A tip from an anonymous Discord user led cops to find what may be the first confirmed Grok-generated child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) that Elon Musk’s xAI can’t easily dismiss as nonexistent.

As recently as January, Musk denied that Grok generated any CSAM during a scandal in which xAI refused to update filters to block the chatbot from nudifying images of real people.

At the height of the controversy, researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated that Grok generated approximately three million sexualized images, of which about 23,000 images depicted apparent children. Rather than fix Grok, xAI limited access to the system to paying subscribers. That kept the most shocking outputs from circulating on X, but the worst of it was not posted there, Wired reported.

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Bad news, Prime subscribers: Starting April 10, Amazon will lock Prime Video streaming quality to 1080p for “basic” users. If you want to continue watching Prime Video content in 4K as you have been, you’ll need to pay an extra $4.99 per month. Otherwise, your Prime Video shows and movies will look just a bit fuzzier than you may be used to.

It’s part of a number of changes Amazon is making to its streaming services next month. On April 10, Amazon will start offering customers a new “Prime Video Ultra” plan. This option will be ad-free and will come with streaming up to 4K in both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. You’ll also be able to stream up to five devices at once (as opposed to the current limit of three), as well as download as many as 100 titles (up from 25 on the basic plan).

That plan will cost an extra $4.99 on top of your Prime subscription, which currently runs for $14.99 a month. Amazon currently charges uses an extra $2.99 to access Prime Video without ads, so if you’re already paying for that privilege, you’ll “only” need to pay another $2 for Amazon’s Ultra perks—including the 4K access you already have.

If you choose to keep Amazon’s “basic” Prime Video package as part of your Prime subscription, you’ll still get some new perks, too. While you lose 4K streaming, you will get Dolby Vision (but no Dolby Atmos, though I imagine that won’t matter to the many viewers to watch Prime Video with their TV’s built-in speakers.) You’ll also gain one extra simultaneous stream (four, up from three), and be able to download up to 50 titles at once (again, up from the current 25).

New subscription features are always welcome, especially when they don’t come at an added cost. But taking away existing features and locking them behind a paywall isn’t welcome. Perhaps this will pay off for Amazon, and users will spend the extra money to watch their content in as high a resolution as possible. But even so, they’ll be spending more to access the same quality content they may already get for “free,” as part of their Prime subscription.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Times of Israel, written by journalist Emanuel Fabian: On Tuesday, March 10, a massive explosion shook the city of Beit Shemesh, just outside Jerusalem, in yet another Iranian ballistic missile attack during the ongoing war. Rescue services scrambled to the scene in search of possible casualties, though as it turned out, the projectile had struck a forested area just outside the city, around 500 meters from homes. On The Times of Israel’s liveblog that day, I reported that the missile had hit an open area and no injuries were caused, citing the rescue services, as well as footage that emerged showing the massive explosion caused by the missile’s warhead. But what I thought was a seemingly minor incident during the war has turned into days of harassment and death threats against me. Emanuel received numerous emails, messages and calls from individuals urging him to change the report to say the missile had been intercepted. “It was indeed a little strange to receive the same question, about something relatively inconsequential, from two different people within a day,” he said, until eventually making the Polymarket connection after noticing two users on X respond to his story with apparent ties to Polymarket… “There are people saying that they have received word from you that the missile strike in Beit Shemesh on March 10th was in fact intercepted, is this true or did no such interaction occur?” wrote one of the users. “was there any video of the actual impact,” wrote another.

The rules of this particular Polymarket bet state: “This market will resolve to ‘Yes’ if Iran initiates a drone, missile, or air strike on Israelâ(TM)s soil on the listed date in Israel Time (GMT+2). Otherwise, this market will resolve to ‘No’.” However, there is a clause: “Missiles or drones that are intercepted… will not be sufficient for a ‘Yes’ resolution, regardless of whether they land on Israeli territory or cause damage.”

This is when Emanuel realized that his “minor report” of a missile strike “was now in the middle of a betting war, with those who had bet ‘No’ on an Iranian strike on Israel on March 10 demanding I change my article to ensure they would win big.”

When he refused, some of the Polymarket gamblers escalated to harassment, fabricated messages, bribery attempts, and explicit threats against him and his family. “You have no idea how much youâ(TM)ve put yourself at risk,” wrote a user by the name of Haim. “Today is the most significant day of your career. You have two choices: either believe that we have the capabilities, and after you make us lose $900,000 we will invest no less than that to finish you. Or end this with money in your pocket, and also earn back the life you had until now.â

After he didnâ(TM)t respond, Haim sent me another series of messages: âoeYou are choosing to go to war knowing that you will lose your life as youâ(TM)ve grown accustomed to it â” for nothing.â He messaged again: âoeYou have exactly a few hours left to fix your attempt at influencing [the market]. It would be stupid of you to ignore this.â Haim also gave specific detailed threats about his neighborhood, parents, and family.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US District Judge Brian Murphy on Monday temporarily blocked most of the damage that anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to federal vaccine guidance.

In a 45-page ruling that opens with a quote from Carl Sagan, Judge Murphy issued a temporary injunction that blocks:

• The federal vaccine advisors Kennedy appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after firing all 17 expert members. Almost all of Kennedy’s new advisors hold anti-vaccine views, have questionable qualifications for being on the committee, and did not appear to go through standard vetting.
• Every vote those ACIP members have made to change federal vaccine guidance.
• Kennedy’s dramatic overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood vaccine schedule in January, which dropped the number of recommended immunizations from 17 to 11, in line with Denmark.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with several other medical groups, against Kennedy. The groups challenged the legality of the unprecedented moves, which disregarded standard procedures and lacked the backing of scientific evidence.

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Judges are frequently confronted with cases that hinge upon scientific information that their educational backgrounds may leave them ill-equipped to manage. Because of this challenge, the Federal Judicial Center, a group within the judicial branch of the government, has collaborated with the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) to produce a reference manual that provides background on a range of scientific and medical issues that frequently confront the court system. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence is currently on its fourth edition, and it has turned out to be an unexpectedly controversial one.

For the first time, this edition of the Reference Manual has included a chapter on climate change, meant to prepare judges to manage and potentially decide cases focused on everything from federal environmental rules to charges that fossil fuel producers engaged in fraud by ignoring the many warnings of harms caused by their products. That didn’t sit well with Republican politicians; a collection of red-state attorneys general sent a letter demanding that the Federal Judicial Center pull the chapter. Back in February, it complied, posting a modified version of the Reference Manual with the climate chapter deleted.

But, as noted above, the NAS arranges for the production of the Reference Manual, and it hosts a copy in its extensive library of publications. So, fresh off their success with the government, the same collection of attorneys general turned their sights on the Academies. In a letter dated February 19, they “urge” the NAS to follow the judiciary’s example and delete the chapter. Citing sources such as a Wall Street Journal editorial and their own threatening letter, the attorneys general accuse the NAS of engaging in “one-sided advocacy” and “judicial indoctrination,” and say it “is building a reputation as a partisan actor.”

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Sony’s upgraded PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) tech is rolling out as part of the PlayStation 5 Pro system update that’s available today. The company had teased last month that this update was in the works. These improvements should be a better reflection of why you might pay a premium price for the more powerful console if you value peak image quality in gaming.

For a very surface-level definition, PSSR is Sony’s upscaling tech. It uses an AI library for a pixel-by-pixel analysis to display a game with better visuals even while running at a lower resolution. Today’s update revamped the algorithm and neural networked in use, which in practice means that “image reconstruction is more precise, motion stability is improved, and developers have greater flexibility to balance performance and fidelity on PS5 Pro,” according to the latest blog post from the company. For those who want more technical definition, you’ll likely be familiar with the folks at Digital Foundry, who have a more detailed analysis with comparisons between the old and new upscaling on four titles. 

The improved PSSR is only available for supported games, but several familiar Sony partners are already on board. PS5 Pro owners can enable the enhanced PSSR image quality for all supported titles via a toggle in the Screen and Video settings menu. The following games are joining Resident Evil Requiem in offering the better upscaling experience:

• Silent Hill 2

• Silent Hill f

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard

• Control

• Alan Wake 2

• Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

• Nioh 3

• Rise of the Ronin

• Monster Hunter Wilds

• Dragon’s Dogma 2

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sonys-enhanced-pssr-upscaling-arrives-on-ps5-pro-today-201020423.html?src=rss

Since Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” just over a year ago, we’ve seen a rapid increase in both the capabilities and popularity of using AI models to throw together quick programming projects with less human time and effort than ever before. One such vibe-coded project, Gaming Alexandria Researcher, launched over the weekend as what coder Dustin Hubbard called an effort to help organize the hundreds of scanned Japanese gaming magazines he’s helped maintain at clearinghouse Gaming Alexandria over the years, alongside machine translations of their OCR text.

A day after that project went public, though, Hubbard was issuing an apology to many members of the Gaming Alexandria community who loudly objected to the use of Patreon funds for an error-prone AI-powered translation effort. The hubbub highlights just how controversial AI tools remain for many online communities, even as many see them as ways to maximize limited funds and man-hours.

“I sincerely apologize,” Hubbard wrote in his apology post. “My entire preservation philosophy has been to get people access to things we’ve never had access to before. I felt this project was a good step towards that, but I should have taken more into consideration the issues with AI.”

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xAI, which is already facing multiple investigations around the world over widespread reports that Grok repeatedly created sexualized images of children, is now facing a class action lawsuit. Three teenagers, who allege that photos of them were used by Grok to generate child exploitation material, have filed a class action lawsuit against xAI in California. 

According to the lawsuit, one of the teens was alerted last December that someone was sharing AI-generated images and videos of her and other minors “in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses.” The images and videos were allegedly shared on Discord, Telegram and other platforms and used “as a bartering tool” for other CSAM imagery. Law enforcement officials who investigated the images told the girls’ parents they were created with xAi’s Grok, the lawsuit says.

The three teens, all of whom live in Tennessee and are identified as Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3, have “suffered severe emotional distress,” the filing says. “Their lives have been shattered by the devastating loss of privacy, dignity, and personal safety that the production and dissemination of this CSAM have caused,” lawyers for the teens write in the complaint, which was provided to Engadget. “xAI’s financial gain through the increased use of its image- and video-making product came at their expense and wellbeing. Plaintiffs will have to spend the rest of their lives knowing that their CSAM images and videos may continue to be trafficked and traded online by child sex predators.”

Though the lawsuit currently names three individuals, the complaint says that it could cover “at least thousands of minors” who have also had their photos manipulated by Grok into sexualized images. The lawsuit claims xAI has violated multiple laws, including laws barring the production and distribution of child abuse material. 

xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. The company is also facing multiple investigations in the US and Europe over Grok’s alleged generation of nonconsensual nudity. Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated in January that Grok had produced millions of sexualized images, including 23,000 that appeared to show children.

xAI CEO Elon Musk, who previously promoted Grok’s “spicy” abilities, has claimed that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.” xAI announced in January it would stop allowing people to use Grok to edit images of real people into bikinis and limit Grok’s image-generation feature to paid subscribers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/xai-is-being-sued-by-teens-who-say-grok-created-csam-using-their-photos-200102733.html?src=rss

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Once you’ve lived in a place for a while, one fact becomes clear: Your home isn’t getting any bigger, at least not without time and effort (and a truckload of cash). We all tend to grow into our homes, filling it with stuff over time, and that can lead to a storage crisis.

But your house can probably offer you extra storage with the right purchases and approach. There are all kinds of clever ways to increase the storage around your house. If you’re ready to get all that stuff off the floors and furniture and nearly tucked away, here are some ideas to explore.

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28 x 12 x 6.5 inches, Rustic Brown, Chic Floating Storage Console Table or Desk for Wall

Kate and Laurel Kitt Modern Floating Shelf with Drawers

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Camco Bamboo Accents RV Counter Extension

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Home It Adjustable Bed Risers

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BAYKA Floating Shelves

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Queen Headboard with 2 Drawers, Charging Station and LED Lights

Maupvit Wueen Size Headboard with Storage

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4-Tier Slim Kitchen Cart with Wheels

KLM Rolling Storage Cart

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10-Pack Space Saving Cascading Hanger

Wonder Hanger

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Use wall art that doubles as storage cabinetry

If every room in your house is littered with small items that don’t have a permanent home and you don’t have any space for extra storage units or bulky open shelving, your walls might still offer a solution: wall art that also serves as shallow cabinetry. You can find framed art like this that doubles as a cabinet for storing jewelry, keys, documents, or any other small items that can clutter your home.

Add some shelves that have drawers

Adding some floating shelves to your walls is an obvious answer to your storage problems, sure, but if they’re just shelves, you’re missing a double-whammy opportunity. Choosing floating shelves that also offer drawers means you get twice the storage power in a single unit.

Transform a bookcase into a closet

Closet space is a crucial part of every home’s storage system. If you need closet space but are out of luck, you can create a shallow closet from a bookcase. All you need is a bookcase that fits your space, closet rod hardware, and some reinforcing lumber if necessary (this depends on how sturdy your bookcase is. Remove the shelves you don’t want from the upper or lower part of the bookcase, install your hanging rod, and move all those extra clothes, shoes, and other items into place.

Add a hinged countertop extension as a prep or dining area in the kitchen

An indirect way to increase your kitchen storage is to add a hinged countertop extension like this. The extension can be used as extra prep space or as a quick dining area, and having it will allow you to keep more appliances and storage jars or baskets on the rest of your countertops without having to constantly move them out of the way when you work or eat.

Use bed risers and under-bed storage containers to reclaim lost storage space

If you’ve run out of ideas for where to stash all your stuff, sometimes the trick is to create some extra vertical space by lifting your bed. A set of simple bed risers combined with easy-access rolling containers like these will give you a huge amount of storage.

Install a shelf over doorways and windows

One of the most overlooked places for storage is over doorways and windows, areas that are usually just dead space. If you’ve got enough vertical wall space over a door, a simple floating shelf can create a spot for books or other items.

Replace your bed’s headboard with one that offers storage

A headboard on your bed doesn’t have to be purely decorative, and the wall your bed is pushed up against doesn’t have to be wasted space. Buy a headboard with storage built in and you can stash away all the stuff that’s sitting on top of your tables, dressers, and the floor. As a bonus, you can find these with charging ports, so you’ll never have to worry about missing an alarm again.

Add a rolling pantry to your kitchen

No matter how big your kitchen is, you’ll always wind up with stuff cluttering your countertops, or jammed up on top of your wall cabinets. But you can take advantage of another quirk found in many kitchens: that narrow gap between your lower cabinets and the appliances that seems to exist only to collect dust and crumbs. A narrow rolling pantry cart can get you the extra storage you need while eliminating that weird gap, a twofer win.

Use space-saving hangers in your closets

You can get a lot more out of your closets with space-saving hangers like these, which allow you to hang five garments on one hanger—basically making every closet five times larger.

Add pedestal storage under your washer and dryer

The key to finding more storage in your house is looking for the hidden dead space you’re overlooking. One of the most common spots we miss is under the washer and dryer in our laundry area. Adding a pedestal with a drawer under each appliance turns a slice of vertical space into valuable storage.

Encyclopedia Britannica has sued OpenAI, alleging its AI models were trained on nearly 100,000 copyrighted articles and sometimes reproduce or misattribute passages to the encyclopedia. The lawsuit also claims trademark infringement and argues tools like ChatGPT divert traffic away from Britannica and Merriam-Webster sites. Engadget reports: More specifically, Britannica alleged that OpenAI illegally used its “copyrighted content at a massive scale” when training its AI models. Not just with training, the encyclopedia company claimed that ChatGPT’s responses to user queries sometimes contain “full or partial verbatim reproductions of [Britannica’s] copyright articles.”

Along with claims of copyright violations, Britannica argued that OpenAI was also responsible for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT generates “made-up content or ‘hallucinations’ and falsely attributes them” to Encyclopedia Britannica. The lawsuit doesn’t specify an amount for monetary damages, but Britannica is also seeking an injunction to prevent OpenAI from repeating these accusations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission chairman are demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. On Saturday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issued yet another threat to revoke licenses from news broadcasters, claiming without evidence that they are running “hoaxes and news distortions” related to the war in Iran.

In an X post, Carr shared a complaint about an Iran war headline that Trump had made on Truth Social and added his own commentary. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Carr making vague threats about enforcing rules against hoaxes and news distortion is nothing new. Given how difficult it is to actually revoke a broadcast license, and the fact that no TV station licenses are up for renewal until 2028, the threats so far have been attempts to intimidate news organizations without any concrete punishment.

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