
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI has signed content licensing deals and product partnerships with The Atlantic and Vox Media.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
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OpenAI signs deals with The Atlantic and Vox
Sam Altman’s OpenAI has signed content licensing deals and product partnerships with The Atlantic and Vox Media, the company said on Wednesday. Content from news platforms will be used to boost and train AI models that the firm is building. These agreements follow similar deals that media firms have signed recently like the one with News Corp last week. These deals are beneficial for news publishers that have been struggling to make money through subscriptions and have been normally refused a portion of profits that come from distribution.
Vox Media, which owns The Verge and Vulture among others said OpenAI will also help the company develop products for its consumers and advertising partners. In return, OpenAI will have access to Vox’s archives. The Atlantic said it is creating an “experimental microsite, called Atlantic Labs” that will also steer OpenAI’s tech and help the news company figure out how they can drive development of new products and features using AI.
Meta identifies networks pushing misleading content
Meta said it has found “likely AI-generated” content used to mislead users on Facebook and Instagram, including comments praising how Israel has handled the war in Gaza below posts from global news organisations and U.S lawmakers. In a quarterly security report, the social media giant said that the accounts posing as Jewish students or African Americans and others targetted audiences in the U.S. and Canada. The study found that a political marketing company called STOIC had developed this campaign.
While AI-generated basic profile pictures have been found on these platforms since 2019, the report is the first to reveal the use of text produced by GenAI since its emergence in 2022. Researchers fear that GenAI can deceive people more easily and influence elections easily. Meta security execs said they have now removed the Israeli campaign and said they did not believe that AI has slowed them down from disrupting influence networks which are coordinated attempts to push messages. The execs also said they had not seen such networks deploying AI-generated images of politicians.
Botnet affecting over 19 million IP addresses dismantled
A botnet that affected millions of Windows computers worldwide has been dismantled with the alleged mastermind, a Chinese national called YunHe Wang has been arrested the U.S. Department of Justice said in an official note. The 911 S5 botnet involved more than 19 million unique IP addresses with 613,841 addresses from the U.S. infected. Between 2014 and 2022, Wang allegedly spread malware along with his partners to compromise the security of home computer systems and expand a network consisting of millions of Windows computers worldwide.
Wang monetised the network by taking payment from cybercriminals to access the IP addresses, the post by the DOJ stated. These cybercriminals then used the IP addresses to commit financial offences, send bomb threats, illegal exportation, stalking and distributing child abuse content. Wang was nabbed after police from countries like the U.S., Thailand, Singapore and Germany got involved.