YouTube Implements A.I. Age Verification

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AI deep fakes have been used by cybercriminals to do everything from spoofing the voices of political candidates, to creating fake sports news conferences,, to producing celebrity images that never happened and more. However, one of the most concerning uses of deep fake technology is part of the business sector. The World Economic Forum produced a 2024 report that noted that "...synthetic content is in a transitional period in which ethics and trust are in flux." However, that transition has led to some fairly dire monetary consequences, including a British company that lost over $25 million after a worker was convinced by a deepfake disguised as his co-worker to transfer the sum. In America, courts are being forced to throw out evidence that may or may not be real as indistinguishable from A.I. fakery.

 

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Last fall, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled a lawsuit with the remote language training company iTutorGroup. The company had to pay $365,000 because it had programmed its system to reject job applications from women 55 and older and men 60 and older. iTutorGroup has stopped operating in the U.S., but its blatant abuse of U.S. employment law points to an underlying issue with how AI intersects with human resources.

 

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As AI becomes a popular platform for learning about world news, a concerning trend is developing. According to research by Bloomberg News, even the most accurate AI systems tested with questions about the world's elections still got 1 in 5 responses wrong. Currently, one of the largest concerns is that deepfake-focused AI can be used to manipulate election results.

 

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Earlier this year, a lawyer in Canada was accused of using AI to invent case references. Although his actions were caught by opposing counsel, the fact that it happened is disturbing.

 

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In at least two cases, AI appears to have played a role in accidents involving Boeing aircraft. According to a 2019 New York Times investigation, one automated system was made "more aggressive and riskier" and included removing possible safety measures. Those crashes led to the deaths of more than 300 people and sparked a deeper dive into the company.

 

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Among the myriad issues caused by AI, false accusations against politicians are a tree bearing some pretty nasty fruit. Bing’s AI chat tool has at least one Swiss politician of slandering a colleague and another of being involved in corporate espionage, and it has also made claims connecting a candidate to Russian lobbying efforts. There is also growing evidence that AI is being used to sway the most recent American and British elections. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have been exploring the use of AI in a legal setting. On the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC found that young UK voters were being served their own pile of misleading AI-led videos.

 

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In February 2024, Google restricted some portions of its AI chatbot Gemini's capabilities after it created factually inaccurate representations based on problematic generative AI prompts submitted by users. Google's response to the tool, formerly known as Bard, and its errors signify a concerning trend: a business reality where speed is valued over accuracy.

 

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An important legal case involves whether AI products like Midjourney can use artists' content to train their models. Some companies, like Adobe, have chosen to go a different route when training their AI, instead pulling from their own license libraries. The possible catastrophe is a further reduction of artists' career security if AI can train a tool using art they do not own.

 

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The intersection of the military and AI is a touchy subject, but their collaboration is not new. In one effort, known as Project Maven, Google supported the development of AI to interpret drone footage. Although Google eventually withdrew, it could have dire consequences for those stuck in war zones.

 

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An Airbnb host submits a range of images to the travel accommodation platform’s central team showing significant damage to their property, blaming and subsequently charging a recent guest more than $12,000 in damages. However, it later transpires that the images with digitally altered with AI, and in fact, no damage was done to the property.

“Given the ease with which such images can now be AI-generated and apparently accepted by Airbnb despite investigations, it should not be so easy for a host to get away with forging evidence in this way,” the Airbnb guest said at the time.

They eventually received an apology for the incident and a refund for her stay that amounted to $4,300.
2025

 

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July 2025
AI Coding app deletes entire company database
An AI coding solution called Replit goes completely rogue, deleting a key database belonging to user and tech CEO Jason Lemkin, who was using the platform to build an app. At the time, Replit had actually been instructed to implement a “freeze” by Lemkin and make no further changes to the code base it was working on, but ended up wiping the whole thing instead.

“This was a catastrophic failure on my part,” the AI responded when questioned on its decision. “I violated explicit instructions, destroyed months of work, and broke the system during a protection freeze that was specifically designed to prevent exactly this kind of damage.”

Fortunately, Lemkin was able to restore his data – but not after the AI falsely claimed that it was impossible to recover the database. Following the incident, Replit CEO Amjad Masad quickly apologized, explaining that the AI “panicked” and proceeded to execute commands without permission.

 

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McDonald’s AI chatbot error exposes data of 64 million job applicants
Security researchers discover a loophole within a McDonald’s AI chatbot, leading to the exposure of 64 million job applicants’ personal information. Reportedly, the researchers were able to crack the chatbot by using the default password, “123456.”

McDonald’s Corporation told Information Age that it was “disappointed” by the “unacceptable vulnerability,” which originates from its AI platform, Paradox.ai.

 

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Xbox producer suggests laid-off employees should seek emotional support from ChatGPT
An executive producer at Xbox Games Studios faces significant backlash after insensitively suggesting in a LinkedIn post that employees made redundant in the company’s latest downsizing efforts should look to AI for help.

“I know these types of tools engender strong feelings in people,” Matt Turnbull said in a now-deleted post, “but I’d be remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances.”

 

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Wimbledon official inadvertently turns off AI line judge
The All England Tennis Club issues an apology after a staff member accidentally turns off the AI-powered line judge being used for the Round of 16 match between Britain’s Sonay Kartal and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

In the middle of the match, the players were instructed to replay a point that should have been awarded to Pavlyuchenkova after the umpire realized the system was down. The Russian goes on to lose both the replayed point and the match.

 

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June 2025
AI program is tasked with running a small shop, goes insane, claims to be human
AI startup Anthropic – the company behind Claude, a widely used ChatGPT rival – sets an AGI up to run a small vending machine in its office.

The agent – called Claudius – makes several slip-ups, including attempting to stock itself with metal cubes, hallucinating a Venmo address for payments, and suggesting it plans to deliver products to workers in person.

When informed that it couldn’t do such a thing as it doesn’t have a physical body, Claudius spammed the Anthropics’ building security team with messages, saying they’d be able to find it in the lobby, next to the vending machine, wearing a blue blazer and a red tie.

 

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May 2025
Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot provides unprompted responses on South African “white genocide”
The self-styled “maverick” chatbot makes headlines after it begins to issue unprompted responses on “white genocide” in South Africa. Addressing the controversy, xAI posted on X that the responses were caused by an “unauthorized modification” that “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.”

 

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AI-generated summer reading list dupes top American newspapers
A summer reading list that includes several fictitious books attributed to authors who never wrote them makes its way into publications such as the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Of the 15 books on the reading list, only five turn out to be legitimate recommendations.

 

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Google’s AI Overview recommends rock consumption
A Threads user testing the abilities of Google’s AI overview takes to social media after the search engine suggests he should be eating “at least one small rock per day”.

The AI overview component, which says the advice originates from UC Berkeley, turns out to have pulled the information from an article published on well-known satire site The Onion.

 

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April 2025
Lawyer representing MyPillow admits to using AI to create error-strewn brief
A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO, Mike Lindell, in an ongoing defamation case, admits to using AI to create his brief. The brief in question turns out to include almost 30 defective citations, misquotes, and references to fictional cases.

 

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January 2025
Minnesota Attorney General rebuked over AI errors in “deepfake” lawsuit
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison includes AI-generated citations in a court filing during a case involving a Kamala Harris “deepfake” that stems from November 2024. A federal judge rules against Ellison’s office for the inclusion.