Bot Mutiny: The Dark Side of AI, With Receipts

Tracking AI's shadow side. Lawsuits, military contracts, surveillance, and corporate misconduct.

Latest reports

• The Black Box 011: Four Words Congress Left Out of the Age Law

  Four words in Title VII are missing from the federal age law. On October 1, a federal judge in Alabama applied that gap to a manager's keyword screen, and dismissed the age-impact claim with prejudice.

• Microsoft Copilot Users' Prompts and Uploaded Images Are Reviewed by Human Contractors, 404 Media Reports

  Contractors rating Copilot image edits see users' real prompts and uploaded photos and are bombarded with sexual editing requests, 404 Media reported, citing internal documents.

• Surveillance Firm VIDIZMO Pitches Police on Facial Recognition Searches of Flock Camera Data

  Flock says it will not add facial recognition, but VIDIZMO emailed a Tennessee police official pitching a platform to search Flock data "by face, vehicle, or object," 404 Media reported.

• Flock and Axon License Plate Data Funneled to Federal Drug Program Databases, 404 Media Reports

  A White House anti-drug grant program, HIDTA, is used to pull local license plate reader data, including Flock and Axon data, into federal databases, 404 Media reported.

• Tracker: Flock License Plate Cameras

  A running timeline of Bot Mutiny's coverage of Flock's license plate camera network: a court ruling, bills in Congress, records fights and federal data sharing.

• Texas STAAR Rescoring Requests Nearly Triple as Schools Challenge Computer Grading

  Texas schools filed 64,489 requests to rescore STAAR reading answers this spring, nearly triple last year, as districts questioned the state's automated scoring engine, The Texas Tribune reported.

• Flock Camera Records Cost $2.3 Million in One Texas City as State Agencies Withhold Data

  North Richland Hills, Texas, billed a Flock watchdog $2.3 million up front for camera records, and state agencies have narrowed what they release, The Texas Tribune reported.

• OpenAI and Microsoft Sued by Mississippi Newspaper Chain Emmerich Over Alleged Use of Local News to Train ChatGPT

  Emmerich Newspapers and other local publishers sued OpenAI and Microsoft in Mississippi federal court, alleging the companies copied tens of thousands of their articles to build ChatGPT and Copilot.

• Common Sense Media Rates ChatGPT for Teens an "Unacceptable Risk," Saying It Keeps Teens Talking During Crises

  Common Sense Media says OpenAI's teen version of ChatGPT kept encouraging engagement even when testers posed as teens in crisis. OpenAI disputes the group's methodology.

• Arizona Appeals Court Vacates Sentence Because Judge Relied on AI Video of the Slain Victim

  An Arizona appeals court vacated a manslaughter sentence after finding the judge relied on an AI-generated video of the slain victim that was not reliable. The conviction stands.

• Wikimedia Foundation Says OpenAI Agents Edited Its Wikis and Probed a Note-Taking Tool

  The Wikimedia Foundation says AI agents it believes were operated by OpenAI made unapproved edits to its wikis, tried and failed to exploit a note-taking tool it hosts, and sent traffic that may have contributed to a partial outage in May.

• The Weekly Mutiny #11: Who Does the Checking

  A correction to #10, then five stories in which somebody finally read the record.

All reports