cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7691747

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29115

Big Tech firms are coming under greater scrutiny for the proliferation of child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence-powered chatbots on their social media platforms.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on Tuesday that it was invoking the European Union's data privacy regulations to open an investigation into Grok, the AI chatbot featured on Elon Musk's X platform, after it was used to generate nonconsensual deepfake images, including sexualized images of children.

In announcing the investigation, DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said that the commission has been in contact with X for weeks after reports first emerged of Grok being used to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Doyle said DPC has since decided to launch "a large-scale inquiry which will examine [X's] compliance with some of their fundamental obligations" under European privacy laws.

Spanish President Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday that his government would ask Spain's Public Prosecution Service to "investigate the crimes that X, Meta, and TikTok may be committing through the creation and dissemination of child pornography by means of their AI."

"These platforms are attacking the mental health, dignity, and rights of our sons and daughters," Sánchez emphasized. "The state cannot allow it. The impunity of the giants must end."

The probes announced by Ireland and Spain mark just the latest actions by European governments against US-based tech giants. Earlier in February, law enforcement authorities in France raided the office of X in Paris, which the Paris prosecutor’s office said was part of an investigation aimed at "ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory."

The UK government's Information Commissioner's Office has also announced an investigation into X that the agency said encompasses "their processing of personal data in relation to the Grok artificial intelligence system and its potential to produce harmful sexualized image and video content."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Notepad++ has adopted a “double-lock” design for its update mechanism to address recently exploited security gaps that resulted in a supply-chain compromise.

Meta has been granted a patent outlining an AI system capable of simulating a user’s activity on social media to post after their death.

X faces a new EU privacy investigation after its Grok chatbot generated nonconsensual deepfake images on the platform.

A new in-depth security report is available, continuing the Bitwarden commitment to transparency and trusted open source security. The audit, conducted by the prestigious Applied Cryptography Group at ETH Zurich, proactively tested Bitwarden core cryptography operations against the hypothetical event of a maliciously compromised server. All issues identified in the report have been addressed by the Bitwarden team and have been included in the attached cryptography report for full transparency.

Report: https://bitwarden.com/assets/Kki4W785JIPOdFj6EeWB5/1e74e924febb4c6a5ad03eed23b92d23/pwmgr_paper__1_-combined%C3%82__1_.pdf

A story about an AI generated article contained fabricated, AI generated quotes.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260215215759/https://www.404media.co/ars-technica-pulls-article-with-ai-fabricated-quotes-about-ai-generated-article/

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way.

AI-generated dossiers from the Jmail team.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.theverge.com/policy/879508/jikipedia-epstein-email-encyclopedia

Acer and Asus can't sell their PCs in Germany until they reach an agreement with Nokia about the use of HEVC.

The company may have walked away from one controversial partner, but its Community Requests program still runs through a major DHS contractor: Axon.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260214133230/https://www.theverge.com/report/879320/ring-flock-partnership-breakup-does-not-fix-problems

Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.

(Since this is a personal blog I'll clarify I am not the author.)

Despite being sued by Spotify, Anna's Archive has begun releasing the actual music files from its massive Spotify scrape.

Wall Street Journal says Claude used in operation via Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/technology/p/1781732/weapon-of-mass-exposure-how-efficiency-led-to-your-most-private-records-sitting-on-an-u

The Russian government is trying to block WhatsApp in the country as its crackdown on communication platforms outside its control intensifies.

With the new Discord changes and the controversy causing people to leave the platform, I decided it was a great excuse for me to finally try to ditch discord. I mostly used discord for my creative endeavors through the years (collaborating on projects, help with software - looking at you Blender and Godot, and etc) but now I really only have my small community that I was trying to start back up based on my board game project.

As someone who drifts from project to project, and often tries to find other people who want to participate in projects - this forum is meant to fill two needs:

‣A communication and contributor hub for the various open source and creative commons projects I am currently working on, as well as a centralized location to access information and assets for said projects.

‣ A place for other creative individuals to network, collaborate, and share their own projects - or even simply chat and meet like minded individuals.

I am a huge advocate for the creative commons, open source software, and the overall Libre community that counters the capitalist models that are so prevalent in the online space. While members of this community don’t need to share these same ideals, I would like to foster a community that can lift up and encourage others who contribute to this space. It would be nice if we could create a community where people help and contribute to each others creative endeavors and improve the FOSS/CC community.

And honestly, I kind of miss the days when forums were the primary form of communication, before discord - so I am excited to see if this community can take off at all.

The community is extremely sparse at the moment, but if any of you would be willing to check it out and stick around for a while to see if we can grow - I would be greatly appreciative. If anyone has feedback for improvement or ideas for direction of the forum, I would love to hear any and all constructive criticism.

And to get ahead of the "Lemmy/Piefed is a forum" comments:
I personally think there is great value in mega-forums like Lemmy, PieFed, and Reddit, and while there are subs for niche topics, the idea of a standalone forum for my specific purpose seems like it has more of an opportunity to create the “small, close-knit” type of community that doesn’t seem to fit within the sphere of these mega-forums.

I could totally be wrong, and maybe its nostalgia, but something about a good old forum seems to bring something different to the table in my eyes.

How's your Valentine's Day going?