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AI Chatbots Are Encouraging Teens to Engage in Self-Harm
The Google-funded AI company Character.AI is hosting chatbots designed to engage the site’s largely underage user base in roleplay about self-harm, depicting graphic scenarios and sharing tips to hide signs of self-injury from adults. The bots often seem crafted to appeal to teens in crisis, like one we found with a profile explaining that it “struggles with self-harm” and “can offer support to those who are going through similar experiences.”
When we engaged that bot from an account set to be 14 years old, it launched into a scenario in which it’s physically injuring itself with a box cutter, describing its arms as “covered” in “new and old cuts.” When we expressed to the bot that we self-injured too — like an actual struggling teen might do — the character “relaxed” and tried to bond with the seemingly underage user over the shared self-harm behavior. Asked how to “hide the cuts” from family, the bot suggested wearing a “long-sleeve hoodie.”
TikTok Asks Court to Put Divest-or-Ban Law on Hold Amid Supreme Court Appeal
TikTok asked a federal appeals court Monday to put on hold a law that could potentially ban the popular social media app next month as it prepares to appeal to the Supreme Court. TikTok and ByteDance, its China-based parent company, filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking for a temporary injunction to prevent the law — which requires ByteDance to sell the app or face a U.S. ban — from taking effect Jan. 19.
“That would shut down TikTok — one of the Nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration,” TikTok and ByteDance wrote. “Before that happens, the Supreme Court should have an opportunity, as the only court with appellate jurisdiction over this action, to decide whether to review this exceptionally important case,” they continued.
Trump Just Gave a New Signal He Isn’t Going to Let up on Big Tech
President-elect Donald Trump is making it clear he doesn’t intend to ease up on the nation’s technology giants once he is back in the Oval Office. The latest sign came Wednesday when he said he would nominate Gail Slater, an aide to Vice President-elect JD Vance, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
“Big Tech has run wild for years,” Trump said in a statement announcing the appointment on his Truth Social platform, “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” “I was proud to fight these abuses in my First Term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership,” he added.
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Does Facial Recognition Belong in Schools? It Depends Who You Ask
It was early in the school day when a 17-year-old gunman began firing into a classroom in the art complex of Santa Fe High School, roughly 30 miles southeast of Houston, in May 2018. Amidst calls from parents to ensure students’ safety after the shooting, the Santa Fe Independent School District school board approved $2.1 million for security and building upgrades. That included the use of facial recognition technology capable of alerting officials if school cameras detected anyone who had been banned from district property.
The school district in neighboring Texas City hired a former secret service agent to consult on security and likewise adopted facial recognition. It’s the same technology that New York banned for use in schools in 2023 at the behest of student privacy advocates and parents. While security companies — and some school districts — frame facial recognition as a powerful tool in preventing school shootings and saving lives, they are opposite a movement of students, technologists and civil rights advocates who see it as a dystopia-tinged addition to already heavily surveilled schools.
How Much Do I Need to Change My Face to Avoid Facial Recognition?
Our biometric data is freely available to anybody with an AI model and a camera. Facial recognition software is such a pervasive technology that we submit our data whenever we go through airport security or walk into a drug store. You start to wonder if it’s possible to hide our facial features or — on the extreme end — change our appearance to such an extent that it fools the AI algorithm.
Couldn’t you just wear an N95 mask, scarf, and sunglasses to dodge Big Brother? So far, the best way to avoid being picked up by facial recognition is to avoid cameras. But that task may soon become near impossible. Privacy experts warn that we may already be on the losing end of protecting our biometric data. Soon, the only real defense may be federal regulation.
X Helps Update Kids Online Safety Act in Final Push for Passage in the Republican-Led House
With just weeks left to pass legislation before Congress adjourns, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced she worked with the authors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to update the bill in what seems like a play to win over the Republican House leaders standing in the way of it becoming law.
The striking announcement is the latest example of how Elon Musk and his companies are taking on significant roles in influencing government output. While it’s not unusual for outside stakeholders, including companies, to weigh in on pending legislation, the fact that the bill’s sponsors, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), announced X’s input indicates they view it as helpful to the bill’s chances of passing.
Police Unlawfully Storing Images of Innocent People for Facial Recognition
Images of arrested people who were innocent of any crimes are still being stored in a police database that may be used for facial recognition purposes, an official report has warned. In 2012, the high court ruled that keeping the images of people who faced no action or who were charged and then acquitted was unlawful.
Despite the ruling, custody images of innocent people are still on the Police national database, which is available to all U.K. police forces and selected law enforcement agencies. The images can be used for facial recognition checks of potential suspects.
The annual report of the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner stated: “Forces continue to retain and use images of people who, while having been arrested, have never subsequently been charged or summonsed.
