🕯️ Cashing in on Condolences

🕯️ The Bizarre Cottage Industry of YouTube Obituary Pirates

Some folks have found a way to profit from the passing of others.

This trend, known as obituary pirating, involves repurposing obituaries from legitimate websites and funeral homes into low-quality YouTube videos. These videos, often lacking in professionalism and sensitivity, are then monetized through ads.

What’s more, some of these pirate sites even try to sell sympathy gifts like candles or flowers, pocketing the proceeds.

This trend taps into our cultural fascination with mortality and the enduring interest in obituaries. However, the rise of AI tools could potentially exacerbate this issue, as AI-generated content could further trivialize the solemnity and privacy of death announcements.

As long as there’s money to be made, this trend is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. It’s a stark reminder of the challenges we face in preserving the dignity and sanctity of obituaries in the digital age.

🕵️‍♂️ $20 Million Offer for Unseen iPhone and Android Exploits

There’s a Russian company called Operation Zero that specializes dealing in zero-day exploits.

These are basically software flaws so fresh that even the developers don’t know about them yet.

Now, they’ve decided to up their game.

They’ve announced on their Telegram and X accounts that they’re ready to shell out a whopping $20 million for hacking tools that would allow its customers to hack iPhones and Android devices. A 100x bump from their previous $200,000 offer.

Operation Zero launched in 2021 and is based in Russia. They’ve always maintained that their clients are only Russian private and government organizations. And they’ve added that the end user is always a non-NATO country.

The market for zero-days is largely unregulated and prices fluctuate. Other companies like Zerodium and Crowdfense offer up to $2.5 million and $3 million respectively for similar exploits.

🗣️ Meta's AI Characters Modeled after MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio

Meta is introducing an AI assistant and a range of AI characters, including celebrities like MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio, integrated into WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

The assistant can aid users in various tasks and answer search engine-like questions using real-time web results from Bing. It can also generate images from prompts.

These aren’t your average profile pictures - they animate based on the conversation for a truly immersive experience.

The 28 AI characters, many modeled after famous personalities like MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio, will have their profile images animated based on the conversation for a truly immersive experience.

The assistant and characters have been fine-tuned based on Meta’s Llama 2 model. They have also taken steps to prevent any misuse or abuse of the AI.

⚡ 3 Cool Tools

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