Internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare is launching a suite of tools that could help shift the power dynamic between AI companies and the websites they crawl for data. Today it’s giving all of its customers—including the estimated 33 million using its free services—the ability to monitor and selectively block AI data-scraping …
Read More »Most US Teens Use Generative AI. Most of Their Parents Don’t Know
A fresh wave of anxiety about children and technology is cresting, with parents and pundits increasingly interrogating how kids use smartphones, social media, and screens. It hasn’t stopped teenagers from embracing generative AI. New research reveals what AI tools teenagers in the United States are using, and how often—as well …
Read More »OpenAI Messed With the Wrong Mega-Popular Parenting Forum
Think of any topic vaguely related to raising kids imaginable, and there’s probably a post about it on Mumsnet, the long-running, enormously popular, controversy-spurring UK-based parenting forum for mothers. Over its more than two decade-long history, Mumsnet has amassed an archive of more than six billion words written by its …
Read More »A New Group Is Trying to Make AI Data Licensing Ethical
The first wave of major generative AI tools largely were trained on “publicly available” data—basically, anything and everything that could be scraped from the internet. Now, sources of training data are increasingly restricting access and pushing for licensing agreements. With the hunt for additional data sources intensifying, new licensing startups …
Read More »The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
The Internet Archive has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found …
Read More »‘Hundreds of Ads in Minutes’: This Startup Thinks AI Can Drown Out the MAGA Movement
Stories about AI-generated political content are like stories about people drunkenly setting off fireworks: There’s a good chance they’ll end in disaster. WIRED is tracking AI usage in political campaigns across the world, and so far examples include pornographic deepfakes and misinformation-spewing chatbots. It’s gotten to the point where the …
Read More »Condé Nast Signs Deal With OpenAI
Condé Nast and OpenAI have struck a multi-year deal that will allow the AI giant to use content from the media giant’s roster of properties—which includes the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and, yes, WIRED. The deal will allow OpenAI to surface stories from these outlets in both …
Read More »Supplements Companies Are Cashing In on the Ozempic Wave
The supplement industry has a long, tangled history with the world of weight-loss products. Prior to the age of Ozempic, many of the trendiest diet aids were supplements, not prescription medications: green tea extract, caffeine pills, ephedra. According to the US National Institutes of Health, more than 15 percent of …
Read More »Generative AI Has a 'Shoplifting' Problem. This Startup CEO Has a Plan to Fix It
Bill Gross made his name in the tech world in the 1990s, when he came up with a novel way for search engines to make money on advertising. Under his pricing scheme, advertisers would pay when people clicked on their ads. Now, the “pay-per-click” guy has founded a startup called …
Read More »Zombie Alt-Weeklies Are Stuffed With AI Slop About OnlyFans
Several of the most prominent alt-weekly newspapers in the United States are running search-engine-optimized listicles about porn performers, which appear to be AI-generated, alongside their editorial content. If you pull up the homepage for the Village Voice on your phone, for example, you’ll see reporting from freelancers—longtime columnist Michael Musto …
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