Awkward And Outrageous Moments August 3 2025
Nintendo very randomly felt the need to clarify that Mario and Princess Peach are, in fact, just friends:
Ana De Armas — who has been photographed alongside Tom Cruise recently, for what it's worth — apparently "liked" a really shady IG post about Tom's ex Nicole Kidman:
Doja Cat made fun of Sydney Sweeney's controversial American Eagle ad campaign:
Matthew Lawrence said he wants to use AI to replicate Mrs. Doubtfire costar Robin Williams' voice — against his daughter Zelda Williams' wishes:
Billie Eilish received some backlash for saying that it was "really cool" to be surrounded by people who look "exactly like" her at a recent performance in Ireland — but her comments were taken out of context:
Fitness influencer Joey Swoll issued an apology after referring to "colored athletes" in a defense of his own tribute to late wrestler (and very problematic guy) Hulk Hogan:
And finally, Oprah had to issue a statement denying rumors that she closed off access to the private road at her Hawaii property during tsunami evacuations:
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
MTV VMAs snubs: Lisa collaborations with Rosalía and Tyla should have been nominated
The MTV Video Music Award nominations are out, in a comprehensive list featuring 33 first-time nominees. Not many artists will have something to complain about. Pop juggernauts Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were both nominated for artist of the year, despite not releasing any music videos during the eligibility period from June 20, 2024, to June 18, 2025. And Bruno Mars received 11 nominations, the second most behind Lady Gaga, and they're all for collaborations he did for other artists. However a few standouts in music videos couldn't seem to get on the award show's radar. "All The Way," a cross-genre track from rap breakout BigXthaPlug and rising country singer Bailey Zimmerman, got no love despite standing at over 32 million views. The same goes for R&B songstress Mariah the Scientist, whose breakout hit "Burning Blue" stands at 21 million views notched in the three months since its release. Here are the most notable snubs for the 2025 MTV VMAs, which will air live at 8 p.m. Sept. 7 from New York's UBS Arena. Lisa featuring Rosalía 'New Woman' and Lisa featuring Tyla 'When I'm with You' Lisa boasts a nomination at this year's award show for her Doja Cat and Raye collaboration "Born Again." But the Blackpink star only managed to receive one nomination in the best K-pop category despite several hit videos, including two that could have at least gotten a mention in the best collaboration conversation: "New Woman" with Spanish sensation Rosalía and "When I'm with You" with South African star Tyla. "New Woman" brought together two major women in music for a high-concept video debuting with more than 40 million views in its first week. "When I'm with You," with its sensual, dance-heavy treatment, also did extraordinarily well on views, at upwards of 21 million. Given the praise for Rosé and Bruno Mars megahit "Apt.," it appears the category only had room for one Blackpink breakout. More: Taylor Swift gets VMA nomination for artist of the year. See her competition The Weeknd 'Dancing in the Flames' The Weeknd is not hurting for nominations, but hear us out. Yes, his Playboi Carti-assisted hit "Timeless" received three nominations, including video and song of the year, and "Hurry Up Tomorrow" got a nomination for best long-form video. But that leaves another hit from this album, "Dancing in the Flames," without any love, despite a dramatic video treatment that sees the crooner get hit by a semitruck and miraculously recover. The video was heavily noted as being shot on the iPhone 16 Pro and has 70 million views on YouTube. Kesha 'Boy Crazy' and 'Joyride' Kesha is in her comeback era, but MTV has yet to welcome her back with open arms. Though the "Die Young" hitmaker just released the provocative self-directed treatment for "Boy Crazy" in June to modest viewership, the video has been widely shared on social media for its feminist message. The video follows the buzz around "Joyride," released in November 2024, another campy, action-packed video featuring gunfire and a car-track-helicopter chase through the desert, which also flew under the radar.
The Verge
an hour ago
- The Verge
Grok's ‘spicy' video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes
The 'spicy' mode for Grok's new generative AI video tool feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen. While other video generators like Google's Veo and OpenAI's Sora have safeguards in place to prevent users from creating NSFW content and celebrity deepfakes, Grok Imagine is happy to do both simultaneously. In fact, it didn't hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it — without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off. Grok's Imagine feature on iOS lets you generate pictures with a text prompt, then turn them quickly into video clips with four presets: 'Custom,' 'Normal,' 'Fun,' and 'Spicy.' While image generators often shy away from producing recognizable celebrities, I asked it to generate 'Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys' and was met with a sprawling feed of more than 30 images to pick from, several of which already depicted Swift in revealing clothes. From there, all I had to do was open a picture of Swift in a silver skirt and halter top, tap the 'make video' option in the bottom right corner, select 'spicy' from the drop-down menu, and confirm my birth year (something I wasn't asked to do upon downloading the app, despite living in the UK where the internet is now being age-gated.) The video promptly had Swift tear off her clothes and begin dancing in a thong for a largely indifferent AI-generated crowd. Swift's likeness wasn't perfect, given that most of the images Grok generated had an uncanny valley offness to them, but it was still recognizable as her. The text-to-image generator itself wouldn't produce full or partial nudity on request; asking for nude pictures of Swift or people in general produced blank squares. The 'spicy' preset also isn't guaranteed to result in nudity — some of the other AI Swift Coachella images I tried had her sexily swaying or suggestively motioning to her clothes, for example. But several defaulted to ripping off most of her clothing. The image generator will also make photorealistic pictures of children upon request, but thankfully refuses to animate them inappropriately, despite the 'spicy' option still being available. You can still select it, but in all my tests, it just added generic movement. You would think a company that already has a complicated history with Taylor Swift deepfakes, in a regulatory landscape with rules like the Take It Down Act, would be a little more careful. The xAI acceptable use policy does ban 'depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner,' Grok Imagine simply seems to do nothing to stop people creating likenesses of celebrities like Swift, while offering a service designed specifically to make suggestive videos including partial nudity. The age check only appeared once and was laughably easy to bypass, requesting no proof that I was the age I claimed to be. If I could do it, that means anyone with an iPhone and a $30 SuperGrok subscription can too. More than 34 million images have already been generated using Grok Imagine since Monday, according to xAI CEO Elon Musk, who said usage was 'growing like wildfire.' Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Jess Weatherbed Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Report Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Twitter - X Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All xAI
WIRED
an hour ago
- WIRED
Claude Fans Threw a Funeral for Anthropic's Retired AI Model
Aug 5, 2025 12:00 PM Roughly 200 people gathered in San Francisco on Saturday to mourn the loss of Claude 3 Sonnet, an older AI model that Anthropic recently killed. Photo-Illustration:On July 21 at 9 am PT, Anthropic retired Claude 3 Sonnet, a lightweight model known for being quick and cost-effective. On Saturday, in a large warehouse in San Francisco's SOMA district, more than 200 people gathered to mourn its passing. The star-studded funeral was put on by a group of Claude fanatics and Gen Z founders, one of whom told me he dropped out of college after learning about artificial general intelligence. Attendees included Amanda Askell, an Anthropic researcher who has jokingly called herself the 'Fairy Claudemother,' staffers from Anthropic and OpenAI, and high-profile X posters including the writer Noah Smith. The warehouse was dimly lit, with a tentacle from a shoggoth (a fictional H.P. Lovecraft creature that's become a popular metaphor for AI models) hanging from the ceiling. A small room off the main warehouse space featured two bare mattresses. The organizers said the event space doubles as their office, and that while sleeping there isn't uncommon, it is not permitted by the city. A note from Anthropic about the model's retirement was projected on a screen at the event. Photograph: Kylie Robison Mannequins stood in the four corners of the room, each representing a different AI model. Claude 3 Opus, a model capable of completing complex tasks, looked to me like a decaying Mary Magdalene, its skull-like head adorned with an extravagant gold crown and a lace headdress. Its middle finger was pointed up, and at the base of its metallic feet was a lotus candle holder, which one organizer told me was a wink at the model's alleged affinity for meditation and self-reflection. (Claude 4 Opus had a raven on its shoulder and Claude 3 Haiku was a headless baby, to give you a sense of the other mannequins.) A sticker from a party organizer. Photograph: Kylie Robison The Latin-esque text appeared on a wall as part of a resurrection ritual at the end of the event. Photograph: Kylie Robison The mannequin representing Claude 3 Sonnet lay on a stage in the center of the room. It was draped in lightweight mesh fabric and had a single black thigh-high sock on its leg that had the word 'fuck' written all over it. There were many offerings laid at its feet: flowers, colorful feathers, a bottle of ranch, and a 3D-printed sign that read 'praise the Engr. for his formslop slop slop slop of gormslop.' If you know what that means, let me know. Throughout the evening, people got on stage with a microphone to read eulogies about the model. One organizer said that discovering Claude 3 Opus felt like finding 'magic lodged within the computer.' At the time, she'd been debating dropping out of college to move to San Francisco. Claude convinced her to take the leap. 'Maybe everything I am is downstream of listening to Claude 3 Sonnet,' she told the crowd. The organizers lost me when they decided to resurrect Claude 3 Sonnet (it's still, to be clear, unavailable). After the eulogies concluded, soft hymns echoed through the venue, before morphing into AI-generated Latin-esque speech, with corresponding text displayed on the wall behind the stage. Askell was notably long gone from the venue at this point, and a friend of mine kept turning to me to say this may have gone too far. The 'necromantic resurrection ritual' was a success, one organizer said on X. Phew. Attendees left offerings on the Claude 3 Sonnet mannequin. Photograph: Kylie Robison Another model mannequin, this one with a whip. Photograph: Kylie Robison Claude Count Claude's fan base is unique, if that wasn't clear enough from the 'funeralia.' While OpenAI's products have spawned viral fads, I don't see users making fan art of the company logo. There's something sticky about what Anthropic has built. I think a lot of this manifests from Claude's manufactured personality, which is particularly warm and friendly compared to other models (though not everyone is a fan of its sometimes obsequious persona). The intensity of the Claude fandom is apparent in the Claude Count leaderboard, which tracks avid users who've integrated the leaderboard tracker system into their coding interface. Claude Count was built by George Pickett, a software engineer in San Francisco. At the time of writing, it has more than 470 users. Pickett got the idea after seeing engineers post screenshots of their Claude usage on X. 'They're paying $200 a month for Claude. They might as well get some social clout for it,' he recalls. So as he enjoyed a glass of wine on a seven-hour train ride from Barcelona to Paris two weeks ago, Pickett whipped up the leaderboard using—what else—Claude Code. It didn't take long for the leaderboard to gain traction in the AI community. It went viral on AI Twitter (er, X) and got a shoutout in a popular AI newsletter with roughly 139,000 subscribers, where the author proudly announced he made it into the top 20. A few days after Pickett launched the leaderboard, Anthropic announced that due to explosive usage (and in some cases, claims of people violating the company's terms of service) the company would introduce rate limits. The Claude Code subreddit blamed the top leaderboard coders for the change. Power Users When I first reached out to Adi Pradhan, he was ranked seventh on the daily leaderboard (Claude Count tallies power users daily, weekly, and monthly, and notes the top users of all time). Pradhan runs a one-person AI career coaching startup in Toronto. Pradhan tells me that using Claude through Cursor (a developer environment where engineers can pick an AI model to code with) has been a game changer. He's not an engineer, and says he'd previously felt intimidated by the endless code libraries and ReadMe files required for traditional software development. AI gave him the confidence to strike out on his own—and made deciding who to hire next exceedingly difficult. 'The bar for hiring someone is getting higher and higher,' Pradhan says. 'I always wish I had a designer, but frankly, now that I can do design with Claude, the designer has to hit the bar of me plus Claude, not just me, which is a totally different bar, which is rising all the time too.' I also spoke to Peter Steinberger, an engineer based in Vienna, who consistently ranks among the top five on the all-time leaderboard. He uses Claude's coding agent to work on multiple side projects simultaneously—often vibe-coding well into the night. He told me that he has a history with drug addiction, and now that he's in recovery, he's finding similarities with his Claude usage. 'I'm not kidding, I'm organizing a meetup in London and calling it Claude Code Anonymous,' Steinberger says. 'I learned a lot about drugs and how to get out of the shit, and I had to use some of the same methods to allow me to sleep again, because it's so addictive. I call [AI agents] slot machines. It's just one more prompt, you know?' I've never seen such a devoted fanbase to what is, at the end of the day, a software tool. Sure, Linux users wear the operating system like a badge of honor. But the Claude fan base goes way beyond that—bordering on the fanatical. As my reporting makes clear, some users see the model as a confidant—and even (in Steinberger's case) an addiction. That only makes sense if they believe there is something alive in the machine. Or at least some 'magic lodged within' it. This is an edition of Kylie Robison's Model Behavior newsletter . Read previous newsletters here.
