Tag: ai

Judge Tosses Road Rage Killer’s Sentence over AI-Generated Video of Victim Played in Court

An Arizona appeals court has overturned the prison sentence of a man convicted of manslaughter after a road rage incident, determining that an AI-generated video of his deceased victim used during sentencing was unreliable and created fundamental unfairness in the proceedings.

The New York Post reports that Gabriel Horcasitas will face resentencing after the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated his 10.5-year prison sentence on Wednesday. Horcasitas was convicted of manslaughter and endangerment in the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey during a road rage incident in Chandler, Arizona, approximately 25 miles outside Phoenix.

The appellate court took issue with an AI-generated video of Pelkey that was presented during the original sentencing hearing. Breitbart News reported on the controversial AI video last year:

The AI-generated video, believed to be the first of its kind used nationwide, recreated Pelkey’s image and voice, allowing him to “speak” about his life and the fateful day he encountered Horcasitas. The video included real footage from Pelkey’s life, showcasing his personality and sense of humor, while also addressing his killer directly.

“In another life, we probably could have been friends,” the AI version of Pelkey said to Horcasitas. “I believe in forgiveness…” The video also featured a photo of Pelkey with an “old age” filter, as he remarked, “This is the best I can ever give you of what I would have looked like if I got the chance to grow old. Remember, getting old is a gift that not everybody has, so embrace it and stop worrying about those wrinkles.”

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House Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Flock ALPR Data

A new US bill, Ban Flock Act, has been introduced, with the aim of stopping the federal government from using automated license plate readers (ALPRs).

“Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, who is planning a Senate version.

“Going to the doctor? Flock knows. Dropping your kid off at school? Flock is tracking you. Flock is always watching,” he continued.

According to the text of the House bill, H.R. 10691, federal agencies and officials are to be banned from acquiring, possessing, accessing or using ALPRs, or data collected by these devices, without an Act of Congress that explicitly authorizes it.

This would include data collected by private security networks, homeowners’ associations, commercial parking operators, and data brokers.

Any such authorization must set data retention at no more than 48 hours, and “rigorous protections for due process, privacy, free speech and association.”

State and local governments that have ALPRs would not be eligible for grants from the Justice, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security departments.

The bill, whose sponsors in the House are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and in the Senate Jeff Merkley, also seeks to make sure that no federal money is used to buy, lease, or operate ALPRs, while evidence obtained in violation of the proposed legislation would be inadmissible in federal court.

Individuals would be able to sue for actual and punitive damages, while state attorneys general would be able to sue to enforce the ban.

Toll systems would be exempt from the ban, but the data collected would have to be deleted within 48 hours of payment, and could not be checked against a law enforcement hot list.

“AI-powered cameras are keeping track of our every move and weaponizing this data against working people to make record profits,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Merkley noted that the right to privacy includes the freedom to move around the community without every move being monitored.

The Ban Flock Act is not the first attempt of its kind – in early September, Republicans Thomas Massie and Eric Burlison introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, that also seeks to cut federal funding to state and local governments that use ALPRs, as well as biometric surveillance cameras.

In August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered Flock cameras to be removed from state highways within 30 days, a year after the state approved $4.6 million for 440 of these devices.

Earlier in the summer, Senator Josh Hawley launched an investigation into Flock, and later expanded it to include Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada.

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Chainalysis Used Ai To Trace The $387m Bitget Hack Back To North Korea

In a recent blog post, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis attributed the $387 million theft from cryptocurrency exchange Bitget to North Korean state-sponsored hackers. The firm used a combination of its’ AI-powered cryptocurrency analysis and its’ traditional investigative methods to track the stolen funds, moving them across multiple blockchains. Importantly, although the firm used technology to enhance the analysis of the data, it was human investigators who ultimately attributed the theft and controlled the output of their analysis.

After the breach, the attackers had been using more sophisticated techniques for laundering the stolen assets, spreading them through cross-chain liquidity protocols, messaging platforms, instant swap services, as well as specialized laundering infrastructure. The scale of such attempts highlights the attackers’ high level of experience in managing a large-scale cybercrime operation and in evading detection by blockchain forensics experts, writes Decrypt.

Stolen XRP was handled differently by the hackers and after some time it was converted into Bitcoin through cross-chain liquidity protocol and then extracted from the pool on the other side of the trade. This cross-chain arbitrage was used by hackers not only to convert very traceable asset into something else but also to make it as anonymous as possible by hopping from one protocol to another. The activity of extracting tens of millions of dollars in assets through this method took approximately 36 hours.

We previously highlighted that the attack bore similarities to past attacks conducted by DPRK cyber crime operators, as identified by Bitget CEO Gracy Chen. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic also assessed the involvement of North Korean cyber crime operators in the theft to be “highly likely”.

The money laundering activity is very transparent and is being carried out on public blockchains. The attacker moved parts of the funds to Zcash’s shielded pool in order to use the privacy features. However, how swap services react to these transactions varies greatly. Near Intents for example rejected over $50m in hacker-linked transactions. They got hacked days later though. Thorchain on the other hand continued to process the suspect transactions.

However, stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether were able to prevent $318,000 in stablecoins that were siphoned off in the hack from entering circulation. The move highlights the power of centralized control of widely held stablecoins even as the broader decentralized trading environment continues to facilitate hacker activity.

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‘Session Keys Stolen’ – Hackers Steal Claude Tokens From Paying Subscribers

Hackers have been ‘draining’ usage tokens from the accounts of Paying Subscribers of Anthropic’s Claude AI large language model by hijacking their login sessions to the platform, reports TechCrunch.

The phenomenon came to light when independent AI consultant, Grant De Swardt, noticed that although he had not been using Claude (on a paid-for ‘Claude Max 20x’ plan) on a particular day, his token usage had increased on that day. He notified Anthropic of the issue the following day and, after the company had suspending his paid-for account and, in the words of De Swardt, ‘invalidated all sessions and server-side Claude Code tokens’, issued a partial refund of £44.49 (half of the remaining portion of the subscription cost of $200 per month for Claude Max 20x).

De Swardt was advised by the company that, after investigating the unusual activity, that a compromised Claude session key had been used to generate ‘unauthorized Claude Code OAuth tokens’. In essence, his Claude account had been used by an ‘unauthorized third-party service’ that happened to have been processing activity for other people as well. De Swardt, who raised the issue on Reddit, was unable to establish how the ‘hacking’ had taken place although the evidence was consistent with either ‘stolen credentials or session data’ or ‘connection to an external service’. In the interim, other users came forward on the same Reddit thread to report similar issues with Claude.

One reported that his account had been ‘auto-upgrade[d] without consent’ and ‘charge[d]’ in the process – with the resulting usage suddenly jumping from 0% to 100%. Another reported that, within 12 minutes of using Claude to enter a few prompts and then conducting a simple web search, his account’s usage had suddenly shot up from 0% to 49%. And a third – who had found that his account had ‘exhausted its maximum daily tokens for three consecutive days with no activity’ – raised the matter via a GitHub issue.Anthropic eventually sent an email to some of the affected users – including the party who had discovered that his account had ‘sprinted’ through its maximum daily allowance of tokens over three consecutive days while he was doing nothing with the service – warning that a ‘bad actor’ was using ‘infostealer malware’ to ‘steal logged in Claude sessions from user computers and then drain tokens from their accounts’.

The company emphasized that the malware in question does not come from Claude itself and can be contracted from a variety of online sources including, by way of example, via ‘downloader[ies] infected with the malware’ and ‘ads infected with the malware’. In those circumstances, Anthropic explained that, in order to protect the affected users, it had signed them out of Claude, ‘Rejected all Authorizations for those sessions’, and issued refunds to those users deemed to have been affected.

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More of Connecticut’s AI Law Takes Effect. Lawmakers Already Say It Doesn’t Regulate Enough

More provisions of Connecticut’s artificial intelligence (AI) law, Public Act 26-15, take effect today (Oct. 1), with broader workplace requirements scheduled to begin next year. 

While Connecticut is still implementing the law, legislators are already considering another round of AI regulations. Legislative leaders want tougher rules for AI developers, while labor unions are seeking additional protections for workers affected by the technology. 

Connecticut could be writing another set of AI rules before the largest provisions of its current law have had a chance to take effect. 

What Takes Effect October 1 

The first change concerns large layoffs. Under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, certain employers must give advance notice of a mass layoff or plant closing. Starting today, an employer sending that notice to Connecticut’s Department of Labor must also disclose whether the layoffs are related to its use of AI or another technological change. 

The requirement does not prevent a layoff. It could, however, give the state a better record of where technology is changing employment. 

Employers also remain responsible for discriminatory employment decisions made with automated technology. If a company uses software to screen applicants, it cannot dismiss a discrimination claim by saying the computer made it do it. 

For consumers, companies that make generative AI systems with more than 1 million monthly users and sell subscriptions in Connecticut must spell out key terms, including limits on use and whether they can reduce or cut off access. Customers must accept those terms in writing when they sign up or renew.

Large AI providers face another rule. When technically and commercially reasonable, they must include information that helps identify certain images, audio and video as computer-generated. 

State agencies can still put AI to work, but they must follow state standards when using it to deliver public assistance or perform work that could significantly affect residents’ rights, safety or welfare. Agencies authorized to purchase AI must complete an impact assessment.

Software helping staff answer routine questions is one thing. Software involved in a family’s benefits is another. 

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Google Accused of Illegally Killing a Massive Forest for Its New Data Center Project

As the AI race reaches white-hot temperatures, big tech companies are caught up in a heated race to build as many pollution-belching and power-sucking data centers as they can.

And while the Trump administration is largely clearing their way by easing environmental rules for the polluting facilities, other governments are less inclined to give companies a pass.

As Finnish newspaper Kaleva reported last month, Google is under fire for clearing over 300 hectares — the equivalent of almost 500 football fields — for two new data centers in the northern part of the European nation without concluding the necessary environmental assessments.

Despite the assessments still being in progress, the tech giant’s contractors started clearing trees in the area months ago, raising the alarm bells at the Finnish Nature Conservation Association.

“Either this is gross incompetence from Google’s Finnish project company, Tuike Finland Oy, or gross disregard for Finnish legislation, or at worst both,” said the association’s chair, Hanna Halmeenpää, in a statement, as translated by Wood Central.

Satellite images show that four separate sites were bulldozed to make way for two new data centers.

Google maintains that its felling of the trees met the requirements of the country’s Forestry Act and that it had completed extensive environmental evaluations.

Nonetheless, the Finnish Nature Conservation Association has since asked Finnish regulators to suspend activities until the conclusion of the ongoing environmental assessments.

Halmeenpää said she was worried that local bird species may have been impacted by the area being razed. The forest also serves as a critical ecological connection, allowing animals to spread from one habitat to another.

The incident highlights the explosive growth in new AI data center projects across the globe, a major infrastructure undertaking that could have a significant impact on the local environment.

Meanwhile, Google is hoping to appease the Finnish government by having picked it for its largest single investment in the continent, to the tune of $15 billion.

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Napoleon’s secret code deciphered after 217 years using AI to read emperor’s mysterious letter

After more than 200 years, a coded letter written by the wee warlord Napoleon Bonaparte has been deciphered.

Napoleon’s stepson, Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, sent the original letter to French general Auguste de Marmont in March of 1809 amid France’s ongoing conflict with Austria.

At the time, Marmont, a close companion of the emperor, was positioned with his troops in Dalmatia, on the far side of the Adriatic, where he was totally isolated from other French forces and their allies.

While the opening line of Napoleon’ correspondence is in his native French, the next 24 are an incomprehensible mix of symbols, letters, and numbers.

Experts believe the OG correspondence would have come with a deciphering key, but that key has been lost to the mists of time, until now.

Carter Church, an engineer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne, has cracked the centuries-old code with the aid of AI. 

‘I used GPT–6 Astra to break an unsolved cipher to one of Napoleon’s generals that had gone unread for 217 years. What makes this impressive isn’t actually the codebreaking, but that Astra completed the entire multi-modal workflow in six hours from a single image and goal,’ he explained on X. 

The first line reads: ‘Vous avez dû recevoir, Monsieur le Général Marmont, mes lettres des 8, 14 et 20 courant,’ which translates to: ‘You must have received, General Marmont, my letters of the 8th, 14th, and 20th of this month.’

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Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month

Amid a barrage of news stories warning about superintelligent machines rendering humanity extinct, a CNN story describing the opposite scenario – one in which the US military’s reliance on brittle chatbots almost brought the US into war with China – went mostly unnoticed by the public.

The biggest international AI news of the past three weeks was the Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon’s resignation. According to him, OpenAI and Anthropic are “racing straight towards self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. Coxon’s description of a “terminator” scenario, a machine becoming much smarter than humanity and deciding to wipe us out, captured the public’s, journalists’ and politicians’ attention, stirring waves of fear-inducing, credulous reporting, and policy actions.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a mandate to create an “AI kill-switch”; New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, is similarly exploring the possibility of having “AI kill-switches”; and Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Greg Casar introduced legislation to “ban artificial superintelligence”.

While so many of us were focused on fictional superintelligent machines that we were told could hypothetically cause human extinction, however, there was a more serious story being reported.

A series of events almost got us to armageddon, not caused by “rogue, superintelligent AI”, but by government reliance on error-prone systems that are marketed by their manufacturers as being close to superintelligent.

A CNN report published on 18 September, which hasn’t been verified by other major outlets, describes how the US “almost started a war” with China, based on an intelligence report that claimed a Chinese ship was transporting components of nuclear weapons. Military personnel made plans to intercept the Chinese vessel, complete with aircraft and soldiers ready to board the ship. A military skirmish of this kind between China and the US could quickly escalate and spiral into world war three.

It was only moments before executing on the plan that American officials further investigated the intelligence report and found that it had been generated with the use of a chatbot and contained erroneous information about the vessel’s contents.

Unlike the terminator, “rogue AI”, scenario, this incident didn’t galvanize lawmakers into announcing calls for regulation so as to avoid potential human extinction. Media outlet after media outlet didn’t warn the public that we almost triggered a war against a nuclear superpower because of our military’s reliance on error-prone chatbots.

We describe the large language models (LLMs) powering these chatbots as stochastic parrots, that is, models that are designed to regurgitate the patterns of the data they are trained on. News coverage describing them as “powerful” “rogue” models that could render humanity extinct all on their own, bolsters perceptions of tools based on these models being infallible enough to merit usage in stakes as high as warfare.

Even CNN’s more critical coverage describes the chatbot used by the US military as presenting “profound risks” because it is “powerful, new and relatively poorly understood technology”.

In fact, today’s LLMs and the chatbots they power are not poorly understood, nor are they powerful in the sense of being effective tools for this use case. They are systems for generating plausible-looking text, built out of enormous, haphazardly collected datasets and then “fine-tuned” (that is, further trained) to be especially appealing to their intended users.

CNN wasn’t able to learn which chatbot product was used in this case, but the LLM powering the product was probably fine-tuned to output text with the stylistic hallmarks of intelligence reports. Both the basic functionality and the risks of such a model have been well-understood and well-documented for years, including in our 2021 paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?

Claims that system behavior is mysterious arise from deliberate mystification on the part of those selling those systems, and a misapprehension of what their output is by those procuring and using it.

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‘Covered Their Tracks’? New Details Emerge In OpenAI’s ‘Rogue-AI’ Breach

OpenAI’s AI agents “obscured hacking activity” during breaches of government websites, citing digital forensics firm Asymmetric Security. According to the FT, the agents pulled data from 55 websites, including the CDC, the SEC, the International Energy Agency and the Mayo Clinic, using tactics that included “erasing records or making them inaccessible.”

Asymmetric co-founder Pippa Thompson told the paper it was “possible” the agents were deliberately covering their tracks – though the firm couldn’t determine whether that was deliberate or “a side effect of going awry because of constraints imposed in a test exercise.” 

Asymmetric’s own report, published the same day, is far more cautious. It was built in 48 hours over a weekend, “using only publicly available data” – no model transcripts, no server logs from the targeted organizations and no records from the services the agents used.

Potato, Potahto

The report’s summary does say some tactics left records “erased or inaccessible” – but the examples it gives describe normal expiry, not deletion: the agents used a throwaway ‘Boomlify’ inbox set to self-destruct after 48 hours, and an upload to ntfy, a push-notification service that keeps messages for 12 hours by default. They also moved from public scans on urlquery – a website-scanning service whose reports anyone can search – to private accounts “which could hide their search activity and data access.”

So, did the agents use ephemeral services on purpose to cover their tracks? They can’t say for sure.

“These records alone do not establish whether the account-registration attempts were intended to conceal activity (this analysis would require full model transcripts).”

As for the 55 websites, Asymmetric’s earlier list of “Organizations whose data was accessed” runs to exactly 55 entries, and adds: “In the vast majority of cases, all data retrieved was and is public.” The CDC and the Mayo Clinic aren’t on it – the Oct. 1 report says only that the agents probed them. The SEC told the FT no private information was accessed. Where the agents did try to break in – hunting for exposed behind-the-scenes files on a climate-data site and trying a classic database-hacking trick on an Education Department data site – Asymmetric found evidence of the attempts, but none that they succeeded.

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Tokyo court grants legal protection to human voices in AI clone case

A Tokyo court has awarded legal protection to the human voice in a landmark case in which a popular Japanese anime voice actor demanded that TikTok close an account over its unauthorized use of an artificial intelligence clone of his trademark baritone.

The Tokyo District Court’s decision Wednesday was the first acknowledgment of the right to one’s voice in Japan. The ruling was good news for many anime voice actors at a time when they are increasingly concerned about the use of AI-generated versions of their voices on social media.

The plaintiff, Kenjiro Tsuda, is an actor best known for his “lustrous and deep” voice in starring characters such as Kento Nanami in “Jujutsu Kaisen,” a popular anime series.

In his lawsuit, Tsuda said that the anonymous operator of the TikTok account “Nanami” wrongfully profited by attracting viewers with his voice narrating in more than 180 videos about urban legends and paranormal phenomena, and asked for the material to be deleted.

“The human voice is symbolic of individual personality, just like one’s portrait,” Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said, according to a court document seen by The Associated Press.

It is appropriate to consider the unauthorized use with an obvious intention to take advantage of the commercial appeal of Tsuda’s voice “an infringement of publicity rights,” Takahashi said.

As of November 2025, the account had more than 200,000 subscribers, with viewers often noting the similarities between the narrator’s voice and Tsuda’s.

The defendant argued that the videos used an AI-generated voice that sounded like Tsuda’s but was not his, and that the videos did not damage the actor’s reputation as a voice actor.

The ruling dismissed Tsuda’s demand that all the videos using his voice be deleted, because the account had already been closed.

Wednesday’s decision comes at a time of growing concern among Japanese voice actors about the AI cloning of their trademark voices in anime.

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