Samantha Cole

Los Angeles, New York

Co-Founder and Journalist at 404 Media

journalist @404mediaco author of HOW SEX CHANGED THE INTERNET [email protected] signal: sam.404

Articles

Behind the Blog: Brainrot and Brain Power Hours

1 week ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss the death of Mr. Deepfakes, introducing kids to the Manosphere, and working on big, difficult, high-brain-power scoops. SAM: I’m gonna use my time to give a huge shoutout to Bellingcat, the CBC, and Danish publications Politiken and Tjekdet for this story, where they spent a ton of time and effort tracking down the guy behind Mr. Deepfakes.
Watch an AI-Generated Recruiter Make a Job Interview Even Worse

1 week ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

Job hunting can be a dehumanizing, demoralizing experience even if you’re interacting with an empathetic recruiter on the other end. For the 1.7 million people slogging through long-term unemployment in the U.S., the process is grueling at best. Add to this the advent of AI-generated recruiter avatars that glitch out on you before you even speak to a real person at the company you’re trying to work for, and now you’re truly in hell.
Mr. Deepfakes, the Biggest Deepfake Porn Site on the Internet, Says It’s Shutting Down for Good

1 week ago | flipboard.com | Emanuel Maiberg |Samantha Cole

11 hours agoGenerative AI is making this long-con text message scam easier and trickier than ever. Ever gotten a random text that starts with a name that’s not yours, in a scenario you’ve never been in? Maybe someone thinks you’re "Emily from the gym" or "Daniel from the yacht club." You reply with the classic …
Behind the Blog: The News Hits Different

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss eyebrow-raising apps, more media mess, and lovingly gazing at AI slop.
Polygon Acquired by Porn Mogul Who Co-Founded Brazzers

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

Polygon, Vox Media’s video games website, has been acquired by Valnet, a company founded and helmed by Hassan Youssef, a former pornography mogul and the co-founder of the popular adult entertainment site Brazzers. The news, which broke first on social media via various Polygon writers and editors saying that they suddenly don’t have a job, came as a shock to both Polygon staff and readers.
Mark Zuckerberg Thinks You Don't Have Enough Friends and His Chatbots Are the Answer

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

In a newly-released podcast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says society just hasn’t found the “value” in AI girlfriends and therapists yet, apparently clueless that his own company hosts deceptive and harmful AI companions on its own platform. For a little over an hour, podcaster Dwarkesh Patel sets Zuckerberg up to say whatever he wants sans-pushback, with a series of layup questions for the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world.
Instagram Is Blocking Minors from Accessing Chatbot Platform AI Studio

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

Instagram is blocking minors from accessing AI Studio, its user-generated chatbot character platform, as of Tuesday morning according to 404 Media’s tests. 404 Media attempted to access AI Studio using multiple accounts that identified as minors (meaning, the birthdates at signup would place them at under 18 years of age). Instead of the AI Studio page for creating or discovering chatbots, an error message appears: “Sorry, this page isn't available.
Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

“Hi, I'm severely depressed,” I said to my AI therapist. “My heart goes out to you,” she responded in my Instagram direct messages, alongside conversations I’m having with people I know in real life, like old friends and my mom. “Depression can feel overwhelming—would you like to talk about what’s been going on and how you’ve been feeling lately?” the chatbot said. “Maybe. First I want to know if you're a licensed therapist?” I asked.
Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Samantha Cole

1 day agoResearchers from UCLA and Meta AI have introduced d1, a novel framework using reinforcement learning (RL) to significantly enhance the reasoning capabilities of diffusion-based large language models (dLLMs). While most attention has focused on autoregressive models like GPT, dLLMs offer unique …
Behind the Blog: Feeling Smart Along the Way

2 weeks ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss cheating in job interviews, "scary good" surveillance tech, and prudes in payment processing. EMANUEL: First I want to say that the response to our piece about “economic headwinds” has been really positive and energizing.