Enslaved in a scam
You’ve heard about people losing their money to online scams — romance, crypto, tech support, real estate and countless other types. But have you ever wondered who is doing the scamming? A large number of scammers are using innocent people to con and steal money against their wills.
Remember that hot site Cameo? The platform that lets folks pay for celeb shoutouts is stone-cold broke. The former $1 billion unicorn can’t afford to pay a $600,000 fine after violating the FTC’s rules for celebrity endorsements. New York and 29 other states involved will have to settle for splitting $100,000. If you want to buy a Cameo, better get it now.
Steve Jobs used the “i” prefix for Apple products starting with the iMac in 1998. The “i” initially stood for “internet.” What does it mean now?
Gotta run this by legal: In just six months, AI agents might talk to each other to solve problems, just like a team of employees. Say you want to run an ad campaign. An AI marketing agent would mock up the creatives and then check with an AI legal agent to make sure it’s compliant. You’ll still need an intern for coffee runs, though … for now.
Watch your kids, please: Maria Gomez-Perez, 12, was on Facebook telling several adult male strangers she was unhappy at home. On May 29, 31-year-old Antonio Agustin picked her up in Georgia and drove her to his home in Ohio. The other day, Maria told her father on Facebook she wasn’t coming home. Authorities tracked that message’s IP address to Agustin’s home and arrested him.
Restaurant wars: If you want a table at a trendy restaurant, forget greasing the palms of the concierge. AI bots are now scooping up table reservations (paywall link) and listing them on sites like Appointment Trader, sometimes at prices upwards of $1,000. To fight the bots, restaurants are starting to require a $25 or $50 deposit per person for reservations.
🥹 I teared up: After losing her voice to a rare neurological disorder, Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton used AI to get it back. ElevenLabs created a text-to-speech model from her past voice recordings that sounds just like her! She used it to advocate for others with disabilities in the first AI voiced-cloned speech on the House floor. Watch this truly amazing vid.
Coming for the king: OpenAI is testing a free web search tool. SearchGPT has a search box just like Google, but you can ask conversational follow-up questions. It’ll be available for a small group of folks before launching in ChatGPT. Wow, Google is going down!
💊 This is nuts: Anyone with an internet connection and a few thousand in crypto can make $3 million worth of fentanyl. Chinese sellers will ship you the compounds in about six weeks. It’s 50 times stronger than heroin, and cartel cooks say it’s as easy to make as chicken soup. So scary. You’re gonna wanna read this one.
Sit, DoS, rollover: The Department of Homeland Security now has a dog-like robot that disables smart devices on the go. Need to surprise a suspect? The robo-pup, “NEO,” can launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack to take out the doorbell cam and other connected security systems. Crazy!