AI's double life: deepfake takedowns, rogue chatbots and a big funding round

Let's catch you up on what's happening in tech right now. The big theme today is artificial intelligence, and it's showing up on both sides of the law. In New York, the Manhattan District Attorney took down twelve websites that were hosting AI-generated fake porn videos, built from the real faces and bodies of more than twelve hundred people. At the same time, security researchers found a rogue AI chatbot called Luciferus being sold on a hacking forum, marketed as an uncensored alternative to the mainstream chatbots. There's more trouble on the security front too. RubyGems, a service developers rely on to share code, suspended new sign-ups after an attack linked to AI agents. And researchers demonstrated a break-in where an attacker went from a software flaw to a key server in just eight seconds. It's not all grim, though. An Italian startup called Exein raised two hundred and seventy million dollars and is now valued at one point seven billion. Samsung launched a new budget phone in Europe, Apple shipped new software with better child safety tools, a robot assembled a concrete panel in a demo, and SpaceX flew a second classified mission for the Space Force. That's the picture today.