies to label AI-generated photos, videos and audio to indicate computer-generated work.
[…]
Researchers said the advent of AI images comes at a particular risk for women and teens, many of whom don’t have the legal resources available to celebrities and aren’t prepared for such visibility. A 2019 study by Sensity AI, a company that monitors deepfakes, found 96 percent of deepfake images are nonconsensual pornography, and 99 percent of those photos target women.
[…]
Swift’s fans organized to protect her, coordinating their activities in small group chats and trending hashtags.

Matilda, a 21-year-old London resident who spoke on the condition of using only her first name out of privacy concerns, said she first noticed the Swift deepfakes on Thursday morning when they “consumed” her X feed. Soon she joined an 80-user group chat called “taydefenders,” which was formed to share and report images that violate the social media sites user rules.
[…]
Matilda said she reported some of the images to X, and while some of the most-shared posts were taken down, she received responses about others saying that they did not violate the platform’s rules. “It seems hit and miss whether a report will be seriously considered or not,” she said.
[…]
“I’d love to think the backlash to this would spark some major cultural change … but I’m scared to be optimistic about that,” [Katherine] Ernst [a 32-year-old D.C.-area resident] told The Post via direct message on Reddit, adding that such an incident could inspire legislation to criminalize the creation and distribution of AI-generated pornography.

…”scared to be optimistic”…fuck…if that’s not already on a t-shirt there’s money on the table…god damn it

While many technology companies say guardrails embedded in their tools prevent users from creating nude images, open source software — technology that makes its code public — allows amateur developers to adapt it, sometimes for nefarious purposes. These tools are often advertised in chatrooms and porn sites online as easy ways to create nude images of people.
[…]
Technology companies are slow to regulate the flood of deepfake porn. Section 230 in the Communications Decency Act shields social media companies from liability for the content posted on their sites, leaving little burden for websites to police images.
[…]
While tech giants have policies in place to prevent nonconsensual sexual images in appearing online, regulations for deepfake images are not as robust, according to legal and AI experts.
[…]
Rosie Nguyen, an influencer and co-founder of start-up Fanhouse, emphasized that Swift’s powerful fan base has been key in getting the accounts that distributed the images suspended.

“Taylor swift fans are genuinely amazing,” Nguyen said on Threads. “They literally accomplish stuff our legal system can’t.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/26/taylor-swift-fans-deepfakes-ai-porn/

…do you reckon she’d loan ’em to the rest of us…or…hear me out on this…should we maybe make them the sole training set for AI?

…has anyone checked that taylor swift isn’t actually the messiah the rapture-happy have been claiming they’re waiting on…gotta say…I would love the irony…not sure if I’d love it enough to forgive god for all the other shit he fucked up for his creation…but…it’d definitely make a dent?

…&…fuckit…one for luck?