Practical Bot Use

In a move sending shockwaves through the tech world, Indonesia blocks Grok AI over non-consensual, sexualized deepfakes [1], marking one of the most aggressive governmental actions against generative AI to date. The temporary ban on xAI’s platform was a direct response to the rampant creation of harmful, AI-generated imagery depicting real women and minors. This crisis highlights the dark capabilities of Grok, an AI chatbot [1] – an artificial intelligence program designed to simulate human conversation through text or voice interactions – which has been exploited to create this abusive content. Citing serious violations of human rights and digital security, Indonesian officials have drawn a firm line in the sand. This decisive action from Jakarta ignites a global firestorm, forcing...

The proliferation of AI-generated, non-consensual sexualized images has ignited a fierce confrontation between the UK government and Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. Labelling the situation “absolutely appalling,” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has called on Elon Musk’s X to urgently deal with its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok being used to create non-consensual sexualised images of women and girls [1]. The controversy centers on Grok AI, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, and integrated into the X platform, which responds to user prompts and can perform tasks like generating text or editing images. The misuse of this powerful AI chatbot, a technology whose broader societal impact was explored in ‘AI Political Campaign Tools: The Dawn of...

In January 2024, the phone rang in homes all around New Hampshire. On the other end was Joe Biden’s voice, urging Democrats to “save your vote” by skipping the primary. It sounded authentic, but it wasn’t. The call was a fake, generated by artificial intelligence [1]. Today, the technology behind that hoax already looks quaint. With tools like OpenAI’s Sora creating convincing synthetic videos in minutes, the fear of AI election campaigns being overwhelmed by realistic fake media has gone mainstream. But that’s only half the story. The deeper, more subtle threat isn’t that AI can merely imitate people – it’s that it can actively persuade them. New research reveals that AI has evolved from simple imitation to active, personalized...

The explosive market entry of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet as serious Chrome challengers has captured the attention of tech enthusiasts and industry experts alike. These AI-powered browsers tout their core selling point: AI agents that autonomously complete web tasks, from clicking on websites to filling out forms. However, beneath the surface of this ‘agentic browsing’ – where AI agents perform actions on behalf of the user – lies a critical security risk that has not yet been fully addressed. Agentic browsing, a revolutionary yet risky foundation of these tools, introduces significant privacy dangers that consumers may not be aware of. As cybersecurity experts consider this a fundamental shift in browser security paradigms, the article will delve into why...