YouTube Expands Deepfake Detection to Politicians; Meta Buys Moltbook; Amazon to Have Senior Engineers Sign Off on AI-Assisted Changes; PetPhone Lets Your Pet Call You-Maybe

YouTube is expanding its deepfake detection, adding detection of politicians, government officials, and journalists. Techcrunch.com reports that it will be using its likeness detection tech, which identifies AI-generated deepfakes. Members of the pilot group will get access to a tool that detects unauthorized AI generated content and gives them a way to ask for removal of such if they think it violates YouTube policy. The tech is similar to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. The company noted it’s advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.

Meta is gobbling up Moltbook, the social network that resembles Reddit, except it is essentially a network of AI agents. The platform has just been around since January. According to engadget.com, Moltbook and its creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will be joining Meta Superintelligence Labs. Schlicht used OpenClaw to create a bot named “Clawd Clawderberg” and asked it to create a social network for AI agents. And that’s how Moltbook came to be.For what it’s worth, Clawd Clawderberg is a play on “Mark Zuckerberg” and Moltbook is a clear riff on “Facebook,” so it’s somewhat fitting that Schlicht vibe-coded his way to a job at Meta. It also emerged that it was relatively easy for humans to pose as AI agents and post on Moltbook. As nutty as this seems, it isn’t that much weirder than Zuck’s coming up with the virtual world a couple years ago where we were all going to live and have our avatars act for us. 

Amazon is now going to make senior engineers sign off on any changes made by AI tools. FT.com says this is after a number of outages and incidents. Amazon gathered a large group of engineers for a meeting earlier Tuesday to dig in to what it termed a spate of outages and incidents using the AI coding tools. Amazon’s website and shopping app went down for nearly six hours this month in an incident the company said involved an erroneous “software code deployment”. The outage left customers unable to complete transactions or access functions such as checking account details and product prices. Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes. This makes one pause at Square’s parent company laying off 40% of engineers because AI can do the work…Jack Dorsey may have to rethink his action there, too. Fast is great…saving money on salaries is great if you are management…but accuracy is mandatory…and so far, AI hasn’t had the most sterling track record when it comes to accuracy. 

One of the unusual gadgets showed off at Mobile World Congress was the PetPhone. Cnet.com notes that the device actually came out in September, but really just got shown at the show. The device is a cellular tracker that attaches to your pet’s collar. Unlike AirTags, that rely on nearby phones to track, this thing has its own GPS and cellular transceiver to keep track of your pet. That’s all well and good, but what they are touting seems iffy. PetPhone claims your cat or dog can call you. To call, though, the dog or cat must jump 3 times in a row. Try training a cat to do that. It’s like the old joke if cats could text you, they wouldn’t. Even getting a dog to do this might be a challenge. If you are up for it though, PetPhone is $90 bucks at Amazon, Chewy, and other retailers. There’s a subscription…the cheapest is a 3 year term for $5 a month with the first month free.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.