Meta's AI development isn't going quite as well as billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hoped. Once a frontrunner in the AI race, a year's worth of <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/faulty-nvidia-h100-gpus-and-hbm3-memory-caused-half-of-the-failures-during-llama-3-training-one-failure-every-three-hours-for-metas-16384-gpu-training-cluster">technical failures</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-llama-was-big-deal-developers-see-untapped-potential-2025-5">setbacks</a> to his company's "state-of-the-art" Llama 4 Behemoth have spurred Zuckerberg to pull out all the stops.
Now, the second richest man on the planet is said to be handpicking a team of some 50 AI researchers for a shadowy "superintelligence group." To do so, he's set aside some $15 billion for a <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-pay-nearly-15-billion-scale-ai-stake-startups-28-year-old-ceo">49 percent stake</a> in Scale.ai — the despotic AI startup that's been accused of using <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/28/scale-ai-remotasks-philippines-artificial-intelligence/">wage-slave labor</a> to train chatbots, commiting systemic <a href="https://www.inc.com/sam-blum/its-a-scam-accusations-of-mass-non-payment-grow-against-scale-ais-subsidiary-outlier-ai.html">wage theft</a>, and is contracted to run the Pentagon's "flagship" <a href="https://futurism.com/pentagon-signs-deal-deploy-ai-agents-military-use">weapons automation program</a>.
Zuckerberg's goal, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/technology/meta-new-ai-lab-superintelligence.html">according to the New York Times</a>, is to be the first to develop the first AI system that exceeds the abilities of the human brain — a dream, it's worth noting, which the <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/most-researchers-do-not-believe-agi-is-imminent-why-do-policymakers-act-otherwise/">majority of AI researchers</a> still think is "very unlikely."
Scale.ai is probably the biggest player in the <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/06/10/2025/metas-15-billion-investment-in-scale-ai-comes-with-a-hidden-perk">data labeling game</a>, hiring third world laborers to do the laborious task of writing, scraping, and cataloguing data for companies to train their AI systems. It'll be in good company at Zuckerberg's operation; Meta was recently caught scraping over <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-copyrighted-books-no-value">seven million</a> copyrighted books to feed Llama, leading to a major <a href="https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/">class action lawsuit</a>.
"This is like the AI equivalent of the Marshall Plan," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3lr37ato7hc2c">wrote tech critic Ed Zitron</a>, referring to the post-WWII scheme that made the US the <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/04/americanizing-france-the-marshall-plan-reconsidered/">global dynasty</a> it is today. "[Meta's] running out of training data (if they haven’t already) and all they have left is one company that generates it using sweat shop labor. Gotta wonder why this much money too."
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-10/zuckerberg-recruits-new-superintelligence-ai-group-at-meta?sref=YfHlo0rL">Per Bloomberg</a>, the "superintelligence" initiative is Meta's largest external investment to date. As part of the investment, Scale.ai co-founder Alexandr Wang is set to join Zuckerberg's secret society of AI developers. The Meta CEO even rearranged the desks so that his new team could "sit near him," according to reporting.
As part of his shadow cabal recruitment drive, Zuckerberg highlighted Meta's ad-based <a href="https://scholarship.depauw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&amp;context=politicalscience_facpubs">revenue stream</a>, suggesting that AI developers would be free from investor scrutiny if they came to work for him, according to Bloomberg. The CEO also stressed that he had enough cash tucked away to erect a "multi-gigawatt data center," which if ever realized be among the most powerful in the world. (For context, it currently costs about <a href="https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/can-we-build-a-five-gigawatt-data-center">$30 billion</a> for a one-gigawatt data center, which is about the amount it takes to power <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/31/meta-turns-to-solar-again-in-its-data-center-building-boom/">750,000 homes</a>.)
It's not currently known who else will be joining Meta's AI scrum — though the company is reportedly offering potential recruits anywhere from seven to nine figures to join. If Wang is any indication, Zuckerberg's desk is sure to be flanked by a league of headline-grabbing tech personalities.
<a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/11/business/scale-ai-ceo-alexandr-wang-issues-stark-warning-about-china/">Breathlessly described</a> as the "world's youngest self-made billionaire" — as if any billionaire is <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/712/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-self-made-billionaire">self-made</a> — Wang has become a darling of the US defense industry as of late. A notorious China hawk, Wang's cozy deals with the Pentagon come alongside <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/23/scale-ai-ceo-says-china-has-quickly-caught-the-us-with-deepseek.html">drastic escalations</a> in anti-China rhetoric, declaring an all-out "AI war" with the nation.
He'll be a major asset for Zuckerberg, whose own collaboration with the US military apparatus are well known, and <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/money-spigot-thats-never-going-190151812.html">ramping up</a> in recent months. The tech billionaire has previously given the federal government <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/nsa-collating-data-americans-facebook-gps-tax-other-records">carte blanche</a> to spy on US citizens through data scraped from Facebook. He eventually went on to become an outspoken champion of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-free-expression-speech">free speech</a>, even as he helped build a "clean" global internet <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/08/06/the-filthy-hypocrisy-of-americas-clean-china-free-internet/">closed off to Chinese nationals</a>.
Even if his "superintelligence" scheme doesn't work out — remember the metaverse, a scheme he was so obsessed with that he <a href="https://futurism.com/facebook-changes-name-meta">renamed the entire company</a>? — Zuckerberg should have more than enough dough serving up <a href="https://futurism.com/slop-farmer-ai-social-media">brainrot to the elderly</a>. There's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/cursedaiwtf/posts/1840855186522956/">always money in the banana stand</a>.
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-copyrighted-books-no-value">Meta Says It's Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No "Economic Value"</a>

Gentlemen, Behold!

"This is like the AI equivalent of the Marshall Plan."

Zuckerberg's Meta Just Made a Huge Investment in a Very Dark AI Company

Portions of the US government's official "Vaccine Hub" website, Vaccines.gov, seem to have been taken over by an AI sloperation that hosts "gay impregnation" content — and pages featuring lots of other NSFW topics, too.
As <a href="https://www.404media.co/spam-blogs-ai-slop-domains-wowlazy/">flagged by 404 Media</a>, this same spam marketing scheme seems to have also targeted websites for AI chipmaker Nvidia, National Public Radio, and Stanford University.
Prior to the AI spam pages being taken offline, a bit of clicking through on the Vaccine Hub site reveals a wild, weird world of pages with titles like "Gay Firry [sic] Porn," "Lesbian Guy," "Bi Twinks," and, hilariously, "Lesbianism and Gayism [Sic]."
While there are also plenty of explainers about vaccines on Vaccines.gov, these raunchy pages contain no information about healthcare at all.
As for "gay impregnation," that porn-brained terminology seems to be shorthand for "male impregnation," an umbrella term used for fantasies of cisgender men being impregnated by other men, the scientific pursuit of cis male pregnancies, and the real-life occurrence of transgender men getting pregnant.
The latter became something of a right-wing strawman when Apple added a pregnant man emoji to its library, though that appears to have more to do with an <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-pregnant">obsession with reproduction and breeding</a> than anything else.
The Vaccines.gov "gay impregnation" page seemed primarily to point to the scientific part of the so-called "mpreg" trifecta.
"With the rapid progress being made in the fields of reproductive medicine, genetics, and assisted reproduction, it's not entirely implausible to imagine a future where male pregnancy could become a reality," the page read, prior to being taken down. "For instance, recent studies have explored the possibility of using artificial wombs or ectogenic pregnancies, where an embryo is developed outside of a human body."
The other porn-y pages we viewed — which we won't link to, but which are easy enough to find with a bit of Google elbow grease — feature the same meandering and faux-intellectual syntax that seems very likely AI-generated.
The "Bi Twinks" page, for instance, repeatedly explains what the terms "bisexuality" and "twink" mean, before insisting on the kind of wokeness that the Trump administration is so adamantly against.
"When considering the intersection of these identities," the page reads, "it's crucial to approach the topic with sensitivity, understanding the complexities and nuances of sexual orientation and gender expression."
Though the Nvidia pages were taken down after 404 contacted the chipmaker, archival snapshots show that those, too, struck a hilariously woke tone.
"The exploration of Brazilian facesitting fart games, while seemingly niche, opens up broader discussions on sexuality, humor, and cultural diversity," the obvious AI slop description on the formerly Nvidia-hosted "Brazilian facesitting games" page reads. "It underscores the importance of respecting and understanding the varied ways in which people express themselves sexually and find humor in different activities."
Because the pages were so obviously written by AI, some of the images that ended up featured alongside the text are either nonsensical or, in some instances disturbing.
On Vaccine.gov's "Gay Straight Clips" page, for instance, a random image of a woman wearing clip-in hair extensions is included without context, while the page titled "Is Everyone Gay" features a similarly decontextualized photo of NBA superstar Charles Barkley.
The "Gay Impregnation" page also, confusingly, is home to what appears to be an anti-incest public service announcement. A quick reverse image search reveals that the ad <a href="https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/anti-incest-billboard-irks-fla-county-officials/85-273450108">made waves online</a> in 2016 when Florida officials asked Refuge House, the abuse survivor nonprofit that put it up along a Panhandle highway, to take it down because it could upset economic development.
How or why that ad got onto the page is, like everything else with this debacle, a mystery.
We've reached out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP), both of which are involved in the government's vaccine messaging, to ask what's up with Vaccines.gov.
Given that health secretary and <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-suggests-getting-measles">known anti-vaxxer</a> Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-poppers-hiv-prevention">gutted the latter</a>, it's not all that shocking that the site was not only abandoned but co-opted by AI slop. So goes the United States government, apparently.
More on mpreg: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-pregnant">Elon Musk Says He Longs to Get Pregnant So He Can Produce as Many Children as Possible</a>

Slop-eration

This is equal parts hilarious and disturbing.

Government Website Caught Hosting "Gay Impregnation" Content

In the artificial intelligence world, there are two streams. One is the cool, analytical current of AI scholarship, flowing with genuine curiosity and drive to verify. The other is the boiling-hot torrent of commercial AI — excited, frenetic, gushing with utopian promises.
As AI hype blasts off <a href="https://futurism.com/google-deepmind-hassabis">into the heavens</a>, one notable tech critic asks an important question: which of these streams should drive AI development?
Yesterday, neural scientist, AI scholar and outspoken OpenAI critic Gary Marcus took to X-formerly-Twitter to blast OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's brand of incessant AI hype.
"Sam keeps doubling down on bigger and bigger promises that are harder to keep," <a href="https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/1932582295124521339">Marcus wrote</a>. "Did Elizabeth Holmes do the same?"
The post was accompanied by a picture of Altman's head superimposed over a portrait of the <a href="https://qz.com/elizabeth-holmes-appeal-theranos-denied-1851766198">infamous conwoman</a>, whose $9 billion blood-testing company Theranos collapsed after investigators discovered its leaders had <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/07/tech/theranos-rise-and-fall">deceived investors</a> by wildly overhyping their tech's abilities.
Marcus' comment came just hours after Altman published a characteristically strident essay, "<a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity">The Gentle Singularity</a>," in which he claims that "humanity is close to building digital superintelligence" — something which a lot of experts in the space say is <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/most-researchers-do-not-believe-agi-is-imminent-why-do-policymakers-act-otherwise/">patently false</a>.
Altman bit back in response, fuming that he respects Marcus' "commitment to the bit." Marcus is a <a href="https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openai-in-deep-trouble">longtime critic</a> of Altman's chosen model of AI production, "scaling," where tech companies dump untold billions into ever-larger systems powered by more processing power and larger quantities of data, scraped without the permission of its original creators.
Though Altman projects nothing but confidence, the strategy's long-term prospects remain divisive. It took a hit earlier this year, for instance, when Chinese company DeepSeek <a href="https://futurism.com/silicon-valley-shambles-chinese-startup-deepseek">released a large language model</a> (LLM) roughly equal to OpenAI's ChatGPT, developed for a fraction of the cost.
"Can't tell if he is a troll or just extremely intellectually dishonest," Altman continued in his broadside against Marcus. "Hundreds of millions of happy users, 5th biggest website in the world, people talking about it being the biggest change to their productivity ever... we deliver, he keeps ordering us off his lawn."
For his part, Marcus says he has no problem with OpenAI's commercial achievements, per se.
"I would be singing OpenAI's praises," the critic replied, "if it weren’t for the hype, much of it fanned by you, that has massively overstated what the technology can do today and in the near future."
If one could summarize Marcus' contention, it might be said that one can either be a rigorous AI scholar, or a billionaire tech emperor — but not both.
"I think this hype is harming the world," he said.
Altman's deep desire to be an AI thought leader — complete with bizarre pseudo-manifestos — is constantly putting him at odds with his tech dynasty, as his endless promises of "<a href="https://time.com/7205596/sam-altman-superintelligence-agi/">superintelligence</a>," "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1kj6wSO4so">solving physics</a>," and "<a href="https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/sam-altman-perfect-ai-tiny-model-superhuman-reasoning">superhuman reasoning</a>" make clear. The drive to hype his brand, not to mention his <a href="https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-is-sam-altman-so-obsessed-with">personal image</a>, is constantly leading him to fantastic conclusions that fewer serious researchers would indulge, like the playground fantasy that functional <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-humanoid-robots-future-of-work-ai-2025-5">humanoid robots</a> "aren't very far away."
This conflict also leads him to make unforced errors in real life, such as reversing course on OpenAI's long-stated <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-15/openai-tumult-raises-question-of-how-open-an-ai-company-should-be">open source</a> development model, and backtracking on his stance supporting <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-sam-altman-ai-regulation-trump/">strong AI regulation</a> — something he and Marcus once stood side by side on, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/03/open-ai-sam-altman-chatgpt-gary-marcus-taming-silicon-valley">literally</a>.
Which of the two streams ultimately wins out will be decided in the years to come. For now, it seems commercial AI — and all the hype that follows — is dominating the conversation, though whether it can keep its lead as the <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/">financial losses mount</a> is anyone's guess.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-built-ethical-data">The Tech Industry Said It Was "Impossible" to Create AI Based Entirely on Ethically-Sourced Data, So These Scientists Proved Them Wrong in Spectacular Fashion</a>

Gary's Jawed

"Can't tell if he is a troll or just extremely intellectually dishonest."

Sam Altman Goes Off at AI Skeptic

Billionaire Elon Musk appears to have some major regrets about losing his composure during his <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-musk-bromance-exploded">blowout verbal brawl</a> with former bestie president Donald Trump last week.
Musk and Trump <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-cutting-off-nasa">have been at each other's throats</a> for well over a week. Their on-and-off-again bromance collapsed in spectacular fashion when Musk excoriated Trump's so-called "big, beautiful bill" as a "<a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-donald-trump-war">disgusting abomination</a>," torching any goodwill from the Republican party in the process.
Trump shot back almost immediately, <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-calls-terminating-elon-musk-government-contracts">threatening</a> to revoke all of Musk's government contracts, actions that likely would've cost the mercurial CEO dearly.
During his meltdown, Musk also dropped what he called a "really big bomb," <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-trump-epstein-files">claiming</a> in a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930703865801810022">since-deleted tweet</a> that Trump is in the "Epstein files," referring to deceased pedophile sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, arguing that's the "real reason they have not been made public."
Days later, the dust is seemingly beginning to settle. In a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1932695486684950962">groveling tweet</a> posted in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Musk said that "I regret some of my posts" about Trump last week.
"They went too far," a cowering Musk confessed.
It's a notable attempt to save face, highlighting just how much power Trump holds over even the richest man in the world. However, which exact claims Musk is reneging on remains murky. Is he apologizing for correctly pointing out that Trump once had a long and close relationship with Epstein?
A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/trump-jeffrey-epstein-tapes">wealth of evidence</a> suggests the president did indeed spend a lot of time with the late sex trafficker. In fact, Musk's claim that Trump is in the "Epstein files" — heavily redacted excerpts of which were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/03/jeffrey-epstein-list-names-released">made public in early 2024</a> — is true, though Trump wasn't accused of wrongdoing in the documents.
Numerous photos show Trump and Epstein hanging out back in the day, and in an <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-trump-once-calling-233000593.html">eyebrow-raising 2002 quote</a>, Trump even said that Epstein "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
Musk's uncharacteristic capitulation suggests Trump's threat of revoking billions of dollars worth of government contracts, which have <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/06/08/the-100-ways-elon-musk-and-his-companies-allegedly-benefited-from-working-with-donald-trum">propped up his businesses for decades</a>, holds substantial sway over him.
Following his <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-black-eye-drug-claims">purported departure</a> from the world of politics last month, Musk claimed he would refocus his efforts on his businesses, including Tesla and SpaceX.
His EV maker, in particular, has seen <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-falling-worldwide-norway">plummeting sales</a> due to his embrace of far-right ideologies, actions that have greatly tarnished the brand.
Musk's space company SpaceX is also <a href="https://futurism.com/spacex-failing-starship">facing major headwinds</a> in developing its Mars-bound Starship rocket. A major loss in government funding could easily make matters far worse.
Are Musk's latest comments a sign of actual regret — or is the entrepreneur simply looking out for his own bottom line? Given the drama we've seen unfold over the past few weeks, his relationship with Trump was likely never on particularly solid ground to begin with.
Musk's businesses, however, seem to be safe for now. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lrdwqmhvdl2g">told reporters</a> on Wednesday afternoon that "no efforts have been made" to review Musk's government contracts.
Trump, for his part, seems ready to bury the hatchet with his former number one ally.
"I think he feels very badly that he said that," the president <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/06/11/us-news/donald-trump-responds-to-elon-musks-apology-after-public-feud/">told the New York Post</a>, referring to Musk's mea culpa. 
Mere days ago, Trump <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-issues-new-threat-elon-musk">sang a very different tune</a>.
In an <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-elon-musk-consequences-funds-democratic-candidates-rcna211605">interview with NBC News</a> over the week, he warned that Musk would "pay very serious consequences" if he were to jump ship and start funding Democrats.
More on Trump and Epstein: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-trump-epstein-files">Elon Musk Melts Down, Claims Trump Is In The "Epstein Files" and That's the Reason They Haven't Been Released</a>

Jet Setters

He says he "went too far."

Elon Musk Apologizes for Accurately Pointing Out That Trump Was Extremely Close Friends With Jeffrey Epstein

Like all websites, ChatGPT is fallible — and when it went down this week, people lost their godforsaken minds.
According to <a href="https://status.openai.com/">OpenAI's status page</a>, the company has experienced major issues this week, leading to breathless coverage from sites like <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/live/chatgpt-down-june-10">TechRadar</a> and <a href="https://www.the-independent.com/tech/chatgpt-down-outage-open-ai-broken-b2767111.htm">The Independent</a> — and, unsurprisingly, some massive freakouts on social media.
"F*ck I can't code without ChatGPT," someone on the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1l7u05r/comment/mwzjm3n/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">r/ChatGPT subreddit</a> raged. "Ok I can but I am too dependent on ChatGPT to do the grunt work lol."
In that same thread, one purported teacher got incredibly real about their students' over-reliance on the chatbot — and their own, too.
"I'm a professor and I have fifty students in my class," <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1l7u05r/comment/mx0fv9t/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">the user shared</a>. "There was an essay due this morning and I received... nine of them! Guess that means that eighty percent of my students are too dependent on GPT to write their own essay. Kind of a fascinating natural experiment."
"On the other hand," the teacher continued, "I am really struggling to grade these nine essays on my own."
Things were a bit less deep on X, where jokes and GIFs abounded.
"ChatGPT is down….. Which means I actually have to type out my own emails at work," an <a href="https://x.com/GraceNft89/status/1932389970515230791">apparent NFT enthusiast tweeted</a>. "Send prayers."
"ChatGPT is down," <a href="https://x.com/altaaaf10/status/1932371506216284167">another user posted</a>, alongside a gif of a young man having a meltdown. "How will I answer if someone asks me my name[?]"
"I hope ChatGPT stays down forever," <a href="https://x.com/bbirdbPhD/status/1932626824292401662">another person wrote</a>. "Nothing of human value would be lost."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
society if ChatGPT is shut down forever <a href="https://t.co/bfiNUUHA4V">pic.twitter.com/bfiNUUHA4V</a>
&mdash; the Beverly of Cheverly (@NickoGallo) <a href="https://twitter.com/NickoGallo/status/1932797130407604321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Users on Bluesky, the Twitter expat site, had only vitriol for freaked-out ChatGPT-ers.
"ChatGPT is down yet, amazingly, I am somehow still able to write," one <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/craigcalcaterra.bsky.social/post/3lrawltori22g">self-professed newsletter writer</a> quipped.
"Please check on the most annoying people in your life," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/saraalfageeh.bsky.social/post/3lrb6pqxgak25">another joked</a>.
Others still pointed out the <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/jeff.doctor/post/3lrb77dfilk2x">coincidental timing</a> between the OpenAI outage and the publication of <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">Futurism's investigation into ChatGPT delusions</a> — though we have to admit, it was probably pure happenstance.
There's little doubt that the outage resulted, at very least, in some work stoppage for folks who are indeed too reliant upon the bot to operate normally without it.
Like the <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2012/06/21/technology/twitter-down/index.htm">Twitter outage freakouts</a> of yore, the overwhelming urge to collectively joke our way through this most recent internet discomfort was palpable — except, perhaps, for those actual <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-users-delusions">ChatGPT addicts</a> who were too unsettled to post through it.
More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions</a>

Down Bad

"Please check on the most annoying people in your life."

People Pretty Much Lost Their Minds When ChatGPT Went Down

Disney and NBCUniversal — a pair of media behemoths behind franchises ranging from "Star Wars" and "Toy Story" to "Minions" and "Shrek" — are suing AI company Midjourney, accusing it of enabling copyright infringement on a massive scale through its AI image generator tech.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in a California district court today, the two Hollywood juggernauts accused the firm of ignoring its previous requests to stop violating their intellectual property rights.
"Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism," the scathing complaint reads, as <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/disney-and-universal-sue-midjourney-over-ai-generated-copyright-infringements-e772859f">quoted by the Wall Street Journal</a>.
It's a major escalation in the fight between copyright holders and AI firms, a battle that has been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/getty-images-sues-stable-diffusion">brewing for years</a>. <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/11/disney-nbcu-midjourney-copyright">Per Axios</a>, it's the "first legal action that major Hollywood studios have taken against a generative AI company."
And it's not just the use of image generators; generative AI writ large has triggered a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-copyright-case-tracker/">barrage of lawsuits</a>, with media companies accusing the likes of OpenAI and Google of training their large language models on their materials without fair compensation.
Those disputes have turned into a major pain point for the AI industry, despite surging enthusiasm for the tech.
Considering the sheer size of both Disney and Universal — Disney is the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/021815/worlds-top-ten-media-companies-dis-cmcsa-fox.aspx">third largest</a> media company by market cap in the world — Midjourney could soon be in a world of hurt.
Disney, in particular, has a long track record of closely guarding its enormous cache of intellectual property.
"Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works," said Disney's chief legal compliance officer, Horacio Gutierrez, in a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/11/disney-nbcu-midjourney-copyright">statement</a>.
"We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity," he added. "But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing."
The lawsuit explained in an example how Midjourney users could easily request a picture of the Disney-owned "Star Wars" character Darth Vader in a "particular setting or doing a particular action," and the AI "obliges by generating and displaying a high-quality, downloadable image."
That kind of loose approach to copyright has been an open secret for quite some time. In January 2024, noted AI critic Gary Marcus and film industry concept artist Reid Southen warned in a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/midjourney-copyright">piece for IEEE Spectrum</a> that tools like Midjourney and OpenAI's DALL-E3 could <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-image-generators-copyrighted-characters">land them in a "copyright minefield</a>."
The pair found that it was "easy to generate many plagiaristic outputs, with brief prompts related to commercial films," including well-known Marvel superheroes, Nintendo's Super Mario, and Disney's Darth Vader.
Disney and Universal are framing their legal action as a way to "protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us," said NBCU executive VP and general of counsel Kim Harris in the statement.
Given the lack of a clear legal precedent, it'll be fascinating to watch the lawsuit unfold over what's likely to turn into a years-long courtroom battle.
More on Midjourney: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-artist-furious-stealing-work">Self-Styled "AI Artist" Furious That People Are "Blatantly Stealing My Work"</a>

IP Theft

"Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism."

"Piracy Is Piracy": Disney Sues Midjourney for Massive Copyright Violation

The social media gods can be cruel.
Just ask Natalie Reynolds, an influencer with millions of followers, who was so upset that she got banned from TikTok that she recently went to one of the social media company's offices and was <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/IOl4nvWhOjI?si=O6QRVfHEs_f5EjLN">filmed crying and screaming</a> while on the phone with her dad.
"Dad, they won't let me in," she screamed. "I need my TikTok account unbanned."
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Natalie Reynolds’ Emotional Meltdown Outside TikTok HQ" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IOl4nvWhOjI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Reynolds, who had 2.5 million followers on TikTok, was banned for apparently sparking the ire of rival influencer <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@brookemonk_">Brook Monke</a> and other TikTok users, who have accused Reynolds of <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@piffpeterson/video/7495191405099273515">copying Monke's content</a>, which consists of dances, skits, challenges, and pranks.
In <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/a-iqCD49Nmw?si=s0Kns-Cmjj27jJXr">one video</a> posted to YouTube, a tearful Reynolds, with mascara running down her face, said she plans to pursue legal actions against an unnamed creator, likely referring to Monke.
Even with the TikTok HQ stunt, Reynolds was clearly milking this situation by blanketing the internet with new content on her other social media accounts, including an alt TikTok page. In <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@derekb722/video/7513627325162982686">one skit</a>, she jokingly manned a Wendy's cash register, presumably riffing on the idea that she no longer had TikTok income.
"She fell off so hard, bro," the person who filmed her said on the video.
Reynolds had it coming. Besides accusations of pumping out unoriginal content that was cribbed from other TikTok users, Reynolds is notorious for engaging in cruel stunts such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm5XVSdaw_0">daring a woman to jump in a lake</a> and then running away when the woman almost drowned.
They're ridiculous videos, but they garner a ton of views from people who are either perplexed or angry by the weird spectacles that she stages for online virality.
They may seem silly, but she's following a well-worn path to riches and fame that was set by more established social media stars such as <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/logan-paul-controversies-timeline-1234785537/">Logan Paul</a>, who's notorious for tasteless capers like filming a visit to a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42644321">Japanese forest known for suicides</a>.
The attention, whether love or hate, grabs countless eyeballs. And as long as it remains a lucrative career, people like Reynolds will continue making fools of themselves for our own enjoyment, horror, or both.
More on influencers: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/influencer-personality-traits">Scientists Figured Out the Personality Traits of Influencers, and It Could Explain A Lot</a>

FAFO

"Dad, they won't let me in," she screamed.

Influencer Sobs in Front of TikTok Headquarters After Getting Banned

Although hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into AI development, nearly 75 percent of businesses have <a href="https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-05-06-ibm-study-ceos-double-down-on-ai-while-navigating-enterprise-hurdles">failed to deliver</a> the return on investment promised to them. The hyped up tech is notoriously buggy and in <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-industry-problem-smarter-hallucinating">some ways now actually</a> getting worse, with <a href="https://www.ciodive.com/news/AI-project-fail-data-SPGlobal/742590/">project failure rates</a> on the rise.
Despite staring into the maw of a <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/">colossal money pit</a>, tech CEOs are doubling down, announcing plans to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-earnings-ai-slowdown-microsoft-meta-google-data-centers-2025-5">increase spending</a> on AI development, going as far as laying off <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonsnyder/2025/02/12/ai-reset-layoffs-rto-and-the-new-realities-of-work/">armies of workers</a> to cut down on expenditures.
And while <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/technology/billionaire-fund-manager-skeptical-of-ai-backs-shocking-stock">some investors</a> footing the bill for big tech's AI bacchanalia are starting to wonder when they'll see cash start trickling back into their pockets, private equity billionaire Robert Smith isn't one of them.
Speaking at the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-05/vista-ceo-says-ai-to-force-60-of-superreturn-crowd-to-seek-work">SuperReturn conference</a> in Berlin last week, Smith told a crowd of 5,500 of his fellow ultrarich investors that at least 60 percent of them would be out on the street within a year thanks to the power of AI.
"We think that next year, 40 percent of the people at this conference will have an AI agent and the remaining 60 percent will be looking for work," Smith lectured. "There are 1 billion knowledge workers on the planet today and all of those jobs will change. I’m not saying they’ll all go away, but they will all change."
"You will have hyperproductive people in organizations, and you will have people who will need to find other things to do," the investor ominously intoned.
Smith was speaking primarily about "AI agents," a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/14/no-one-knows-what-the-hell-an-ai-agent-is/">vague sales term</a> that mostly seems to mean "large language model that can complete tasks on its own." For example, OpenAI rolled out a research "Operator" that was supposed to help compile research from all over the web into detailed analytical reports earlier this year.
There's only one issue with the billionaire's prediction — AI agents so far remain <a href="https://futurism.com/professors-company-ai-agents">absolutely awful</a> at doing all but the simplest tasks, and there's <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01502">little indication</a> the industry is about to rapidly revolutionize their potential anytime soon. (OpenAI's Operator is no exception, often conflating <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ai-researcher-hallucinates">internet rumor</a> with scholarly fact.)
Meanwhile in the real world, a growing number of businesses that rushed to replace workers with AI agents, like the financial startup <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">Klarna</a>, have now come to regret their decision as it <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">largely blows up in their faces</a>.
It doesn't take an AI agent to scrape together another explanation for Smith's absurd claim. His private equity fund, Vista Equity Partners, is among the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/011116/worlds-top-10-private-equity-firms-apo-bx.asp">largest in the world</a>. Dealing almost exclusively in software and tech, Smith has a cozy relationship with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and just raised <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/04/18/vista-equity-new-fund-raise-20-billion">$20 billion</a> for AI spending — its largest fund to date.
Now responsible for billions of dollars in <a href="https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/vista-equity-after-marathon-flagship-fundraise-hits-the-market-with-mid-market-pools/">investments</a> that are tied down to a disappointing AI industry, it's really just a matter of time for Smith before his claims either pay out — or the <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-hype-america-financial-ruin">chickens come home to roost</a>.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat</a>

Open2Work

Nightmare scenario.

Investment CEO Tells Convention Audience That 60 Percent of Them Will Be Unemployed Next Year Due to AI

CEOs are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence tools to create avatars of themselves that can deal with mundane tasks — like attending high stakes media interviews on their behalf, for example.
A slew of AI startups with names like Personal AI, Delphi, and Tavus are scrambling to court executives who will let them train models — on stuff like keynote speeches, interviews, and meeting transcripts — to create a digital CEO double.
"It’s common for people across the company to have questions for the CEO, but he doesn’t have time to answer them all," Jean Yves Couput, senior advisor to footwear company Salomon CEO Guillaume Meyzenq, <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ceos-try-cloning-ai?rc=st1fhw">told The Information</a>.
With the help of San-Francisco-based startup Personal AI, Meyzenq trained an AI chatbot to answer his staffers' annoying questions about company culture, mission, and strategy, per Couput.
"Now, they can ask his ‘digital brain’ and get an answer immediately," he said.
But The Information also alluded to problems, saying the team was currently working on "reducing the chatbot’s hallucinations." And <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/ai-ceo-clones-trust-gap">as Axios found</a>, the CEO chatbots are plagued by familiar issues as they spout braindead hallucinations, with all the apparent authority of a company CEO.
Case in point, when reporter Megan Morrone asked the digital clone of Dara Ladjevardian, co-founder and CEO of AI cloning platform Delphi, whether its human counterpart had access to their chat, it erroneously said no.
Ladjevardian told Morrone that it was due to a "bug." No kidding.
In other words, once you cut through the hype, it turns out the bots are stuck in the same gray area as virtually all enterprise attempts to deploy AI: they can rattle off stuff that sounds authoritative, but you have to double check it all to make sure it's not totally wrong about the basics.
"For now it's kind of a novelty," AI coding startup Bolt CEO Eric Simons told The Information. "This thing won’t be doing one-on-ones with my employees yet, but it’s good enough to handle some public facing roles and we’re actively looking into other ways to use it."
It's an especially interesting reality given the conversation the possibility of replacing executives with AI in the long run. Last year, experts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/ai-chief-executives.html">told the New York Times</a> that chatbots may not only replace lower-rung workers, but they could shake up executive suites as well.
"The change delivered by AI in corporations will be as great or greater at the higher strategic levels of management as the lower ranks," former IBM senior consulting partner Saul Berman told the NYT at the time.
A <a href="https://business.edx.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/edX_Workplace_Intelligence_AI_Report.pdf">stunning 47 percent</a> of several hundred CEOs and other executives surveyed in 2023 by Harvard and MIT said the role of CEOs should be completely automated by AI.
A separate survey <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-fear-ai-jobs">conducted by IT consulting firm AND Digital</a> similarly found that almost half of business leader respondents said they believed AI could take their jobs.
But currently, the reality falls way short of the hype, with AI avatars of CEOs spreading confusion among company employees and the public.
Then there's the optics of extremely well-paid chief executives offloading their work in the first place. AI job automation has unsurprisingly proven extremely unpopular with the public, with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn, for instance, <a href="https://futurism.com/duolingo-ceo-ai-reaction">facing massive public backlash</a> for boasting that his company was replacing human contractors with AI.
By dumping their workload onto their digital doubles, CEOs could send the wrong signal.
"It could risk sending messages either to the public or to their employees that there is a lack of accountability at the very top," social scientist and AI researcher Julie Carpenter told Axios.
"It's sort of widening that gap between executive privilege, technical privilege and the precarity of laborers," she added.
More on CEOs and AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions</a>

Talk to the AI, Because the CEO Isn't Listening

They can't even get the basics right.

CEOs Are Creating AI Copies of Themselves That Are Spouting Braindead Hallucinations to Their Confused Underlings

Waymo is hiring a "<a href="https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs/community-public-affairs-specialist-los-angeles-california-united-states">community and public affairs specialist</a>" — at the same time that the company's self-driving vehicles were becoming unwitting participants in Los Angeles' anti-immigration raid protests.
After rabblerousers set fire to a bunch of Waymo's driverless cabs, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymo-robotaxi-fire-los-angeles">the company suspended service</a> in the city of Angels and San Francisco, where <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/map-waymo-suspended-sf-service-anti-ice-protests-20369115.php">satellite solidarity protests</a> also broke out. While it was all going down, the public affairs specialist listing was live, like a cautionary tale for the challenges of the role.
"Our focus is implementing advocacy, grassroots, and grasstops campaigns to drive acceptance and adoption of our life-saving technology," reads the listing. "We work directly with key third party groups and influencers to educate the public on the safety benefits of Waymo's fully autonomous driving technology."
With compensation ranging from $125,000 to $175,000 per year, the Google-owned robotaxi service is seeking someone who can "develop and sustain relationships with influential community organizations and (non-elected) leaders" as the company attempts to "build trust" and "maintain Waymo's ability to operate in Los Angeles County."
Though there's ample allusion to "community" — a word used a total of 10 times on the job listing — Waymo was not explicit in the ad about why it's hiring for such a liaison at this precise moment. And to be fair, those outside of leftist circles in LA and online may also be a bit perplexed about why the company was targeted amid protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As tech journalist <a href="https://x.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1931917252351467961">Taylor Lorenz noted on X</a> over the weekend, it appears that activists zeroed in on Waymos as a symbol of state surveillance because, as <a href="https://www.404media.co/lapd-publishes-crime-footage-it-got-from-a-waymo-driverless-car/">404 Media flagged</a> earlier this year, the Los Angeles Police Department has used footage from the company for investigative purposes.
"People view the cars as an extension of the police," Lorenz wrote, linking to the 404 piece.
Because the more destructive aspects of the anti-ICE protests were seemingly decentralized and spontaneous, there's no way to know for sure whose idea it was to start torching Waymos.
With that in mind, the company clearly wants to start doing the hard work of extricating its brand from that of the massively unpopular federal agency — though issuing a statement in solidarity with the communities it's trying to court would probably make for a better start. Take note, applicants.
Updated to clarify that the job listing was already up at the time of the attacks on Waymo vehicles.
More on robotaxis: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-robotaxis-remote-controlled-human-employees">Elon Musk's "Robotaxis" Have a Dirty Secret</a>