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404 Media reported that Proton CEO Andy Yen has been pressuring employees to adopt AI tools more aggressively, reportedly disparaging workers who resist as 'losers.' The report details internal pressure tactics aimed at accelerating AI use across the company's workflows.
404 Media obtained body camera and in-car footage, along with Flock and Motorola ALPR records, showing Tulsa County deputy Freddie Alaniz searching license plate reader data on a laptop while driving 60 mph, before fully pulling over driver Melissa Kyle. A federal judge had already ruled the Flock search that led to Kyle's arrest an unconstitutional warrantless search and 'indiscriminate mass surveillance,' tossing out evidence of 91 pounds of methamphetamine found in her car. The footage was purchased from a Tulsa courthouse clerk after the court declined to post it online despite it being entered as evidence.
The admin of decomp.dev, known as Encounter, announced the site is closing because advanced AI models have made reverse-engineering game code dramatically faster than the traditional human-led process. Encounter said it has become impossible to distinguish projects driven primarily by humans from those produced largely by AI, undermining the site's collaborative structure.
Character.AI has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to court documents reviewed by 404 Media. The filings show the company spent $56.1 million on compute costs and $19.7 million on salaries between January and August, while monthly revenue grew only from $2.8 million to $5.3 million and operating losses ran $8-9 million per month. CEO Colin Adams acknowledged the company's technology was expensive to run and that it struggled to turn a profit.
404 Media reports that Microsoft hired hundreds of contractors to evaluate how well its Copilot AI executes image-editing prompts, including sexually explicit and nonconsensual requests involving real women, children's cartoon characters, and upskirt-style images. The contractors say Microsoft instructed them to judge output quality using their 'intuition,' not to assess the ethics of the prompts themselves, and faces in uploaded photos reportedly remain uncensored.
404 Media reports that multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI's models were terminated after being caught using AI tools to complete their training tasks, citing internal documents and interviews with contractors. One worker shared a termination letter citing concerns about the 'authenticity' of their work, while sources said such firings are common across a workforce of thousands. Two of the contractors worked through Mercor, a staffing firm reportedly in talks with Nvidia for a $20 billion valuation.
Hacking group ShinyHunters told 404 Media it stole personal data on all FBI employees and job applicants after exploiting a flaw in Oracle's PeopleSoft software used on the bureau's recruitment site. The FBI confirmed it is investigating the claimed compromise of FBIJobs.gov, and the site's main application pages are currently showing maintenance and error messages. The FBI said it has not yet determined whether the breach originated with a third-party vendor or its own systems.
Meta's Muse assistant, which the company says can call businesses on a user's behalf to make reservations or complete tasks, is actually routing some calls to human agents rather than handling them autonomously, according to 404 Media. An internal announcement reviewed by the outlet said Muse can 'hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through,' and the feature remains in an internal testing phase Meta calls 'dogfooding.'
Hacking group ShinyHunters told 404 Media it breached FBI-related systems and obtained personal data on all FBI employees and applicants, including names, home addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and spouse details. The group provided a sample of roughly 5,000 records, and 404 Media verified some phone numbers matched named individuals and linked others to Justice Department personnel. ShinyHunters also defaced the FBI's jobs website on Tuesday.
404 Media reports that contractors hired to review and critique real ChatGPT conversations to improve OpenAI's models have been terminated for secretly using AI tools to generate their feedback instead of doing it themselves. Multiple contractors told the outlet this is a widespread and frequently punished practice among the thousands of workers doing this human-review work.
404 Media is asking residents nationwide to submit public records showing how local police departments use Axon's automatic license plate reader cameras, which many cities are adopting after backlash over Flock's role in ICE lookups and a Texas officer's search related to a self-managed abortion. The outlet has already gathered Axon 'activity reports' from six police agencies detailing which officers searched plate data, their badge numbers, and stated justifications, but wants more submissions to map usage nationwide.
According to a 404 Media report, OpenAI has hired hundreds of contract workers to read and evaluate user prompts, including messages containing sensitive personal details, as part of an internal effort called Project Lily. The reviewers rate and critique ChatGPT's responses to help engineers reduce sycophantic and overly human-like behavior in the chatbot, rather than to moderate content.