In an Instagram video posted on April 1, lifestyle influencer Melissa Strahle poses outdoors before an American flag as soft instrumental music plays. “AI lets me focus on what matters most,” she tells her 1.4 million followers. “We need to invest in American-made AI to ensure America leads the way in innovation and job creation.” … Read more
A little over a year ago, MG was leading the relatively normal life of a twentysomething in Scottsdale, Arizona. She worked as a personal assistant and supplemented her income by waiting tables on the weekends. Like most women her age, she had an Instagram account, where she’d occasionally post Stories and photos of herself getting … Read more
Last week, Taylor Swift filed a trio of trademark applications to protect her image and voice. One is meant to cover a well-known photograph of the pop singer holding a pink guitar during a concert on her record-breaking Eras tour, while the two sound trademarks are for simple identifying phrases: “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and … Read more
“It’s soft propaganda,” says Mandii B, cohost of the sex and lifestyle podcast Decisions, Decisions. The videos, and the rhetoric they spew, are trained on toxic gender tropes. “It subtly shapes beliefs and expectations without offering depth or accountability. It reminds me of how the American Dream was packaged and sold for decades: a clean, … Read more
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the comment sections on these videos actually, and it does not seem like bots. I clicked on people’s profiles; these are real profiles, thousands of followers, no signs of inorganic activity,” Maddox says. “People just like it.” But even if the views and engagement are real, that … Read more
The video opens with a school superintendent lip-syncing a love songbut he’s not the only performer. AI-generated versions of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein join him on the ballad—a splice between Will Joseph Cook’s “Be Around Me” and a rewrite of the song by Beth McCarthy on TikTok—with Epstein … Read more
Brian Barrett: And also the kind of thing that people readily click through and don’t realize is happening, right? TikTok also now tracking data. Anything you put into any of its AI tools, if you put in a prompt or any kind of info you give it there, it’s going to track that data, it’s … Read more