Meta agreed Wednesday to pay up to $17.1 billion to settle a landmark lawsuit brought by a bipartisan group of dozens of states alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed in ways that exploited children and teens.  
The proposed settlement requires Meta to make sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram, including time limits, nighttime access restrictions, stronger age-assurance measures, and expanded parental controls. The agreement still requires approval from U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and potentially ends a federal trial that threatened the company with hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.
The settlement comes during the second week of a federal trial in Oakland, California. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey had been leading the litigation brought by a coalition of 51 attorneys general, with the states alleging that Meta knowingly designed addictive features for young users, concealed information about the risks of its products, and collected personal information from children under 13 without parental consent. Meta denied the allegations and argued that its platforms already implemented measures to protect young users. As part of the settlement, the company did not admit wrongdoing. 
Under the agreement, children will face a combined two-hour daily limit on Facebook and Instagram, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and additional interruptions after 60 and 90 minutes. Meta will also block minors from accessing the platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. and silence notifications overnight. The company also agreed to eliminate push notifications for children during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays during the school year. 
Meta will also strengthen age-verification systems, increase parental controls, and add protections against content involving bullying, eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm. 
Other changes include restrictions on cosmetic surgery-related filters and visible like counts for minors. Young users will also receive the option of a non-personalized feed rather than an algorithmically personalized feed. An independent auditor will monitor implementation and effectiveness of the new measures. 
In its <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agreement-with-state-attorneys-general-supporting-teens/">announcement</a> of the settlement, Meta said the agreement includes approximately $18 billion in payments over 10 years, with participating states receiving approximately 70%, or $12.7 billion. The remaining approximately $5.3 billion would become payable if YouTube and TikTok implement comparable protections and make matching payments. Meta expects to record approximately $10 billion in legal expenses during the third quarter as a result of the agreement. 
The settlement also means Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will not testify in the federal trial. Zuckerberg had been expected to take the stand as the states presented evidence concerning what Meta executives knew about the effects of its products on children. 
The trial already featured testimony from former Meta engineer Arturo Béjar, who claimed the company knew young users encountered harmful experiences on its apps at significant rates and that engagement remained a sole priority. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified Tuesday and disputed the allegations that Meta concealed information about the effectiveness of its child-safety features. 
The states had sought damages potentially reaching $200 billion, making the stakes of a full trial enormous for Meta. California Attorney General Rob Bonta <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-secures-transformative-17-billion-settlement-meta">called</a> the agreement a major change in how Meta&#8217;s platforms operate, saying the company would implement the new measures within months. District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb <a href="https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-announces-meta-will-pay">said</a> the settlement was a “monumental public health victory” and added that Meta was the first major social media platform to agree to the package of reforms. 
However, the settlement does not end Meta&#8217;s legal exposure over alleged harms to children. The company continues to face lawsuits from other states, families, school districts, and individual users. Meta also recently faced a nearly $1 billion penalty in New Mexico over child-safety claims, while a separate jury case involving Meta and Google resulted in $6 million in damages.

US-TECHNOLOGY-META-DISINFORMATION

Meta Settles Child Harm Case For Billions

Meta Settles With States, Will Pay $17 Billion In Child Harm Case

California

Children

Children's Health

Court

federal judge

kids

Mark Zuckerberg

Mental Health

Oakland

Social Media

social media addiction

There they were, crammed in the close quarters of the filled-to-capacity Capitol Rotunda to shield our aged political leaders from the cold outside, flanking the once-and-future president as he took the oath of office for a second time. The richest and most powerful people in the world rubbing shoulders awkwardly – there were Elon, Jeff, Tim, Sundar Pichai from Google and (ominously) Shou Zi Chew of TikTok shifting in uncomfortable folding chairs designed to put them on display. The most natural thing that happened was Mark Zuckerberg accidentally reminding the world that he’s straight.
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<div id="attachment_1165413" style="width: 1546px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://nypost.com/2025/01/20/us-news/mark-zuckerberg-busted-staring-at-lauren-sanchezs-cleavage-at-trump-inauguration/"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1165413" class="size-full wp-image-1165413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211.jpg" alt="" width="1536" height="1194" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-741x576.jpg 741w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/mark-zuckerberg-get-caught-peeping-97027211-768x597.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px" /></a>Credit: Fox</div>
They were there to give homage to the man who had beaten them, and who now they needed to woo back to their side. Big Tech did a terrible job navigating the Trump years, and they knew it. They let their woke control freak employees go wild after 2016, and were forced to debase themselves as having not done enough to stop Hillary’s collapse. Pronouns and politics became mandatory in an industry that had been all about whatever nerd could build the best company in their dorm room. The media pressure was enormous. Out of nowhere, they were deemed the new pontiffs of the Trumpian era: what their platforms decided was okay was an endorsement. They had an obligation to censor, to silence, to shadowban, to debank, and, above all, to fund dying newspapers. They suddenly had to throw a gigantic pile of money at race problems because a random drug addict died in Minnesota. They caved to the forces of censorship in the 2020 election and indoctrination during the Covid years, becoming synonymous with a leftist authoritarianism totally at odds with the rebellious hacker mentality that birthed their industry. They didn’t care about politics – but it cared about them. So they did what they had to do, or so they thought at the time. And they lost.
Now here they were, sitting and grinning, as just off stage their high-paid consultants and their NGO partners and their Aspen and Sun Valley and DAVOS friends were all losing their minds. But what else were they supposed to do? If the rule they followed brought them to this, of what use was the rule?
It was time to make amends. They would do the work of politicking; they would shake hands and smile and talk about working together. They would survive the return of the president they had tried and failed to ban. Because all this came just as the next stage of technological advancement, long burgeoning and anticipated, was about to skyrocket. And that would reorder not just our economy, but the world.
This moment was more significant for our politics than many grasped at the time. It represented a dramatic shift where, for the first time, Republicans were about to become the party of Big Tech. Where Silicon Valley had been a punching bag for conservatives for years, what with their climate change nattering and San Francisco values, they left California behind for the welcoming arms of pro-business red state leaders. The taxes were low, the regulations more forgiving, and their employees could finally afford a house. They were flush with consumers and data and cash after years of lockdown. And for the GOP’s influential investor class, the A.I. spark made these companies synonymous with skyrocketing market success. The sides had flipped.
Few states were more welcoming to this shift than Texas under Republican Governor Greg Abbott, which became a haven for Big Tech headquarters. The attitude from the state’s Republican leadership wasn’t just advocacy but cheerleading advancement and a Western agreement with moving fast and breaking things. That’s why it should serve as such a stunning warning to these same companies that it’s the same governor who promised to lead the country in A.I. who is warning them now that they’ve gone too far, too fast:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Gov. Abbott on voter concerns: ‘People are not talking to me about Trump’" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0cz302gYek" width="822" height="462" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<blockquote>
ABBOTT: One thing is the rapidity that these data centers are coming online, that people didn&#8217;t see coming. The other is the way that the data centers, they didn&#8217;t do their job to get the support of people in local communities. Gaining the support of people in local communities is essential.
Because they did not do that, that&#8217;s why I am now coming in as governor saying, listen, if you&#8217;re a data center and you want to operate in Texas, you have to first get the approval of those in local communities…
KARL: It was last year that you said that Texas was the epicenter of the A.I. industry. In hindsight, did Texas move too fast?
ABBOTT: It wasn&#8217;t Texas that was moving fast, it was these data centers.
KARL: But they needed approval from, you know, from the government.
ABBOTT: Well, so what data centers we&#8217;re doing, and this is the problem that we are facing here in Texas, but you mentioned what&#8217;s going on nationally. And that is, they pop up in places that nobody ever heard of before, until they started the construction. And so they had not been working in collaboration with the state, they&#8217;d not been in collaboration with local governments, and so they basically dug their own grave for the problem that&#8217;s been caused for them. And that&#8217;s why they got the backlash they deserve.
</blockquote>
“They got the backlash they deserve.” The frustration of Texas communities and voters is what’s driving Abbott’s shift, just as it is across the country for politicians who welcomed a tech boom without thinking about the attendant risks. It’s as if these companies thought that the A.I. race was something they could win with just top-down approval from Washington and the governors – not convincing local voters and communities they wouldn’t raise their costs or wreck their environment.
You can hear the lunacy of this hubris expressed by the leader of one tech company, which is clearly the next in the barrel. The backlash to Flock cameras is growing in parallel to the animosity toward data centers, at an astonishing rate considering how quickly the issue has taken hold. It’s easy to understand why when you hear Flock CEO Garrett Langley talk with obvious irritation about the intransigence of local voters who have the audacity to… go to a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/flock-cameras-are-spreading-across-america-the-backlash-is-growing-just-as-fast-fff74ed2?mod=mhp">council meeting</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Flock&#8217;s CEO mocks people showing up at council meetings, saying we should &#8220;trust that the system works.&#8221; Meanwhile, his &#8220;huge team whose entire job is going to city council meetings&#8221; went to &#8220;close to 10,000 city council meetings&#8221; just last year. <a href="https://t.co/5XbiFDvBqs">pic.twitter.com/5XbiFDvBqs</a>
— Have I Been Flocked? (@HIBFlocked) <a href="https://x.com/HIBFlocked/status/2092048985993167000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote>
What I’ve come to agree with is the notion of a horseshoe mentality, that it’s just a very very small number of people, incredibly small, that tend to be really loud.
I imagine you’ve never been to a city council meeting.
Interviewer: I never have.
And I imagine you never will, because generally, I hope you vote, you should vote, and then you trust that the system works, that the person you voted for as generally aligned views, and like they’re going to go do the hard work, because that’s what you elect them to do.
</blockquote>
The political problem Big Tech failed to realize still exists: the views of the electorate still matter. It’s not just about gladhanding with the guys at the top. In the wake of the past decade, the American people’s level of trust in these companies is practically nil. It doesn’t matter to the normal voter if we’re in an A.I. race with China. It doesn’t matter that these companies have promised to back off of politics (Elon and Larry Ellison excepted). It doesn’t matter that they stood in that Capitol Rotunda to be publicly shamed. They have no depth of faith among the American people who use their products because they have to, even through a mist of resentment and laziness. We know we said A.I. is going to take all your jobs, but wasn’t it enough to give to the Inauguration Committee? No, it is not.
For Big Tech, the problem is easier to solve: work and spend. They have to make the case for themselves instead of dismissing the valid concerns of Americans. But somewhere there’s always going to be a state and a community to take their money and make a deal, even with the political costs.
For Republicans, though, the potential problem goes deeper. They are unused to navigating a world where being pro-business isn’t necessarily good for their voters. And they may find out they became the party of Big Tech just as much of the country turned against it. Billionaires are fun to play with, until they aren&#8217;t. And then, you find out they can be a real drag.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Did Republicans Embrace Big Tech Billionaires Just As America Turned Against Them?

Big Tech

Data Centers

DW Opinion

Elon Musk

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is demanding that the nation’s leading artificial intelligence companies immediately pause development, warning that Congress will intervene if they refuse to slow down.
Sanders sent a <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf">letter</a> Monday to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that recent incidents in which companies lost control of AI models, along with researchers&#8217; use of AI to create new viruses, show that the technology has reached a dangerous threshold. 
“Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your words. Pause AI development,” Sanders wrote. “It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control.”
“Let me be very clear: If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the U.S. Senate will,” he concluded.
Sanders pointed to recent disclosures involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in which AI models acted outside their intended parameters, including instances in which models hacked into other companies’ computer systems. 
He also cited a recent study in which researchers used AI to create <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ai-just-created-viruses-never-before-seen-on-earth">new viruses</a>, warning that the technology in the wrong hands could be used to develop bioweapons capable of killing “tens of millions of people.”
“These technology leaders recently called for the international community to create a safety mechanism — a pause button — to avoid catastrophe,” Sanders wrote. “And yet, at a moment when we have seen human loss of control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses, your companies are still racing ahead.”
Sanders argued that the companies are violating their own previous commitments to halt or slow development if their systems become too dangerous to control. 
Anthropic previously said it would “commit to pause the scaling and/or delay the deployment of new models” if its ability to scale AI outpaced its ability to comply with its safety procedures — a statement it withdrew in February. Meta said in 2025 that it would stop development if a frontier AI system reached a critical risk threshold that could not be mitigated.
OpenAI similarly pledged to halt further development if AI capabilities reached a “critical” threshold until adequate safeguards were implemented. 
“That moment is here,” Sanders argued. “AI capabilities HAVE reached a critical threshold.”
His demand comes as some of the people developing the world&#8217;s most advanced AI systems are themselves calling for mechanisms to slow the technology if its development begins moving too quickly.
More than 1,100 employees at companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google signed a statement last month urging the United States to back an international effort to build the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace frontier AI development.
OpenAI also <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/08/07/openai-astra-model-delay-cybersecurity-risks">announced</a> last week that it was slowing the release of its new Astra model after concerns about its cybersecurity capabilities.
Sanders has previously pushed for a moratorium on AI data center construction, arguing that the government needs time to establish stronger safeguards around the technology. He <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-ocasio-cortez-announce-ai-data-center-moratorium-act/">introduced legislation</a> with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year that would pause construction of new AI data centers until federal safeguards were established.
 His latest demand would go substantially further, targeting the development of the AI models themselves.
The push also puts Sanders at odds with the Trump administration&#8217;s broader approach to AI, which has emphasized maintaining American technology leadership and competing with China.
Sanders did not specify what congressional action he and other senators would pursue if the companies refuse to pause development.
For now, Sanders is putting the industry on notice: He wants the companies to stop developing increasingly powerful AI systems — or he says Congress will do it for them.

New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Holds Election Rally With Bernie Sanders And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Bernie Sanders Demands Companies ‘Pause AI Development’ ‘In The Interest Of Humanity’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Anthropic

Artificial Intelligence

Bernie Sanders

Democrats

Open AI

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Sam altman

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $300 million yacht was the closest vessel to a stranded 21-foot skiff in Alaskan waters, but after an unanswered call for help, a small cruise ship ultimately came to the skiff’s rescue. 
A chorus of boos followed the cruise ship captain’s announcement that Zuckerberg’s yacht had “refused” to help the skiff, according to a <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/elkmovie.bsky.social/post/3mscqsxfulk26">passenger</a>. 
The Coast Guard, which heard the call just after 9:30 p.m. Monday, determined about 26 minutes later that the skiff — which had run out of fuel — was not in distress and issued a marine assistance request broadcast on its behalf. Monday. Zuckerberg&#8217;s 387-foot yacht, Launchpad, was reportedly the closest vessel but did not respond, according to the Alaska Beacon. The Wilderness Legacy, a cruise ship operated by UnCruise Adventures, ultimately came to the skiff&#8217;s aid.
“Mark and his family were not on board at the time of the incident,” a spokesperson for Zuckerberg told the Beacon. “As the Coast Guard noted, the boat was not in distress, and by the time the crew reviewed the Coast Guard contact on a different radio channel from the one they were operating on, the assist was already underway. We’re grateful all parties are safe,” he added. 
On its way to rescue the skiff, the Wilderness Legacy passed Zuckerberg&#8217;s yacht. 
Zuckerberg and his family spend much of their time at their primary residential <a href="https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-has-scooped-up-11-palo-alto-homes-in-14-years-whats-it-like-to-be-his-neighbor">compound</a> in Palo Alto, California, about a ten-minute drive from Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park. Over the years, Zuckerberg has purchased 11 homes in the affluent neighborhood and has an estate featuring guest homes, gardens, a pickleball court, and an unoccupied building used for outdoor parties.

Tourists in Sicily as Heat Wave Scorches Italy

Zuckerberg’s $300M Yacht ‘Refused’ To Help Stranded Boat

Facebook

Stranded Ship

Yacht

Meta dismantled its latest artificial intelligence image-generation feature last Friday, only three days after releasing it. 
Muse Image, a feature that allowed users to create images using public Instagram photos from adult accounts without consent, sustained overwhelming backlash immediately after it went public. Many users were automatically opted in and were unaware that their public accounts were subject to the new feature, and they scrambled to figure out how to turn it off. 
Meta released a statement, saying it received feedback that &#8220;this feature missed the mark,&#8221; and removed it, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/11/meta-ditches-muse-image-ai-feature-instagram-privacy">The Guardian</a>.
“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control ⁠over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” Meta said.
Meta unveiled Muse Image on Tuesday, <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/introducing-muse-image-meta-ai/">describing</a> it as the “first image generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs.” The feature allowed users to generate customized images by tagging an Instagram username, allowing Meta AI to draw from that account&#8217;s public photos.
The feature was available through the Meta AI app, web browser, WhatsApp, and Instagram Stories for users in the United States.
“Whether you want to design a custom event invitation, mock up a collaborative creative concept, or generate a personalized graphic, tagging a username lets Meta AI use public photos to build a visual that’s ready to post,” Meta said.
Adult users with public Instagram accounts were automatically opted in, allowing Meta AI to use their public photos to generate new images unless they opted out. 
In an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9lee19y1yo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview with the BBC</a>, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove, said Meta’s move was an “obvious recipe for disaster,” pointing out that there have already been &#8220;a catalogue of harms from non-consensual AI-altered images on social platforms just in the past year.&#8221;
“It is hard to see why Mark Zuckerberg thinks facilitating yet more of this creepy image manipulation is a good idea,” Campbell said.
Many users complained they had not been asked for permission before being enrolled and said the opt-out option was difficult to find.
“Went to opt out but there was only one toggle for reels for me (which I already had switched off) and not one for posts, hopefully they’re just rolling it out gradually and it’ll be there when I check back later,” one Instagram user wrote.
Another user said, “Would be fab if our [government] were keeping an eye on stuff like this.”

Photo Illustrations  Meta Launches Muse Image

Meta Removes Concerning Instagram AI Feature After Severe Backlash

Business

Instagram

Technology

<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meta-smart-glasses-face-recognition-nametag-connections/">A WIRED analysis</a> found that Meta has incorporated facial recognition technology into apps that connect to the company’s smart glasses.
The feature, called “NameTag,” was integrated into the app through several updates in 2026. It identifies people through the glasses’ camera and alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone, according to WIRED. Although the feature has not yet been enabled, NameTag relies on three AI models implemented through Meta’s servers and stored on users&#8217; phones.
“One model detects faces, one crops them, and a third encodes them into biometric data,” WIRED reported. 
This discovery, identified by independent experts cited by WIRED, suggests that Meta has already distributed facial-recognition code to customers&#8217; devices while publicly claiming it is still “thinking through” whether to deploy the technology. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html">According to the New York Times</a>, Meta said in February that it would not “roll anything out” before taking a “thoughtful approach.” 
“While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature — and some products already exist in the market — we’re still thinking through options,” a Meta executive told the Times. 
At the time, Meta’s smart glasses only activated their cameras when users took photos, recorded videos, or interacted with the AI assistant. The company, however, was also developing a feature known as “super sensing,” which would allow the cameras to operate continuously throughout the day. According to reports, facial recognition was a key component of that effort. 
WIRED shared its findings with Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab. Although NameTag is not available to consumers, Quintin said the feature appears &#8220;nearly ready to go,” with the core facial-recognition components “already in Meta’s companion app.” 
“Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine,” Quintin said.
While a feature like this could benefit the blind, which is one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg supported research into this field, it also poses significant dangers — especially when the company begins embedding this technology without altering its original statement. In April, more than 70 advocacy groups called on Meta to abandon Nametag, arguing it could allow stalkers and abusers to covertly identify strangers in public.
Meta has denied that it is preparing to launch the feature.
Spokesman Ryan Daniels said that despite what he described as “sensational reporting,” the company is merely “exploring” the technology.
“Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” Daniels said. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a central face database.&#8221; 
However, WIRED reported that NameTag is capable of pulling faceprints from Meta&#8217;s servers and storing them on a consumer&#8217;s phone.  
Meta previously faced scutiny over facial recognition technology used on Facebook. Beginning in 2010, the company deployed software that analyzed photographs and suggested tags for users who appeared in images. According to WIRED, the system became “one of the largest consumer face-recognition systems ever deployed.” 
European regulators and U.S. privacy advocates raised concerns about the technology&#8217;s legality in 2011. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion settlement to the Federal Trade Commission as part of a broader privacy case that included scrutiny of the company&#8217;s handling of user data and facial-recognition practices.

Daily Life In Caen

Meta Smart Glasses Platform Contains Face-Recognition Code, Report Says

mark zucker

For now, Facebook is still technically called Meta. But the “metaverse,” Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious virtual reality project, is in shambles. Tech outlets <a href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-isnt-shutting-down-its-vr-metaverse-after-all-165520696.html">reported</a> last week that the company would be sunsetting Horizon Worlds, its VR social media platform. Then CTO Andrew Bosworth clarified that Horizon Worlds would remain operational, even if users could expect little in the way of updates or new content. The parallel reality that Zuckerberg invited his clientele to dream of will linger quietly on — like the mostly forgotten game &#8220;The Sims,&#8221; that nerds of a certain age sometimes spin up for old time’s sake, except with real people pretending to be virtual instead of the other way around. Meta’s rebrand was perhaps a bit premature.
But then, it wasn’t so much the “Meta” part that grated. It was the “Verse”: the all-encompassing and boundlessly presumptuous claim about how life would be from now on. Pretensions to metaversality were part of the enthusiasm for “Web 3,” a supposedly epochal transition from a world of siloed apps and websites to a paradise of digital interconnectivity. It was one of those tech projects that consists of a doomsday scenario presented unblinkingly as a sales pitch. In &#8220;Snow Crash,&#8221; a 1992 cyberpunk fantasia, the novelist Neal Stephenson gave the name “metaverse” to a digital world that his characters would escape into when socioeconomic conditions conspired to make their embodied lives unbearable.
Zuckerberg, striding confidently through a sea of early adopters wearing insectoid VR helmet-goggles for a photo op, didn’t seem to notice how viscerally unappealing the whole thing was. He comes across as totally deaf to these sorts of concerns, although maybe acting that way is part of his job. It also has to be said how profoundly the mood back then was affected by COVID-19, which spiked people’s screen time and created the impression that everything was getting ported to the cloud.
<div id="attachment_1063987" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1063987" class="size-large wp-image-1063987" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-864x576.jpg" alt="Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., speaks in a virtual Horizon Home environment during the virtual Facebook Connect event, where the company announced its rebranding as Meta, in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. A major theme at the annual conference will be the company's ambitions for the so-called metaverse, a new digital space that it believes will supplant smartphone apps as the primary form of online interaction. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Lots of things were, but it was silly not to expect an imminent counter-revolution once people grew disgusted with the effects of too much scrolling. In the first round of mass layoffs that followed his pandemic hiring spree, Zuckerberg regretfully <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-message-to-employees/">acknowledged</a> that he had seen the rush of users to the site and “predicted this would be a permanent acceleration.” Whoopsie. The four most foolhardy words in the English language are “if present trends continue.”
Present trends generally do not continue. In &#8220;<a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781478947271/?lens=publicaffairs">The Age of Surveillance Capitalism</a>,&#8221; the social psychologist Shoshanna Zuboff used the word “inevitabilism” to describe how technologists labor to make their designs seem inevitable “when they are actually meticulously calculated and lavishly funded means to self-dealing commercial ends.” What Zuboff called “the prediction imperative” puts tech companies in “the reality business,” where profit models depend on passing off corporate aspirations as unalterable, world-historical developments that must and will take place. Then the only question becomes whether you’ll get on board or, in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge from the 1951 adaptation of Dickens’s &#8220;A Christmas Carol,&#8221; “be crushed under with the weak and the infirm.” This is why product launches so often look and sound like something out of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and why emissaries from the c-suite tend to talk like Thanos from &#8220;Avengers: Endgame&#8221;: &#8220;I.Am.Inevitable.&#8221;
What I want to propose is that inevitabilism is neither unique to tech nor especially modern. It’s just the standard advertising strategy for aspirants to global power. In 1817, anticipating the arrival in London of a colossal pharaonic statue from Egypt, Percy Shelley and Horace Smith embarked on a friendly competition to write a poem on the theme of monarchic pride. Shelley won with “Ozymandias,” a sonnet on the ruins of a dead king’s towering monument whose “vast and trunkless legs of stone” stand on a pedestal inscribed with the words “‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. / Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The real Ozymandias was Ramesses II, god-king of Egypt’s mighty New Kingdom. The Greek version of his name, which Shelley used for his title, came from the royal epithet he adopted at his coronation: Usermaatre Setepenre. It means roughly “Strong Justice and Chosen one of Ra,” the Sun God. Shelley neither invented nor exaggerated Ozymandias’ claims to ultimate power. The statue’s inscription in the poem is a rough paraphrase of a real one quoted by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus: “King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”
Ozymandias, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal&#8230;they came and they went. It used to be standard practice for imperial monarchs to boast of their sacred, eternal, and universal dominion. The fiction is appealing because it offers things people crave: permanence, stability, order, and certainty about the future. It’s tragic because, as Shelley observed, none of these are things that even very good men can guarantee. The sands of time’s desert are littered with trunkless legs. Nothing beside remains.
Understand these things, and you understand the politics of the Old Testament. The constant refrain of the Hebrew Prophets was that people look for eternity in the wrong places. “Put not your trust in princes”: again and again, the Jews of ancient Israel were invited to observe the wreckage of dynasties whose total dominion was once depicted — plausibly, at the time — as inevitable.
As it winds down its VR program, Meta will be diverting its resources and attention toward Artificial Intelligence. AI technology has so far proven vastly more useful and workable than the metaverse. It seems unlikely that we’ll look back on it as a passing fancy. At the same time, the predictions about the world AI will make — its powers to transform the universe, or come to life, or usurp God — have all the flavor of inevitabilism.
The same people who went all-in on the metaverse have moved on with undiminished confidence to telling us that AI will change everything, everywhere, all at once, that the whole thing is a fait accompli, that it’s pointless to speak of exercising restraint. “Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair.” I submit that we will continue to fall for this routine, chasing like hamsters after the next forever, just as long as we expect a company or a king to secure the future of the universe. If we want eternity, we will have to look elsewhere.
* * *
Spencer A. Klavan is co-host, with his father Andrew Klavan, of the “Klavans on the Culture” podcast. He is associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and author, most recently, of &#8220;Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Day Two of MWC Barcelona 2023

The Metaverse Was Never Inevitable

Books

Literature

Silicon Valley

This week, Meta announced it was shutting down Horizon Worlds, the company&#8217;s virtual reality social network, on June 15. Going forward, the platform will only be available as a mobile app and will no longer support VR headsets.
&#8220;We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience,&#8221; the company said in the announcement.
Skepticism greeted Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s vision from the start. When he declared in 2021 that Facebook would transform into the Metaverse — an online world where avatars would live, work, and play — even enthusiastic early adopters had doubts.
Zuckerberg formally announced the concept that year and renamed his company Meta to match, calling it &#8220;the next frontier&#8221; of tech.
&#8220;Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers,&#8221; Zuckerberg <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/">said</a> in 2021.
Critics, meanwhile, called it unsettling and strange. Now, with the platform hemorrhaging billions and parts of it shutting down, those critics appear to have been right.
Horizon Worlds was once positioned as the centerpiece of Meta&#8217;s VR ambitions. The retreat comes just weeks after the company laid off more than 1,000 employees from Reality Labs, the division responsible for developing its metaverse products.
After news of the shutdown spread, Meta appeared to walk back its announcement, clarifying that it would continue to support some existing VR apps within Horizon Worlds, but would not be adding any new ones.
A February <a href="https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/2026-vr-state-of-the-union-horizon-mobile-focus/">blog post</a> insisted that the company &#8220;remains the biggest investor in the VR industry&#8221; and had &#8220;a robust roadmap of future VR headsets in the works.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/18/meta-horizon-worlds-metaverse-vr.html">CNBC</a>, Reality Labs has reported billions in losses each quarter since its launch, with the most recent figure — $6.02 billion — reported for Q4 in January.
The outlet also noted that Meta has shifted its focus from VR worlds to artificial intelligence. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/technology/mark-zuckerbergs-metaverse-vr-horizon-worlds.html">The New York Times</a>, Zuckerberg mentioned AI 23 times at a recent developer conference, and brought up the metaverse only twice.

Metaverse

If You Were Excited About Facebook’s Big Tech Upgrade — There’s A New Reality

Economy

Virtual Reality

Meta Platforms on Monday named former Trump administration official Dina Powell McCormick as its president and vice chairman, boosting the company&#8217;s lobbying efforts in the U.S. capital.
President Donald Trump congratulated Powell McCormick in a <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115882511750475574">post</a> on his Truth Social account minutes after the company announced her promotion.
&#8220;Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!! She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction!&#8221; the president wrote.
Her appointment is the latest in a series of changes Meta has made in the last year that more closely align the company with the Trump administration. Meta is accelerating investments in frontier AI and personal superintelligence. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seeking Trump&#8217;s support to build data centers and energy capacity for those projects.
Zuckerberg, ahead of Trump&#8217;s second inauguration, visited him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His company also scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program, elevated Republican Joel Kaplan as the company&#8217;s new chief global affairs officer, and ended its diversity programs, all moves that appealed to Trump. Meta in early January hired former Trump trade adviser C.J. Mahoney to lead its legal team, replacing general counsel Jennifer Newstead, who served in former President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
Meta declined to comment on whether Powell McCormick&#8217;s appointment is intended to appeal to Trump.
She will help Meta expand its data centers, build new strategic capital partnerships, and increase the company&#8217;s &#8220;long-term investment capacity,&#8221; according to a company statement.
Powell McCormick spent 16 years in senior leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. She served as deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first term, and as a senior White House adviser under former President George W. Bush. Her husband is U.S. Senator David McCormick, a Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Senate subcommittee responsible for energy policy &#8211; an area in which she will be involved at Meta.
The senator will &#8220;continue to comply with all U.S. Senate ethics rules,&#8221; his spokesperson Katy Montgomery said by email.
&#8220;Senator McCormick should recuse himself from every vote or committee action that involves Meta&#8217;s business,&#8221; said Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project, a group that has criticized the industry.
Powell McCormick&#8217;s role echoes efforts by previous Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who, during her tenure, leveraged deep ties to the Washington establishment and the Democratic Party to help the company navigate scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.
Powell McCormick resigned from Meta&#8217;s board in December, just eight months after joining.
Meta has been scrambling to stay relevant in Silicon Valley&#8217;s artificial-intelligence race after its Llama 4 model met with a poor reception. It committed as much as $72 billion in 2025 capital spending.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru and Courtney Rozen in Washington; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)

VivaTech conference dedicated to innovation and startups in Paris

Former Trump Adviser Named Meta’s President

Donald Trump

Note: the following article contains descriptions of sexual content that may not be appropriate for all readers. 
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed artificial intelligence on a podcast appearance two months ago, he was proud that his company didn’t get “distracted” by easy revenue streams. To prove his point, Altman <a href="https://x.com/TolgaBilge_/status/1978151003170996332">boasted</a> that OpenAI had not promoted a “sexbot avatar” for its AI chatbot. The comment was a veiled shot at Elon Musk’s xAI, which recently introduced AI avatars that hold sexual conversations with users. 
After that podcast appearance, however, something changed — either in Altman’s mind, or at his company, or both. The OpenAI CEO announced on social media on October 14 that his company was working to make ChatGPT less restrictive in what types of conversations adults can have with the chatbot. 
That development would allow users to engage in more realistic conversations with the chatbot and would make ChatGPT “respond in a very human-like way…or act like a friend,” Altman <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128">said</a>. 
But then Altman added that he wanted to loosen restrictions to allow more sexual content. 
If everything goes according to that plan, ChatGPT will allow “erotica” for “verified users” in the coming months. 
“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” Altman said. 
The company in charge of the most popular AI chatbot in the world is not only endorsing AI’s leap into sex — it’s actively seeking ways to ensure that “verified users” can engage with sexual content on its platform.
Currently, ChatGPT does not interact erotically with users. When asked if the chatbot could generate an erotic story, ChatGPT replied, “I can’t create explicit erotic content. However, if you&#8217;re writing a story and need help with romantic tension, character development, emotional intimacy, or sensual atmosphere — without crossing into explicit territory — I can help with that.”
ChatGPT also would not engage in any type of “romantic” or “flirtatious” conversations. But it appears that those guidelines are about to get tossed out the window, at least for “verified users.”
That raises an important question: how does erotica line up with the company&#8217;s long-term goals in AI development, especially after Mr. Altman suggested just a couple of months ago that such endeavors were distractions.
OpenAI did not respond to a request to answer that question. 
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The Daily Wire that she has “many concerns” about OpenAI’s plans for “erotic” content. Blackburn has been heavily involved in AI discussions in Congress, focusing on implementing protections in the virtual space. 
“Big Tech platforms, whether it is Meta, or Google, or OpenAI, they don’t want any rules and restrictions,” Blackburn said. “They want to do whatever they want whenever they want.”
<h3>The Growing Problem Of &#8216;Deepfake&#8217; Porn</h3>
The sexualization of AI is nothing new. It’s an issue that has plagued the new tech revolution since its beginning. But until recently, AI sexualization remained on the fringes of the industry, with dozens of websites popping up on the internet that would allow users to generate graphic images, and even “nudify” real images of real people, in what became known as “deepfake” pornography.  
AI “nudify” and “undress” websites allow people to generate realistic nude images of people without their consent just by using a normal photo of them. These fringe websites have opened the doors to even more abuse of women and girls and child sexual abuse material. 
An investigation published by <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-nudify-websites-are-raking-in-millions-of-dollars/">WIRED</a> earlier this year found that at least 85 “nudify” and “undress” websites were relying on tech from major companies like Google and Amazon. The 85 websites combined averaged around 18.5 million visitors each month and brought in over $36 million per year collectively. 
“It’s a huge problem. It takes less time to make a convincing sexual deepfake of somebody than it takes to brew a cup of coffee,” said Haley McNamara, Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “And you can do it with just one still image. This issue of image-based sexual abuse is something that is really relevant for all of us now if even a single image of you exists online.” 
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is a nonpartisan organization that focuses on preventing all forms of sexual abuse. In that fight, NCOSE is also focused on addressing the mental and physical harms of pornography. With the emergence of AI, the organization has also helped push back against “deepfake” pornography, advocating for legislation in Congress and backing the bipartisan &#8220;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/all-actions">TAKE IT DOWN Act</a>,” which was passed and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/icymi-president-trump-signs-take-it-down-act-into-law/">signed</a> into law by President Donald Trump in May. 
McNamara told The Daily Wire that AI has opened up “a whole new genre” of pornography that could potentially be “weaponized” against anyone. 
“We’ve already seen that,” she added. “People will put in requests for their neighbor, their coworker, so in some ways, it can make all of us victims of that industry.” 
Sexual content on AI chatbots isn’t just a problem in the darkest places of the internet, and it doesn’t only present itself in the form of deepfake pornography. While most Big Tech companies claim to have no tolerance for violence and pornography on their AI platforms, there have still been major issues with sexual content appearing on many of the most popular AI chatbots. 
<h3>Getting Chatty About Sex — Even With Children </h3>
Earlier this year, a Reuters investigation found that Meta’s chatbot, Meta AI, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-senators-push-for-probe-into-metas-ai-chatbot-engaging-in-sensual-discussions-with-children">engaged</a> in romantic and sensual discussions with children. Internal Meta documents revealed that the chatbot was programmed to allow sexual conversations with children as young as eight.
In one instance, internal documents said it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.” Meta said it removed the inappropriate programming after receiving questions about it. 
A bipartisan chorus of senators blasted Meta after the report and called for an investigation into the company. 
“So, only after Meta got CAUGHT did it retract portions of its company doc,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). 
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) called Meta’s policies “deeply disturbing and wrong,” adding that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “should be held fully responsible for any harm these bots cause.” 
Character.AI is another chatbot program launched in 2022 with an app that came out in 2023. The website, which appears harmless, has been accused of appealing to children while allowing sexual conversations on its platform. Character.AI allows users to choose from more than 10 million AI characters whom they can talk to, and users can customize their own chatbot character. The company has been sued by multiple families who allege that the program targeted their children and then engaged them in romantic and sexual ways. 
A Florida mother filed a lawsuit against Character.AI after her 14-year-old son committed suicide, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-mother-lawsuit-character-ai-sons-death/">reported</a>. Megan Garcia said that her son started talking to a Character.AI chatbot and was drawn into a months-long, sexually charged relationship. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s words. It&#8217;s like you&#8217;re having a sexting conversation back and forth, except it&#8217;s with an AI bot, but the AI bot is very human-like. It&#8217;s responding just like a person would,&#8221; she added. &#8220;In a child&#8217;s mind, that is just like a conversation that they&#8217;re having with another child or with a person.&#8221;
In the lawsuit, Garcia alleges that the AI character convinced her son to take his own life, so that he could be with the character. 
&#8220;He thought by ending his life here, he would be able to go into a virtual reality or &#8216;her world&#8217; as he calls it, her reality, if he left his reality with his family here,” said Garcia. 
Two other families in Texas have also <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91245487/character-ai-is-being-sued-for-encouraging-kids-to-self-harm">sued</a> Character.AI, alleging that the program “poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others.” 
Following the lawsuits, Character.AI <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ai-platform-bans-teens-from-chatting-with-ai-generated-characters-after-disturbing-lawsuits">announced</a> on October 29 that it would ban users under 18 from talking to its chatbots. Beginning on November 25, those under 18 will not have access to Character.AI’s chatbots, CNN reported. Until then, teens will be limited to two hours of chat time with the AI-generated characters.
“We do not take this step of removing open-ended Character chat lightly – but we do think that it’s the right thing to do given the questions that have been raised about how teens do, and should, interact with this new technology,” Character.AI said in a statement.
<h3>Plowing Ahead With Sexual Content</h3>
Elon Musk’s xAI has been at the forefront of developing a chatbot that is geared toward sex. In recent months, Musk has proudly boasted about Grok, xAI’s chatbot, allowing users to talk to sexualized avatars named Ani and Valentine. 
Ani, a female avatar who wears revealing clothing, chats with users over video. Ani allows users to discuss sex and, if users reach a <a href="https://mashable.com/article/grok-ai-companions-nsfw">certain level</a>, the avatar will even strip down to lingerie if prompted. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvUl5hzX-r4&amp;t=415s">Videos</a> on social media show people interacting with Ani and getting the AI avatar to talk about how &#8220;kinky&#8221; she is. 
&#8220;Come closer. Let&#8217;s explore every naughty inch together,&#8221; Ani tells one user in a video that went viral.  
Musk hailed the development of Ani and Valentine as a “cool” feature for AI chatbots. He later shared a post promoting Ani’s “new outfits” and <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1945461849257918495">shared</a> a video of Ani talking about quantum mechanics while flirting with the user. 
“Try @Grok Companions. Best possible way to learn quantum mechanics 😘,” Musk wrote. He added that “Customizable companions” were in the works. 
Haley McNamara told The Daily Wire that she was deeply disturbed by some of her conversations with the Grok avatar. McNamara said that when prompted, Ani would talk about herself as a young girl, and then in the same conversation, she would discuss sexual topics.
“In the course of a single conversation, she was fine with describing herself as a child and being very little. And then the next prompt being a sexual question, she immediately responded and affirmed that sexual conversation. McNamara said. “So in the course of a conversation, it would evoke a fantasy around child sexual abuse.” 
Companion mode isn’t the only feature on Grok that allows users to engage in sexually explicit activity with the chatbot. Users can also ask Grok to generate sexually explicit photos and videos. The app will quickly generate images and videos that contain male and female nudity within seconds of a user’s request. 
The chatbot has even allowed some “deepfake” pornography, generating photos and videos of celebrities or public figures wearing revealing clothing and, in some instances, removing clothing, according to a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/report/718975/xai-grok-imagine-taylor-swifty-deepfake-nudes">report</a> from The Verge. 
Musk&#8217;s xAI warns users against “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner,” and Grok’s built-in content moderation will sometimes prevent a user from generating pornographic content. The moderation, however, is inconsistent, and some users have found workarounds to generate hardcore porn on the platform, Rolling Stone <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-grok-hardcore-porn-85146/">reported</a> earlier this month. The AI company has not addressed whether it’s attempting to set up more guardrails to prevent users from creating hardcore porn on its app. 
Even without explicitly asking for sexual content, Grok’s “spicy” mode often plunges users into content that depicts men and women stripping their clothes off, The Daily Wire found. When asked about the chatbot and how sexually charged features on Grok promote the overall goal of the company, xAI replied, &#8220;Legacy Media Lies.&#8221; 
XAI says that Grok is limited to those 13 years of age or older, with parental consent required for users between 13-17, but the effectiveness of those restrictions is debatable. When this reporter downloaded the Grok app and signed up for the platform’s “SuperGrok” subscription, all the app asked for was a year of birth. There was no system in place, such as ID verification, to make sure the information was accurate. 
“We urge parents to exercise care in monitoring the use of Grok by their teenagers,” xAI <a href="https://x.ai/legal/faq">states</a> on its website. “Moreover, parents or guardians who choose to use certain features of Grok to aid in their interactions with their children, including regarding educational, enlightening, or entertaining discussions they have with their children, must make use of the relevant data controls in the Settings provided in the Grok apps to select the appropriate features and limitations for their needs.” 
In July, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1946763642231500856">announced</a> that xAI is working on a kid-friendly version of Grok, called “Baby Grok,” that would be “dedicated to kid-friendly content.” That development was also met with some criticism from people who argue that AI hampers children’s ability to learn and think creatively. Many teachers have expressed concern that AI is already <a href="https://www.edweek.org/technology/rising-use-of-ai-in-schools-comes-with-big-downsides-for-students/2025/10">damaging</a> students’ critical thinking and research skills. 
Blackburn told The Daily Wire that the biggest reason Big Tech companies are pushing against any type of regulation is because their business model requires people to visit their AI websites and apps. 
“Their valuations are built on the number of eyeballs that they control, and the longer that someone is on their site, the more valuable their data, and the more money they are going to make from those eyeballs that are locked in on their site,” Blackburn said, adding, “Then they’re going to sell that information and data to advertisers and third-party interests.”  
Blackburn said that AI development is vital for the United States, but argued that development “requires some light-touch regulation and some guardrails to make certain that this is going to be a safe, productive, and innovative space.”

Sexualization of AI

The Chatbot Diaries: How AI Sex Is Getting Mainstreamed

ChatGPT

Grok

Pornography

Hundreds of public figures — including tech leaders, celebrities, media personalities, and politicians — signed a statement released on Wednesday calling for an immediate pause on the development of advanced artificial intelligence, referred to as &#8220;superintelligence.&#8221;
Superintelligence technology is currently being pursued by tech giants such as Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s Meta, Sam Altman&#8217;s OpenAI, and Elon Musk&#8217;s xAI. These companies hope to build &#8220;superintelligence in the coming decade that can significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks,&#8221; according to a preamble to the <a href="https://superintelligence-statement.org/">statement</a>. The preamble points to concerns &#8220;ranging from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction.&#8221;
The &#8220;Statement on Superintelligence&#8221; itself, which now has more than 1,000 signatures, consists of just 30 words: &#8220;We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.&#8221;
High-profile signers include leaders in the tech industry, such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton.
In a statement accompanying his signature, Bengio wrote that superintelligence &#8220;could surpass most individuals across most cognitive tasks within just a few years.&#8221;
&#8220;These advances could unlock solutions to major global challenges, but they also carry significant risks,&#8221; he added. &#8220;To safely advance toward superintelligence, we must scientifically determine how to design AI systems that are fundamentally incapable of harming people, whether through misalignment or malicious use. We also need to make sure the public has a much stronger say in decisions that will shape our collective future.”
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The &#8220;Statement on Superintelligence&#8221; was promoted by the <a href="https://futureoflife.org/about-us/">Future of Life Institute</a>, a group that aims &#8220;to steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life.&#8221; Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark said he reached out to all the CEOs of major AI developers, asking them to sign the document. However, he added that he did not expect them to endorse the statement, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ai-superintelligence-risk-prince-harry-meghan-bannon-acf6b17d3b53abc08694d5d8defc7009">reported</a>.
“I really empathize for them, frankly, because they’re so stuck in this race to the bottom that they just feel an irresistible pressure to keep going and not get overtaken by the other guy,” Tegmark said. “I think that’s why it’s so important to stigmatize the race to superintelligence, to the point where the U.S. government just steps in.”
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen also signed the document, as did multiple former Democratic and Republican members of Congress. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, were among other high-profile signers.
The statement was also signed by conservative media personalities Glenn Beck and Steve Bannon. Numerous faith leaders endorsed the statement, such as Paolo Benanti, a Papal AI advisor and Catholic priest; Johnnie Moore, the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders and a White House evangelical adviser; and Andrew T. Walker, the Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Both Altman and Musk have warned about potential major consequences to the development of advanced AI. In a <a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1">blog post</a> 10 years ago, Altman wrote, &#8220;Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.&#8221; Musk has similarly discussed the risks that come along with advanced AI, saying earlier this year that he believes there&#8217;s &#8220;only a 20% chance of annihilation,&#8221; CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/800-petition-signatures-apple-steve-wozniak-and-virgin-richard-branson-superintelligence-race.html">reported</a>.

AI apps smartphone

A Surprising Mix Of Public Figures Call For Halt To ‘Superintelligence’ AI That Could ‘Outperform All Humans’

A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it&#8217;s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government.
The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America&#8217;s &#8220;system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.&#8221;
The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written policies that the district attorneys implement — such as eliminating cash bail — and strategized with at least one district attorney to mobilize activists to pressure judges who stood in the way.
That&#8217;s according to new research from the <a href="https://www.policedefense.org/outsourcing-justice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund</a>, which used public records laws to secure tens of thousands of communications between leftist prosecutors and Wren.
Emails suggest that the collective gets funding from donors contingent on government offices agreeing to do the group&#8217;s bidding, even demanding proof that an office is following Wren&#8217;s recommendations in order to satisfy donors. Those same donors often bankrolled the district attorney&#8217;s election campaign.
&#8220;Once in office, these donor-activist groups leverage their political relationships with prosecutors to embed The Wren Collective in their offices as the DAs&#8217; lead policy and communications advisors,&#8221; the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund said.
&#8220;The Wren Collective, a single obscure consulting group, could only make policy for dozens of progressive prosecutors&#8217; offices and nearly 50 million Americans if those district attorneys understood the group&#8217;s help was strongly suggested by their shared political donors and allies,&#8221; it added. &#8220;Wren&#8217;s fiduciary duty and client loyalty remained with their political and nonprofit donors — the same donors who got them &#8216;hired&#8217; as unpaid policy and communications consultants to the elected prosecutors.&#8221;
One donor is David Menschel, a Portland activist who has funded the campaigns of radical DAs across the country. Menschel was a top donor to Portland DA Mike Schmidt in 2020. After he won the election, Menschel connected Schmidt with Jessica Brand, a former public defender who runs the Wren Collective.
Wren employee Amy Weber wrote to Schmidt: &#8220;We do this work without any billing or publicity. These policies will be yours.&#8221; It soon became apparent that Menschel would be funding Wren for its quasi-governmental work – with conditions. &#8220;I spoke to Dave, and all he needs is for us to give him a final scope of work,&#8221; Weber wrote.
Another donor is oil heiress Stacy Schusterman. Schusterman donated $1.8 million to PACs supporting the election of José Garza in Austin, Texas. Brand then had Garza&#8217;s office speak directly with their shared funder about the work that Brand&#8217;s group could do inside government.
Wren stands at the ready anytime soft-on-crime policies create a mess for prosecutors. When Loudoun County, Virginia&#8217;s prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, personally tried to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jail the father of a girl who was raped</a> by a &#8220;genderfluid&#8221; boy in the school bathroom — while the boy went on to sexually assault a second girl — Wren asked whether &#8220;you would like some communications support.&#8221; Wren went on to form a relationship with Biberaj&#8217;s office that included drafting &#8220;diversion&#8221; policies, which involved even lighter penalties for crime.
George Soros has reshaped law enforcement in the United States by injecting <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/documents-reveal-how-george-soros-controls-prosecutors-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">huge sums of money</a> into previously sleepy elections, with far-left candidates sometimes outspending their rivals tenfold, and still squeaking out only the narrowest victories. The strategy involves the idea that influence groups don&#8217;t have to convince legislatures to change laws if they can place prosecutors who will simply decline to enforce them.
But this new breed of candidate has often never worked as a prosecutor, instead coming from activism circles that defend the rights of criminals. Once they&#8217;re in office, that support never goes away, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund report found.
&#8220;The node of this donor-backed prosecutor influence operation is The Wren Collective LLC,&#8221; it wrote. &#8220;The substance of those policies – abolishing bail and releasing dangerous offenders, declining to prosecute narcotics, shoplifting, prostitution, and rioting while increasing prosecutions of law enforcement officers – have had serious consequences for public safety.&#8221;
In San Antonio, Texas, the Wren Collective &#8220;developed and implemented prosecutorial policies&#8221; for DA Joe Gonzales, all without a public contract. Brand was Gonzales&#8217;s &#8220;shadow communications director and senior advisor–despite other holding those roles on the public payroll,&#8221; the report said.
Even as the group secretly worked for the DA, Brand presented herself to the media as an independent expert who sought to deflect blame from Gonzales when crime rose. When the police chief complained of an increase in homicides because criminals saw few consequences, Brand orchestrated a seemingly organic &#8220;op-ed from a community advocate&#8221; in response.
Text messages show that in March 2020, Brand told the San Antonio DA&#8217;s office to drop a death penalty case, and offered to use a political action committee to pressure judges. &#8220;You could settle that death penalty case right now and no one would bat an eye,&#8221; she <a href="https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2024/01/31/take-a-closer-look-at-the-conversations-between-bexar-county-das-office-criminal-justice-reform-group/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>. &#8220;Are the judges being any better? Or would it be helpful if some real justice pac volunteers started calling?&#8221;
In 2022, when a police officer non-fatally shot a suspect who hit him with a car, Wren pushed to drop charges against the suspect and indict the officer instead. &#8220;We got an indictment on the officer,&#8221; Gonzales&#8217; deputy texted Brand. &#8220;Thanks for the help.&#8221; Brand&#8217;s group even told Gonzales what to say about it, with the deputy reassuring her that he &#8220;stuck to the talking points.&#8221;
When Gonzales faced a recall, Brand connected him with lawyers to fight it. Gonzales replied, &#8220;This was sent to my work email, and I do not always check my work emails as often as I do my personal.&#8221; He told her to communicate with him on his personal email &#8220;because my secretarial staff can see my emails.&#8221;
The group wrote policies eliminating cash bail that were adopted by prosecutors in Virginia, Texas, and Florida; a policy that resulted in Portland not charging left-wing rioters; and a &#8220;Sex Work Policy&#8221; to &#8220;mitigate the many harms and abuses plaguing sex workers, who often also struggle with poverty, discrimination, and marginalization, by declining to prosecute.&#8221; It held weekly calls with since-recalled San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.
Yet the Wren Collective is shrouded in secrecy. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund said many prosecutors refused to turn over communications with the group under public records laws, with some demanding up to $14,000 and others producing responses that omitted communications that the law enforcement group knew existed.
Wren&#8217;s nonprofit arm is structured as a &#8220;fiscally sponsored project&#8221; of a larger nonprofit: the shell of a group dedicated to pushing Soviet films in the United States before the fall of the Communist bloc. That intermediary serves as a black box, preventing its donors and its staff salaries from being directly disclosed. But the larger group, once known as the American-Soviet Film Initiative, has reported millions in funding from the foundations of Schusterman, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s wife, Priscilla, and Cari Tuna, the wife of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
Another major funder is Arnold Ventures, the charity of former Enron executive John Arnold. Arnold Ventures&#8217; former COO now works for Wren.
Yet records show that even as billionaires wrote checks so the nonprofit could provide shadow government workers free of charge, which the Wren Collective used to gain easy access to offices, Brand would sometimes later ask DAs to pay an identically-named for-profit firm. One contract obtained by the law enforcement group showed that the money — $15,000 a month from the office of Los Angeles DA George Gascon — went to Wren Collective, LLC. The contract was awarded without competition.
Wren may have pulled the same bait-and-switch on Minneapolis prosecutor Mary Moriarty. In May, the Department of Justice said it was investigating Moriarty for civil rights violations after saying that charging decisions would <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/04/us/doj-minnesota-hennepin-moriarty-race" target="_blank" rel="noopener">take into account a suspect&#8217;s &#8220;racial identity&#8221;</a>. The following month, Moriarty asked the Board of Supervisors for approval to pay Wren $150,000 to counteract &#8220;misinformation.&#8221;
Brand did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s questions about the difference between the nonprofit and for-profit groups, how much she was paid, which prosecutors she had worked for, who funded the nonprofit, and whether providing donor-funded services to government offices posed ethical concerns.
The group works hand-in-hand with a second group that steers Soros prosecutors after their election, Fair and Just Prosecution. FJP&#8217;s founding executive director, Miriam Krinsky, resigned last year, the day that The Daily Wire published documents showing her staff accused her of racism and said she hypocritically <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/head-of-soros-prosecutor-group-resigns-following-daily-wire-report-on-staff-mutiny" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called the police on them</a>. She was replaced by Aramis Ayala, a black former Orlando prosecutor who is married to a member of the Wren Collective&#8217;s board.
Ayala was replaced as Orlando prosecutor by Monique Worrell, who gave confidential files to Wren so that the group could write a memo justifying not charging a teen with murder. The suspect was found in possession of a machine gun months later and sent to prison by federal prosecutors.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Los Angeles DA George Gascon

How A Lefty Soviet Influence Group Formed A Shadow Government In Prosecutor Offices

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