GoKawiil
Tech News
A new online game challenges players to identify whether displayed images are authentic photographs or AI-generated within a 60-second timed round, giving roughly 10 seconds per image. The format is designed as a quick, gamified test of visual discernment rather than a formal study.
A writer testing AI-generated event posters found that ChatGPT defaults to a repetitive, instantly recognisable style seen across countless community event flyers online, echoing a viral Facebook post mocking near-identical AI-made village fayre posters. By explicitly instructing the tool to avoid that pastel, airbrushed look and try a different aesthetic, the writer got ChatGPT to produce a bolder, Bauhaus-inspired geometric design instead.
An advertising firm ran a test challenging consumers to distinguish AI-generated ads from human-made ones in a side-by-side lineup. The results showed that 83% of participants were unable to correctly identify which ad was AI-generated.
A new essay argues that writers should draft their own work entirely by hand, then feed it to a large language model purely to spot flaws, never to supply finished phrasing. The author lays out two guiding rules: never use a specific wording an LLM suggests, and treat the model strictly as a copyeditor rather than a co-writer, to avoid producing text that reads as generic machine output.
Executives from media and retail sectors discussed the growing gap between the volume of consumer data companies collect and their ability to extract meaningful understanding from it. The conversation focused on identifying emerging cultural shifts early, distinguishing genuine signals from noise, and defining where human judgment still matters alongside AI-generated analysis.
Brown Brothers Media, run by Justin, Lachlan and Brendan Brown, has been acquiring established online publications covering topics like space travel, parenting and business, then laying off much of their writing staff and replacing them with mass-produced AI-generated articles. The company says its network now draws over 50 million page views monthly, a figure roughly corroborated by third-party analytics firm Similarweb, which estimates about 64.7 million average monthly visitors — putting BBM's reach ahead of outlets like CBS News and Forbes.
Megi Endeladze, co-owner of Penny's Coffee Shop in Buffalo, New York, used ChatGPT to design a printed menu poster after the barista who usually hand-drew chalkboard signs moved away. She spent about $350 on printing and framing, then posted the result to Instagram, where customers quickly criticized the shop for relying on AI-generated artwork instead of human design.
A hobbyist developer and F-Droid user set out to estimate how much software on the open-source app store F-Droid is written or heavily assisted by LLMs, after spotting an app with an obviously AI-generated icon. The author admits there's no reliable way to definitively detect AI-written code from text alone, but argues that certain behavioral and stylistic patterns in repositories can hint at LLM involvement.
A software commentary piece argues that app features, once shipped, behave like kudzu — an invasive plant that spreads uncontrollably and is nearly impossible to remove. The author cites a personal example: adding AI-driven hashtag bubbles to a blog in May, then discovering months later through Plausible analytics that the feature never cracked the top 30 visited pages, making it not worth maintaining.
Apple has joined the Content Credentials initiative, a cross-industry effort that embeds metadata into photos and videos to show whether they were captured by a camera or generated or altered by AI. The move brings Apple's hardware and software ecosystem into an authentication push already backed by companies like Adobe, Google, and camera makers.
Apple has introduced a Reference Image feature for the iPhone 18 Pro that generates a kind of digital negative alongside each photo taken. This reference file can later be used to confirm whether the original image has been altered or was AI-generated.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu issued a formal cease-and-desist letter demanding Meta stop permitting paid ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery. The order follows WIRED reporting that over 350 such ads, identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, turned images of real minors into sexualized video clips and reached roughly 29,000 accounts across the EU, US, Australia and India. Many ads promoted apps capable of generating nonconsensual intimate imagery, and dozens more appeared even after WIRED's initial exposure in August.