Top Stories
Stop X’s Grok AI From Training on Your Tweets

Top Stories Tamfitronics

The fallout from CrowdStrike’s deleterious software update came into full view this week as system administrators and IT staffers scrambled to get digital systems back online and return operations to normal. Elsewhere, the Olympics began this week, and Paris is ready with a controversial new surveillance system that hints at a future of ubiquitous CCTV camera coverage. And researchers revealed new findings this week about the innovative malware Russia used in January to sabotage a heating utility in Lviv and cut heat to 600 Ukrainian buildings at the coldest point in the year.

The US Department of Defense has a $141 billion idea to modernize US intercontinental ballistic missiles and their silos around the country. Meanwhile, the European Commission is allocating €7.3 billion for defense research—from drones and tanks to battleships and space intelligence—over the next seven years. And hackers have established a “ghost” network to quietly spread malware on the Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub.

In more encouraging news, a former Google engineer has built a prototype search engine, dubbed webXray, meant to allow users to find specific privacy violations onlinedetermine which sites are tracking you, and see where all that data goes.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Israel Reportedly Worked to Keep Info on Pegasus Spyware Out of US Courts

Leaked files obtained by The Guardian reveal that the Israeli government took extraordinary measures to prevent information about the Pegasus spyware system from falling into the hands of US courts, including seizing files directly from the company to prevent legal disclosure. The spyware is the product of the Israel-based NSO Group. It allows users to infect smartphones, extract messages and photos, record calls, and secretly activate microphones. NSO Group faces legal action in the US brought by WhatsAppwhich claims the company engineered Pegasus to target users of its messaging software. According to WhatsApp, more than 1,400 of its users were targeted. NSO, whose software has been allegedly tied to the harassment and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has denied any wrongdoing.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Massive Screwup Leaves BIOS on 200+ Computer Models Vulnerable

In an effort to thwart BIOS-based threats, prompted in part by the rollout of a powerful rootkit designed by a Chinese researcher in 2007, Secure Boot became a widely adopted tool. Unfortunately, researchers at the security firm Binarly have revealed that Secure Boot is now “completely compromised” on more than 200 device models, affecting major hardware manufacturers like Dell, Acer, and Intel. The incident was the result of a weak cryptographic key used to establish trust between hardware and firmware systems. AMI, the key’s owner, says it was meant to be used for testing and should never have made its way into production.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Musk’s AI system, Grok, Is Now Feeding on All Your Tweets

Following in Meta’s footsteps, Elon Musk’s X quietly adjusted its settings this week to give the company’s AI system—known as Grok—access to all of its users’ posts. There is a way to prevent Grok from ingesting your posts; however, you cannot perform this action from the mobile app. You’ll need to access X’s Settings using a desktop computer; select Privacy and Safetythen select Grokand then uncheck the box. Or just head straight here to go directly to the right settings page. (You can also delete your conversation history with Grok, if you have one, by clicking Delete conversation history.)

Top Stories
X’s AI Bot Is Reporting Shaggy dog story Posts as True Data

Top Stories Tamfitronics

“Adams vs. Earthquake: 50,000 Law enforcement officers in Subway Showdown” is an right headline the AI generated in accordance to (obviously silly story) posts on X.

Top Stories Tamfitronics A photograph of a hand conserving a smartphone displaying the Grok AI logo. The X logo shines in the background.

Credit: Ascannio/Shutterstock


When you happen to pay for Twitter (sorry, X), you now maintain rating entry to to Grok, the firm’s AI bot. Section of that privilege entails rating entry to to a trending recordsdata feed in the Discover tab powered by the firm’s synthetic intelligence. Basically the most straightforward inconvenience? Or no longer it’s garbage.

Here is how Grok’s trending recordsdata feed appears to work: The bot pulls together the “high” posts concerning any given recordsdata story, then generates a abstract of the recordsdata from those posts. Simple ample, and something that we now maintain viewed generative AI attain sooner than. But sooner than you fireplace your human writers and editors and build Grok responsible of the recordsdata, it’s possible you’ll maybe maybe maybe are wanting to glimpse how precisely it’s reporting works.

Grok appears to be aggregating silly story tweets and spitting out an AI-generated resolution as right recordsdata. You could maybe maybe maybe glimpse that from this post shared by X user BrettRedacted following the earthquake that shook mighty of the Fresh York Metropolis metro space. The bot generated the headline: “Adams vs. Earthquake: 50,000 Law enforcement officers in Subway Showdown,” then studies how Fresh York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams is deploying the NYPD to “prevent further earthquakes,” pondering the usage of “robo police officers,” and has ordered “every cop in the metropolis” to “shoot the damn earthquake sooner than it strikes again.”

Obvious, we live in unheard of instances, but no cheap particular person would ever judge that Grok’s abstract of the recordsdata became preferrred. When you happen to a technique or the opposite could maybe maybe now not desire for your self, it’s possible you’ll maybe maybe also steal a peek on the head posts fueling that recordsdata abstract, which in this case, are all silly story tweets about the mayor’s response to the earthquake.

Tweet can also were deleted

That is a tragic but humorous instance of the assert of X in 2024. Previous variations of the positioning would were the assert to be to look at both official updates on breaking recordsdata cherish the NYC earthquake, and snigger on the jokes about the inconvenience. Now, the positioning treats the jokes as recordsdata. You rating what you pay for, I guess.

It would now not steal mighty foresight to mirror how this inconvenience goes from unhappy but humorous to simply dangerous. What happens when Grok decides to “fable” on something that appears before the total lot peek official, but is in accordance to the rampant misinformation spreading across the positioning? An X user can also take a look at into the Discover page to glimpse that their metropolis is being bombed, or that a candidate of their election did something illegal, when neither “story” is largely preferrred.

While we can’t quit the positioning from pushing this crap, we can all collectively conform to no longer treat Grok, or any generate AI for that matter, as a official recordsdata provide, or a preferrred summarizer of the day’s high reviews.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Lifehacker Save

Lifehacker has been a plod-to provide of tech attend and lifestyles advice since 2005. Our mission is to provide authentic tech attend and credible, functional, science-based entirely entirely lifestyles advice to attend you live better.

© 2001-2024 Ziff Davis, LLC., A ZIFF DAVIS COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Lifehacker is a federally registered trademark of Ziff Davis and could maybe maybe no longer be utilized by third parties with out explicit permission. The cloak of third-party emblems and change names on this space would now not basically cloak any affiliation or theendorsement of Lifehacker. When you happen to click on an affiliate link and purchase a product or carrier, we can be paid a fee by that carrier provider.

Lifehacker supports Neighborhood Dusky and its mission to create biggergreaterdiversity in media voices and media ownerships.