Kids' Content Is Deeply Broken. Low-quality AI-generated content currently dominates children's media. Maka, a streaming platform run by child development experts, is offering an alternative. If you have young kids or if you know somebody who does, then you know about YouTube's AI slop problem. Videos targeted at children on the platform are often filled with bizarre and hyperstimulating content that's AI generated .

PCWorld tested Google's SynthID detector, a tool designed to identify invisible AI watermarks in images, video, and audio content. The tool only detects watermarks from specific partners like Nvidia, OpenAI, and Kakao, meaning a negative result does not confirm media is human-made. SynthID can flag certain AI-generated content but falls short as a reliable authenticity checker, leaving a significant gap in detecting broader AI slop. Aw, have you seen that viral video of the little puppy nuzzling with a baby? It's absolutely adorable -- so adorable that it's probably AI, although not even Reddit seems to know for sure. Now Google has unveiled a site featuring a tool designed to spot AI-generated images, videos, and audio files, using a technology called SynthID to pinpoint invisible watermarks embedded in AI-generated content. Surely the SynthID tool can tell us whether that suspicious puppy video was created by AI, right? I plopped the ultra-cute video into the tool, waited a few seconds, and got the result: no AI watermarks detected. So, the video must be real, right?

Google is making SynthID Detector, its web tool for identifying AI-created and AI-edited content, available to everyone. The web-based tool is able to flag images, video and audio clips created with AI tools from Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao. It's free to use, but does require users to log in with a Google, OpenAI or Apple account. The website will also be one of the first AI detection tools that will be able to identify images created with Apple's AI features, like Image Playground. Google says support for images created and edited with Apple Intelligence is coming "soon."

The Oversight Board is once again pushing Meta to address the flood of AI-generated content on its platform. The group published its two latest decisions dealing with the social media company's handling of AI content. The cases show that Meta's rules are "consistently and fundamentally inadequate to address the rapid rise of AI-generated content on its platforms," the board said in a statement. Both cases were related to posts with AI-generated videos. One depicted a Scottish politician saying "refugees are welcome here, even if they rape our women, because white people do that too."

Gen AI Tools Are Now Being Used to Push'Slop Jihad' A new generation of Islamic terror supporters are using AI to spread'Slop Jihad' to new audiences on TikTok. Over a decade ago, the Islamic State released a disturbing video that depicted its members lowering men locked in a cage into a swimming pool and drowning them. Today, that video has been reproduced as a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon depicting fish in orange jumpsuits inside the cage, as SpongeBob lowers the cage into the water while Squidward films the scene. The video, shared on TikTok, is part of what a new report from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) calls "Slop Jihad," a trend where young supporters of Islamic terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaida appear to use generative AI tools to create fan edits, cartoons, and memes designed radicalize a new generation of online backing. This shift "signals a fundamental transformation in the aesthetics of jihadist propaganda online," concludes the report, which was shared exclusively with WIRED. "The principal concern is the growing volume and diversity of material," says Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, a UN-backed counter terrorism organization that has also written a report about the Slop Jihad trend.

You Know Who Really Hates AI? Insurance Claims Adjusters Of the Glassdoor reviews from claims adjusters that mentioned AI, a staggering 98 percent were negative. "AI is just a tool," one person tells WIRED. "It should never be given the keys." On the job review platform Glassdoor, one faction hates artificial intelligence more than any other. "Pushing AI to the point that you are asking humans not to use their thoughts and brains is such a turn off," reads one representative review.

Pet owners, rescue agencies, and wildlife groups are calling for new safeguards as AI makes it harder to tell whether animals, from polar bears to house cats, are real or fake. AI-generated videos and pictures are destroying one of the largest and most enduring sources of joy and compassion on the internet: animals . Whether the imagery features sailors rescuing a polar bear, baby cows separated from their mothers, or a lost pet that was miraculously found, many people have reached the point where they can't take the creatures on their feeds at face value anymore. The explosion of deepfakes and AI slop over the past few years has led to widespread frustration among viewers, creators, and organizations that support animals, forcing everyone to hunt in the pixels for glitches or other telltale signs of AI. Mibbby Butler was overjoyed one day in April when she received a text message that her lost cat, Brooklyn, had supposedly been found.

The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content--and how difficult it was to find accountability. For Luis DeSantiago, a substitute teacher in Los Banos, California, it started with a few text messages. On March 12, as he was working his other part-time job at a coffee shop, his phone lit up. A fellow barista said there was an AI photo circulating on social media. Her cousin wanted to know if it was DeSantiago.

Coders Say They Already Found Workarounds to Claude's Invisible Watermarks Anthropic announced last week it would include invisible watermarks in AI-generated content to comply with new EU rules. Within hours, overrides were being touted online. Within four hours of Anthropic confirming that Claude models would globally embed invisible, machine-readable watermarks into any AI-generated content, developer Guillaume Meyer had published his override. His code to remove watermarks from Claude-generated text has since gone viral on GitHub, has been bookmarked more than 20,000 times on X, and has drawn more than 100 contributors, with many more incorporating the technology into their own projects. "Anthropic is embedding watermarks in its Claude texts the issue is practically history just one day later," wrote one AI specialist, accompanied by an image of Meyer breaking out of chains and standing on crumpled EU and Anthropic flags.

Google VP Josh Woodward just announced that users will be able to remove visible watermarks from AI-generated images and videos. A toggle will soon be available for the Nano Banana, Omni and Lyria models, which all use the familiar sparkle icon to denote AI. This kind of defeats the whole point of visible watermarks, as they exist to give people a fast way to spot AI-generated content out in the wild. However, users will still have slightly harder methods to identify this type of thing. This move will not impact the invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA metadata, as there are are no toggles to shut those off.