Tag: celebrities

Sarah Silverman’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI Is Full of Nonsense Claims

Is it a crime to learn something by reading a copyrighted book? What if you later summarize that book to a friend or write a description of it online? Of course, these things are perfectly legal when a person does them. But does that change when it’s an artificial intelligence system doing the reading, learning, and summarizing?

Sarah Silverman, comedian and author of the book The Bedwetter, seems to think it does. She and several other authors are suing OpenAI, the tech company behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, through which users submit text prompts and receive back AI-generated answers.

Last week, a federal judge largely rejected their claims.

The ruling is certainly good news for OpenAI and for ChatGPT users. It’s also good news for the future of AI technology more broadly. AI tools could be completely hamstrung by the expansive vision of copyright law that Silverman and the other authors in this case envision.

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Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is a Psy-Op

You’d have to go back to the peak years of Bob Dylan’s cultural relevance, when one critic cum stalker started searching the songwriter’s garbage for clues about his lyrics, to find a musician who attracts as many amateur code breakers as Taylor Swift does. Swift has fed the frenzy by declaring that her songs, her liner notes, her social-media posts—basically everything around her—might have hidden meanings embedded in them. As she told The Washington Post in 2022, she and her fans have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.”

That scavenger-hunt mentality can lead would-be decoders in directions the singer might not prefer, as with the “Gaylors” who search for signals that Swift is secretly queer. Now a different subculture is getting in on the act: A chunk of the GOP has been conjuring alleged evidence that Swift is a deep-state psy-op, and that maybe—we’re just asking questions here—the NFL is in on it.

This theory got its first burst of mainstream attention last month, when Fox’s Jesse Watters aired a video that, he claimed, shows that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” The person speaking in the video was not in fact from the Pentagon, she was citing Swift as a generic example of celebrity influence, and this all happened years after Swift became super popular anyway, but Watters still seemed to think it might explain “why or how she blew up like this.” He then interviewed a former FBI agent, who said that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign would like Swift’s support (which is true) and that she could move substantial numbers of votes into Biden’s column (which is not the track record that pop-music endorsements have historically had in American politics).

The psy-op rumor mutated into its most infamous form a few weeks later. Vivek Ramaswamy, until recently a presidential candidate himself, posted on X, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

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‘Sect and the city’: Striking photo shows bosses of ‘orgasm cult’ OneTaste leave NYC courthouse with female entourage, after two of them were charged with forcing women into sex acts

It made for a glamorous change to the usual perp walk outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

The founder and the ex-sales boss at ‘orgasmic meditation cult’ OneTaste dressed to impress as they appeared with an entourage of supporters to face charges of forcing women into sex acts and keeping them in ‘residential warehouses‘.

But there were no grimy mugshots for Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz as they faced down photographers outside the New York courthouse for a procedural hearing on Thursday. 

Their San Francisco based company was making $12million a year from their sexual disfunction treatments for women which included being genitally massaged by a man with a latex glove.

It won praise from celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloe Kardashian, and welcomed 35,000 people to its events in 2018.

But the FBI began investigating in November that year after ex-customers came forward saying they were left in debt after paying for expensive classes, and former employees said they were ordered to have sex with potential investors.

Former staffer Ayries Blanck filed a lawsuit against the company in August of 2015, claiming they subjected her to a ‘hostile work environment, sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wage and intentional infliction of emotional distress’.

But she was counter-sued by the group for breaking a non-disclosure agreement when she contributed to the 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste in 2022.

Blanck’s sister Autymn repeated allegations that OneTaste ‘condoned violence’ and ‘found strangers to rape her’.

Prosecutors say that Daedone and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz deployed a series of abusive and manipulative tactics against volunteers, contractors, and employees.

They also claim the duo rendered OneTaste members dependent on the group for their shelter and basic necessities and limited their independence and control.

The company operated in 39 cities including New York, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, Boulder, Los Angeles, Austin and London, but some former customers alleged that they were ‘raped’ after becoming involved in the company, with one telling the BBC she was attacked by a man called ‘Jake’.

The company closed all of their US locations in 2018 halting all in-person classes, and Anjuli Ayer, who became CEO in 2017 is not facing charges.

But she told Dailymail.com last year the allegations are ‘totally false’, and that consent is the ‘first thing’ they teach.

‘I did not anticipate a five-year snowballed media campaign of negative allegations against us,’ she added.

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Congress pushes bill to let Americans SUE if fake porn images of them are published after Taylor Swift deep fake scandal

A group of lawmakers are stepping in to try and take down Taylor Swift ‘deep fake’ perpetrators with a bill that would allow Americans to sue if fake porn images of them are published. 

Popstar Taylor Swift became the latest target of nonconsensual deepfakes after artificial intelligence generated sexually explicit images of her flooded the internet this week. 

The dozens of graphic images showed Swift in a series of sexual acts while dressed in Kansas City Chief memorabilia after she became a regular at football games to support of her boyfriend Travis Kelce. 

Swift is now considering legal action against the deepfake porn website that posted the images amid calls from fans and even the White House for legislative action to combat the growing issue. 

Lawmakers decided to step in to combat the rise of nonconsensual deepfakes with a new bill that allows victims to take action against fake porn made in their likeness.

The DEFIANCE Act of 2024 was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Senator Amy Klobuchar, R-Minn.

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Media Still Claims Biden Campaign-Taylor Swift Plot is a “Conspiracy Theory”

The legacy media is still characterizing the fact that the Biden campaign is working with Taylor Swift for voter recruitment as a crazy conspiracy theory, despite also acknowledging that this is in fact taking place.

In one instance, CNN reported that the Biden campaign was feverishly working behind the scenes to secure the pop star’s endorsement.

Yet later that same day, on the same network, the notion that there was a “psyop” at work to elevate Swift via her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce was aggressively dismissed.

Hosts on CNN News Central characterized the claim that the Biden campaign was in “cahoots” with Swift to influence voters and “try to get President Biden re-elected” as a nonsensical “conspiracy theory”.

The hosts then rounded on Jack Posobiec for daring to suggest that “the Democratic Party and other powers are gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against Donald Trump,” as well as Fox News’ Jesse Watters for asking if Swift was a “front for a covert political agenda.”

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Elon Musk’s X Blocks Searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ Amid Spread of Explicit AI-Generated Images

X was blocking searches for “Taylor Swift”over the weekend following the spread of AI-generated images depicting the pop star in sexually explicit poses.

Searches for “Taylor Swift” and “Taylor Swift AI” on X returned error messages on Saturday and Sunday, though Elon Musk’s platform allowed variations on the search terms, including “Taylor Swift photos AI.”

X confirmed it is deliberately blocking the search phrases for the time being.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” X’s head of business operations Joe Benarroch said in a statement sent to multiple media outlets.

The Joe Biden administration and the mainstream news media shifted into high gear after the fake Taylor Swift images went viral, seeking to protect the left-wing pop star.

“We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of the false images,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday, saying social media companies need to do a better job enforcing their own rules.

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Congress Is Trying to Stop AI Nudes and Deepfake Scams Because Celebrities Are Mad

If you’ve been on TikTok lately, you may have noticed weird videos of celebrities promoting extremely shady products, such as a robotic-sounding Taylor Swift promising viewers a free cookware set. All of these videos are scams created with generative AI—the latest example of how the technology is being used to create disturbing virtual clones of people without their consent.

Needless to say, this kind of thing has pissed off a lot of famous people. And now, Congress is proposing new legislation that aims to combat AI deepfakes—specifically when it comes to things like fake celebrity endorsements and non-consensual AI-generated nudes, which have become a problem online and in high schools. Despite the surging popularity of websites and apps designed to generate deepfakes, there’s no comprehensive law on the books banning the creation of AI images. 

The new bill, called the No AI FRAUD Act and introduced by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), would establish legal definitions for “likeness and voice rights,” effectively banning the use of AI deepfakes to nonconsensually mimic another person, living or dead. The draft bill proclaims that “every individual has a property right in their own likeness and voice,” and cites several recent incidents where people have been turned into weird AI robots. It specifically mentions recent viral videos that featured AI-generated songs mimicking the voices of pop artists like Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, Drake, and The Weeknd.

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John Schneider Under Secret Service Investigation After Calling for Joe Biden to Be ‘Publicly Hung’

John Schneider has reportedly gotten the attention of the president of the United States.

According to Deadline, after the Dukes of Hazzard star, 63, expressed that President Joe Biden should be “publicly hung” in a since-deleted reply to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Secret Service has opened a probe into his statements.

The statement was written in response to a tweet in which Biden, 81, expressed that former President Donald Trump “poses many threats to our country.”

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The celebrity worship of “Love Has Won”: Why Robin Williams may have resonated with a cult

There is little about Amy Carlson’s cult that diverges from other groups profiled in docuseries like “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God.” To fans of such docuseries, it may feel like an expansive palette sparkling with conspirituality themes. Self-identified light workers bandy about the concept of twin flames and profess that cumulus cloud tufts disguise space ships.

Each of Carlson’s followers describes some version of being adrift in life before meeting her, whether due to addiction, trauma, serious illness or existential malaise. They credit her for guiding them out of the 3D illusion that is mundane reality into their five-dimensional ascended state. At this “frequency” it is understood, for instance, that Hitler was a lightworker. They proclaim the miraculous health benefits of ingesting colloidial silver.

And Carlson, whose followers call her Mother God or simply Mom, comes from basic beginnings. The supposed messiah was born in Kansas and found success as a McDonald’s district manager in Texas before suddenly abandoning her family in 2007, reappearing online shortly after that claiming to be a divine healer who practices spiritual surgeries.  Among her many wild claims was that she lived more than 500 lives over 19 billion years and was once known as Joan of Arc, Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra. She also purported to be the reborn “Madam Blavtski,” likely referring to Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophy occultist movement.

When Carlson died in 2021 at the age of 45 as the result of what a coroner’s report deemed to be “alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion,” her followers refused to let Mom go. They drove her body from California to a Colorado house belonging to one of her most trusted acolytes, wrapped it in a blanket and blinking Christmas lights, and awaited her return. By the time the police raided the home, Carlson’s corpse was blue and mummified.

If you’ve seen “Wild Wild Country,” any of the Twin Flames or NXIVM examinations and “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult of Sarah Lawrence,” to name a few, you have seen some version of this. But “Love Has Won” has one dazzling and bizarre differentiator from those: its followers’ universal connection through the spirit of Robin Williams.

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Tiny Fraction Of Global Elites Emit As Much Carbon As Bottom Two-Thirds Of Humanity

Critics who rail against the hypocrisy of wealthy global elites jet-setting on carbon-spewing private planes while pontificating about the need for the rest of us to cut our climate footprints just got a boost from a new study.

It turns out that the world’s richest 1 percent emit about the same amount of carbon as the world’s poorest two-thirds, according to an analysis from the nonprofit Oxfam International.

This means that a small sliver of global elites, or 77 million people, have produced as much carbon as the 5 billion people that make up the bottom 66 percent by wealth, per the study.

The study also estimates that it would take roughly 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99 percent to produce as much carbon as the wealthiest billionaires do in just one year.

The study was based on research compiled by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and examined the emissions of various income groups up to 2019. In summary, it suggested that the private jet-setting class of global leaders and policymakers, who take private planes to lead summits addressing the assumed dangers of climate change, may warrant charges of hypocrisy.

The analysis was published as global leaders prepare to meet for climate talks at the COP28 summit in Dubai later in November, where, much like other climate conferences, some elite participants will likely pontificate on the need for ordinary folk to end their reliance on cheap fossil fuel energy to make their ends meet.

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