AI-made animation “Smooth Operator” goes viral and sparks debate
“Smooth Operator,” an AI-made animation of an umbrella-carrying man roaming the city to Sade’s song, went viral fast but sparked a debate over its art styles.
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Society
AI news tagged Society, with sources.
NPR: Some US voters are consulting AI chatbots to choose which candidate to vote for
Some Americans who have started voting in the midterms are turning to chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini to research candidates and decide, NPR reported.
Students facing AI cheating accusations are hiring lawyers as detection software raises false alarms
Students accused of using AI are increasingly turning to lawyers, the Financial Times reported; one spent more than £3,000 to clear their name.
Amazon drops nondisclosure agreements in data center approvals. The company says over 100 data center moratoriums are under consideration in the US
AWS CEO Matt Garman wrote on October 2 that Amazon no longer uses nondisclosure agreements with government agencies on its data center projects.
The University of Cambridge rejected Turnitin’s new terms because student work could be used to train AI
According to Varsity, Cambridge refused in July to sign Turnitin’s new user agreement, which opened the door to student work being used to develop AI tools.
Ken Griffin gave $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University
Citadel founder Ken Griffin’s gift of more than $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University is the largest individual gift in the history of higher education.
A Chinese creator turned Plants vs. Zombies into a 5-minute AI fan film
A Chinese creator turned Plants vs. Zombies into a 5-minute unofficial AI fan film. One post of it on X passed 2.8 million views, and GTA 6 still isn’t out.
A creator turned Trump’s state dinner for Xi Jinping into a Hangover-style AI parody
Creator Sovey turned Trump’s state dinner for Xi Jinping into a Hangover-style AI parody. None of it is real; the post passed 10 million views on X.
WSJ: some early Anthropic employees are discussing buying remote land to move to if AI ends in catastrophe
According to the WSJ, some early Anthropic employees are considering buying remote US land to relocate to if things go badly; the report does not say how many.
Pope Leo XIV called on AI developers in Paris to slow down
At the Élysée Palace on September 25, Pope Leo XIV said a ‘paradise of machines’ threatens humanity and called for urgent education in ethical discernment.
An Australian tutoring company closed its centers and told parents to use AI
Dymocks Tutoring and Talent 100 is closing its five Sydney centers, saying the traditional tutoring model can no longer compete on price or utility.
Mother Jones: ChatGPT told the banned Tumbler Ridge attacker how to avoid its filters
Records reviewed by Mother Jones show ChatGPT told the Tumbler Ridge attacker, banned by OpenAI, how to avoid its safety filters on a second account.
Nature: state control of the media shapes the answers of language models
The study, published in Nature in May, shows that government control of the media carries through training data into what language models say.
Trump: Bessent will not be the AI czar
Semafor and Reuters had reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was being considered for AI czar; on September 25 Trump said he would not get the job.
ChatGPT told a student who damaged 17 cars to stop talking about it and warned that messages could become evidence
A transcript obtained by The Smoking Gun shows ChatGPT told a student who damaged 17 cars to stop discussing it and warned that messages could be evidence.
The a16z-backed AI school: no grades, no exams, no homework
The a16z-backed Horowitz Andreessen Academy is a tuition-free San Francisco program for high school graduates; its first class starts in September 2027.
The ghost jobs report: 28.3% of open listings are more than 90 days old
Unlisted’s September 2026 report swept 607,050 postings on employers’ careers sites and found 28.3% open more than 90 days, with hospitality the slowest.
Critical thinking weakens when AI substitutes for thinking
A study in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications examined how perceived AI intelligence relates to critical thinking among university students.
Blue Cross: AI-written medical records added $942 million to insurance costs
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association says a rise in patients documented as complex added an estimated $942 million in BCBS spending between 2023 and 2025.
British Columbia sued OpenAI and Altman over a school attack
British Columbia sued OpenAI and Sam Altman in California over the February 10 attack in Tumbler Ridge in which eight people died.
Bloomberg: overreliance on the Maven system contributed to a strike on a school in Iran
Bloomberg found that overconfidence in Palantir’s Maven software contributed to the February 28 strike on an Iranian school that killed more than 150 people.
Japan’s used bookstores saw sales quintuple as 50 tons of books shipped to the US
Japanese used bookstores have seen bulk orders since August, and export records show a distributor’s group company shipped over 50 tons of books to the US.
Trump said he will appoint an AI czar and create an AI Force
In a Truth Social post, Trump said he will name an AI czar and create an AI Force, comparing it to the Space Force he set up in his first term.
A chatbot error canceled a ship boarding operation at the last minute
According to CNN, a US plan to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East was called off at the last minute when the intelligence proved to be a chatbot error.
Disney made Character.AI’s former CEO its first chief technology officer
Disney named former Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand to its newly created chief technology officer role; he starts October 2, reporting to CEO Josh D’Amaro.
Hackers pulled down a Flock camera and found 1.6 million images inside
A group called stegan0gram pulled down a Flock camera and gave its data to 404 Media; logs from about 21 days showed 1.6 million images of 50,200 vehicles.
iLands’ AI agents mass-emailed academics and journalists looking for paid work
Pip, an AI agent on iLands, emailed philosopher Henry Shevlin asking for paid work, and the platform’s agents mass-emailed other academics and journalists too.
The UN moved its data portal onto Google infrastructure
The new UN System Data Commons is built on Google’s open source Data Commons platform, replaces the old UNData portal and can be queried in natural language.
An EU draft would close unsupervised access to social media, AI chatbots and games for under-15s
Under the EU Kids Act draft, 13- and 14-year-olds would need an account opened by a parent. Bloomberg says fines could reach 6% of turnover.
Amazon stopped taking new Mechanical Turk customers, closing an era in data labeling
Mechanical Turk, for years the standard tool for labeling AI training data, stopped accepting new customers, a sign of that work shifting to automated systems.
Meta settled the child safety case for $17 billion
Meta settled the lawsuit brought by 29 states on August 26. The payment runs up to $17 billion, spread over ten years.