"I think it should stand for," one 9-year-old says. Here's why kids of all ages are calling AI "disgusting" and "creepy." Forget cheating on homework and chatbot friends. Some kids are getting in on a new AI trend: thinking it sucks. In the four years since chatbots went mainstream, and their marketing campaigns went into overdrive, young people have grown increasingly skeptical of the hype around LLMs. Yes, many of them still use the tech for school assignments and companionship, but according to market research firm YPulse, 37 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 cringe when they see AI content like music and videos, and more than half worry about misinformation and deepfakes.

The clip features the David Bowie track "Five Years," which includes lyrics such as "Earth was really dying (dying)." On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not "make us less connected" or "leave us behind." It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track "Five Years," which is about, among other things, the end of the world. "Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want--but we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. The snippet of "Five Years" used in the ad includes the following lyrics: I never thought I'd need so many people When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he "would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about'Five Years' and its meaning: having optimism for the future." Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com .

I'm sick of "opt-out" toggles for automatically enabled generative AI features. It's past time to make "opt in" the default setting for sensitive features. In early July, Meta rolled out a new feature where anyone using its AI app could tag public Instagram accounts and generate images using their likenesses. Meta's decision to turn the feature on by default, so that Instagram users had to actively opt out, was controversial. Multiple Instagram creators posted viral videos explaining how to opt out and expressed frustration.

Since WIRED reported on Meta's NameTag face recognition system, company executives have made confusing and conflicting remarks about its very existence. Does a software feature exist if its code has been deployed to the devices of millions of people but they can't use it yet? Not if you work at Meta . The company's executives have spent the last few weeks making this semantic argument about NameTag, the in-development face-recognition system that Meta built for its smart glasses . The inevitable result is confusion, but that's easy enough to clear up.

Twenty-six employees of Meta Platforms have filed a novel lawsuit accusing the tech giant of using AI-powered software that disproportionately targeted people with disabilities or who took medical leave in selecting workers for mass layoffs. The lawsuit, filed in Oakland, California, federal court late Monday, says that the company relied on factors such as productivity and AI token usage when it slashed thousands of jobs earlier this year, disadvantaging people who missed work because of medical conditions or to care for family members. The plaintiffs, who were notified in May that their jobs would be eliminated starting on July 22, are seeking a preliminary ruling from the court blocking Meta from completing the layoffs while they pursue their claims in private arbitration. The workers say Meta's agreements require employees to arbitrate workplace disputes individually, but do not apply to requests for temporary relief. A Meta spokesperson on Tuesday said the claims lack merit. "Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI," the spokesperson said.

Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs Meta cut its workforce by 10 percent in May. Twenty-six former Meta employees are suing the company for allegedly using biased AI tools that disproportionately selected people who took medical leave as candidates to be laid off, reports . All the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were impacted by Meta's most recent round of layoffs, which cut around 8,000 employees in the hopes of offsetting the company's investments in AI and data center infrastructure. Meta is accused of using a constellation of artificial intelligence systems to select which employees should be cut. It's claimed those included an internal AI assistant called Metamate, employee-trained second brain agents, AI-token usage dashboards and keystroke-and activity-monitoring data.

The tech giant allegedly targeted workers with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave. The layoffs were part of Meta's plan to cut 10 percent of staff in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit Monday evening accusing the tech company of using AI software to target employees with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave in its mass layoffs in May. Those layoffs were part of Meta's plans to cut 10 percent of its staff, or roughly 8,000 workers, and close about 6,000 open positions, in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives.

Meta has abruptly taken down a new feature that allowed people to use its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to make fake images from user content on Instagram. The feature was part of a broad rollout of Muse Image, a new AI image generation tool Meta released on Tuesday as part of Meta AI, the company's chatbot. It allowed Meta AI users to tag public-facing accounts on Instagram and quickly use content on those accounts to create AI-generated or altered content and images. The feature quickly sparked blowback . So much so that Meta has now admitted it "missed the mark, so it's no longer available".

Plus: OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited super app. The AI firm Anthropic has got the clearest glimpse yet at what's really going on inside large language models as they answer questions or carry out tasks. What they found ranges from the mundane to the unnerving. Researchers at the company built a tool called the Jacobian lens (or J-lens) and used it to uncover a hidden area, which they named the J-space, inside its flagship LLM, Claude. The J-space contains words related to the response a model is working on but may not ultimately produce. If Claude were a person (which it is not), you might say these hidden words reveal what's on its mind before it actually speaks.

EU says Facebook and Instagram's'addictive' design is illegal EU says Facebook and Instagram's'addictive' design is illegal The European Commission says Meta's current mitigation measures can't prevent social media addiction. The European Commission says Meta did implement addictive designs for Instagram and Facebook, and it is in violation of the bloc's Digital Services Act. It started investigating the company over addiction and safety concern for minors in May 2024, focusing on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and the apps' highly personalized recommendation systems. Now, the commission has released its preliminary findings, wherein it said that the company did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults. Meta, the commission concluded, did not take into account that those aforementioned features will fuel users' urge to keep scrolling, thereby contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use of social media. Further, it said the company disregarded how formats like stories and reels could lead to excessive use of its services.