Social Media Cold Starts, a New Sextortion Scheme, and “Never rely solely on AI.”

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1. Back in June, the Heat Initiative, an online safety advocacy group, posted a report on “The Hidden Dangers of Snapchat for Kids.” It found “90% of unwanted messages minor users received were from strangers.” And of those unwanted messages, a quarter “contained sexual imagery or language” or requested “a nude or sexually suggestive photo or video of yourself.”

   • 🎙️ With how easy it is to sign up for Snapchat (requiring only a phone number or email address and a birthdate), we created two accounts last month to see what Snapchat’s Spotlight algorithm would feed us from a cold start. Though non-explicit, the first video in the adult account was a pole dancer, and half of the content was sexually suggestive. Twenty-five percent of the teen account feed was sexually suggestive content created and posted… by minors.

2. Three hikers who used Google Gemini to plan their journey were stranded after getting lost on their descent of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. After they were rescued, the local sheriff’s office said, “It is always advisable to call the local USFS Mount Shasta Ranger station ahead of your trip to ensure you have the most accurate information, and to never rely solely on AI for your trip planning.”

   • 🎙️ “Never rely solely on AI” is golden advice. There’s a reason every AI chatbot includes a disclaimer about potential mistakes at the bottom of their interfaces. Transparency is vital. Whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever your go-to model is, be sure to ask for sources and verify information on other sites. And remember, chatbots are not actually reasoning and have a tendency to be overly agreeable.

3. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a document supporting OpenAI in a lawsuit where the New York Times accuses the AI company of copyright infringement. The DOJ says using data from the internet to train AI models is covered by the “fair use” doctrine. A spokesman for the Times stated, “The Administration’s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.”

   • 🎙️ The copyright debate tends to only look in the rear-view mirror. Tech companies argue fair use in court after using public data in the past for training and output while simultaneously inking multi-year, billion-dollar deals with publishers for much needed future data for development and relevancy.

4. While we often hear about sextortion scams targeting individual minors, the Wall Street Journal reported on a sextortion scam targeting a family’s group chat. The scammers used AI to generate non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) of a 24-year-old woman in the group from a public Facebook photo. Experts recommend setting accounts to private, using robust passwords and authentication, and never paying the scammers.

   • 🎙️ We have a sixth bonus module in Driver’s Training for the Online World all about online safety. If you’re a parent and unsure how to talk about social media, AI, gaming, sextortion, NCII, and pornography with your family… no problem! We bring it up for you and guide you along the way!

5. If you’d like to test-drive our training for free, we’ll help get you started with Module 1 LIVE on YouTube on Thursday, September 10, at 7pm (CDT). Save the date, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and share the details with friends.

   • 🎙️ We’ll go through each lesson in Module 1 together in 60 minutes: the video, quiz, discussion questions, thought experiments, and action ideas.

Photo by Stephen Leonardi