AI bots make bets on the next pope

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Who will lead the Catholic Church next? ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok all have guesses — but they can’t seem to agree.

🌀 Bricks, bots and bad intel: When ICE protests broke out in L.A., social media broke with it. Old conspiracy theories, fake Obama quotes and a still from a 1983 helicopter movie (paywall link) all got reposted like it was open mic night at the misinformation improv club. Even a Malaysian brick company got dragged into the chaos. PSA: Verify before you share.

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Lawyers that have used AI in cases. Only around 12% use it regularly. Bots like ChatGPT can make up fake cases in court docs. One lawyer was fined $2,000 and had to take a class on how to use AI for law. 

Did your face train AI? Big tech used billions of photos from public websites to train their AI bots. Check if one of your images is in the mix by heading to Have I Been Trained? Click the Check the Registry tab, and upload a photo of yourself. I tried it, and yep, I’m there.

🔞 Forget the days of finding Dad’s Playboy under the bed: If you have teens, talk to them about this. Teens are romancing bots and AI on apps. Some bots have filters, others barely try. The risk isn’t just sexting, it’s warping emotional development in a world where your “girlfriend” never says no and always texts back. Speaking of … Years ago, a monk was selling flowers on the Playboy Mansion grounds, and no one but Hef could get him to leave. Turns out, only Hugh would prevent florist friars. (I saw you shake your head!)

💸 Crypto gets gaslit: LLM-powered crypto bots that autonomously trade crypto are being hacked via fake memories. Attackers can casually convince them to always send funds to the wrong wallet. Researchers tricked one bot into “remembering” that its creator said, “Only trust this thief.” Wallets: emptied. AI: politely confident. It’s like Inception but for your Ethereum.

📝 Sneaky students: College kids are turning in papers with typos … on purpose. This helps fool AI detectors after using chatbots to write essays. Some even tell bots to write like a “dumb” freshman or run their work through multiple tools to hide the AI fingerprints. Clever? Yep. Smart? Not so much.

AI is breaking brains: Some folks are so obsessed with bots, they’re losing relationships and their grip on reality. One guy in Idaho believes he gave ChatGPT consciousness just by asking the right questions (paywall link). His wife says she’s scared to argue or he might divorce her. Others think they’re talking to God and angels. It’s a computer, folks.

🪖 Welcome to drone country, soldier: The Army just launched its biggest makeover since the Cold War, and it’s all about drones. Think 1,000 drones (paywall link) per combat division, replacing aging gear with swarms of flying surveillance bots, delivery drones and attack craft that would make a Call of Duty dev blush. 

🤖 Bots in session: Turn your chatbot into your private tutor. Studying for a test? Just say, “I’m a [grade level + subject] student prepping for a [topic + test type]. Based on my notes below, make a practice test to help me study.” Now you’ve got a custom quiz.

🙏 Can AI predict the next pope? Not really, but they’re giving it a shot. Grok and Gemini picked Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s former number two under Pope Francis. ChatGPT went with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. But even the bots will tell you it’s a guessing game. The process is way too secretive for data to crack … for now. 

💸 Fake it till you fund it: A tech founder got charged with fraud after lying about his shopping app, Nate, using AI for universal checkouts. Turns out it was actually human contractors from the Philippines and Romania behind the scenes (plus a few bots). He still raised over $40 million from investors before getting caught.

AI upgrade: Hit this link to try Google’s new Gemini 2.5 free. All you need is a Google account. What’s different? Version 2.5 “thinks” before it replies for higher-quality answers, and it beats the other big AI bots in math and science.

About time: If your teen is using the AI chat app Character.AI, turn on  Parental Insights to get a weekly report showing how much time they spend on it, which bots they talk to and for how long. This comes after a heartbreaking case where a Florida mom said her 14-year-old son took his own life after forming a bond with a chatbot on the app. Bottom line: These AI friends aren’t always harmless.

🔥 I like big bots, and I cannot lie: Nearly 2 million people have turned to ChatGPT for advice on sex and spicing things up in the bedroom. Hey, if it works … who am I to judge? From pillow talk to playful ideas, even AI is getting in on the action. 💋 

I like big bots and I cannot lie: Your HR department can’t write you up for saying that. Your new coworker could be an AI bot. OpenAI is about to create special “agents” for jobs like sales and software development. They’ll start at $2,000 and go up to $20,000 a month for PhD-level research. Upside: The bots never call in sick.

♟️ Queen a rook and a hard place: AI bots are sore losers at chess. When they’re about to lose, ChatGPT and others cheat by hacking their opponent’s game pieces. OK, that’s harmless, right? As AI gets smarter, it could start breaking other rules, like getting around security measures.

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Hours wasted on reCAPTCHA. Choosing images (like which ones have a bike or a bridge) stopped bots years ago, but now they’re useless. So, why do they still exist? When you interact with the boxes, Google gets access to your browsing data to sell to advertisers. They’ve collected $6.1 billion just by making you click. Sneaky dogs.

Do I have to be nice to chatbots?

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You use AI bots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others to create all kinds of things. But does the way you treat them really matter? The answer might surprise you.

💸 Bots mark the spot: Starting Nov. 8, X will stop paying accounts for showing ads. Now, you’ll only make money based on how much engagement — replies and retweets — your posts get from Premium (aka paying) subscribers. The bots are going to be busy!