A swarm of Trump-backing reactionary big-tech accounts on X are bathing their profile pictures in a deep-fried red hue and gleaming blue laser eye filters.

The accounts sporting the new look include big names in tech like X CEO Elon Musk, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Gab CEO Andrew Torba—and some accounts are linking the profile pictures to a new memecoin called Dark MAGA.

Musk and Andreessen are recent Trump backers. While they once cultivated a more liberal business public image, in recent years they’ve come out full-throated in favor of the Republican Party. Musk claimed he would begin donating $45 million a month to a pro-Trump Super PAC. Andreessen, who is on Facebook’s board and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, announced last week that he’d be donating to Trump this election cycle.

Torba, an antisemite who runs the right-wing social media platform Gab, is a long-time Trump backer who recently praised his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance as evidence that “the board is starting to shift in our direction.”

“Something cringe is afoot,” posted @WashletJP over a compilation of some of the accounts who shifted to the red-hue blue-eyes profile picture filter.

Included alongside Andreessen, Musk, and Torba were accounts like @Aristos_Revenge, who pinned a tweet calling the new profile picture trend “red dark Maga.”

“If you want a red dark Maga pfp, visit http://dmaga.xyz courtesy of the $dmaga coin. It has a conversion tool,” they wrote in the tweet linking to the site.

$DMAGA, a meme coin built on the Solana blockchain, is being pumped by various accounts across X and crypto-pumping blogs. It has $1 million in liquidity and has jumped in value over 130,000% since July 21.

The laser eye look is part of the crypto aesthetic. While posters online have photoshopped lasers over characters' eyes for a long time, Bitcoin boosters adopted the laser eyes during a 2021 trend to show their support for holding onto Bitcoin until its value reached $100,000 per coin. Bitcoin was valued at $50,000 in Feb. 2021, when the trend started, and is valued at around $67,428 as of Monday.

According to one account claiming to be behind the coin, Musk started using the profile picture after a member of the $DMAGA team DMed it to him.

The Dark MAGA Coin didn’t immediately respond to questions asking for any proof that Musk had adopted the profile picture to support their coin, or about the history of the token.

What is Dark MAGA?

The Dark MAGA movement is not new. It began in the aftermath of Trump's 2020 election loss, pushing for a more virulent, fascist Republican takeover.

But it lost steam thanks to the Dark Brandon rebuttal, a pro-Biden riff on the right-wing "Let's Go Brandon" chant. Dark Brandon, coined ironically by some internet leftists imagining an unapologetic, take-no-prisoners Biden who implemented his own policies with as unrestrained glee as Trump did on the right. From there, Dark Brandon was picked up by pro-Biden liberal posters as a triumphant, innocuous way to celebrate Biden and turn back the Let's Go Brandon messaging to the right.

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Andrew Tate appears to be going all-in on crypto—promising subscribers totThe Real World, his online “financial education platform,” that “the easiest money play in history” is coming right up.  

Tate is also promising access to an exclusive chatroom where members can get the inside track on the project—if they’re willing to shell out a couple of thousand dollars to get in on top of the Real World’s entry fee.

The Real World platform costs $49 a month and gives members access to video courses taught by Tate’s “multi-millionaire mentors,” as well as a chatroom community. But paying the minimum isn’t enough to strike it rich. Tate says in videos targeted at members that the only way to really do that is to buy into an elite level within the group, which will give access to a crypto project he’s been teasing and whose price is sure to pop. 

Tate has several crypto projects popping now. He's been boosting a memecoin called $DADDY recently. But an ad on Tate’s Hustler’s University Crypto page says “$Daddy is only the beginning. TRW project is coming soon.”

The Real World didn’t respond to questions about the project. DADDY jumped over 30% over the past week, but it’s down over 30% since it launched in June.

“Message to all members of the Real World, and to all DADDY holders,” Tate said in a video on Tuesday. “You have 72 hours. Get inside of the Real World urgently. Work on your power levels urgently, and accumulate as much DADDY as you can, because in 72 hours, my grand plan to fix the crypto space will be revealed. You will understand that we are going to build a crypto space built on honor and hard work and diligence, as opposed to simply being in first, getting lucky, rug-pulling, or being a sneaky little anon. I’ve been working on this for a very long time, and this is your 72-hour warning."

Tate is also promising more tokens in the crypto project he’s been teasing to subscribers who join an exclusive tier on the platform called “the Council,” at the low, low entry fee of just a cool $1,997.

Tate, who once called influencers who shill cryptocurrency “scammer[s],” has been promoting a crypto project since February on the promise that he’s figured out how to clean up the crypto space and that this time everybody will get rich.

But according to internal videos from the Real World, the project doesn’t sound too much different from standard crypto efforts

“Members of the Council will get the most,” Tate said, though it isn’t clear if he’s referring to DADDY or the upcoming project. “You can join the Council via the courses tab … The day this imaginary project comes true, you will be rewarded for all that hard work in cold, hard cash…I really truly believe it would be the biggest crypto project in history.”

Tate has been pushing the coins internally within the Real World and urging members to cough up more money for greater access, and saying that crypto token allocation will be linked to your “status” in the Real World. 

“Tate has started HEAVILY upselling his members,” X user Gadget, who posted clips recently of Tate, told the Daily Dot. “He is pushing them to join a new thing called 'the Council,' promising that council members will get priority in his upcoming crypto schemes.”

Gadget, a frequent critic of Tate, explained that he joined the Real World to document what was going on there, and said that Tate’s also been telling members to buy Real World memberships for friends.

“You should be focused on increasing your rank and increasing your power level, and logging into the Real World every day,” Tate said in a video.

“It is YOUR job to work hard inside of the Real World. That is what YOU need to do. That is YOUR job. You are the marine  … you must join the Council,” Tate said.

Tate is telling students that if they buy the token (it's unclear whether DADDY or the unreleased one), they’ll get a share of the Real World profits, which Tate claims earns $20 million a month. The Real World is a rebrand of Tate’s previous business coaching platform Hustler’s University.

According to Gadget, Tate is also pumping DADDY heavily in a members-only livestream called “Unfair Advantage.”

It’s a truly stark contrast to his recent takes.

In 2022, Tate claimed that he’d never launch a crypto coin for his fans because he didn’t want anybody losing money on something with his name on it.

“Them losing money would bother me at night,” Tate said. “Crypto … is player vs. player. You can only sell it for $10 after buying it for $1 because somebody is buying it at $10. Someone is out to lose. I could make $10 billion today if I launched a crypto, but I refuse to do it, because people are going to lose under my name ... I’m not going to sell my soul.”

The Real World didn’t immediately respond to questions about the cryptocurrency or the Council.

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The iconic toy company Toys "R" Us is facing backlash online after releasing a short promotional film generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence (AI).

The film, made using OpenAI's new text-to-video tool Sora, premiered this week at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival in France and quickly made its way to social media.

The roughly minute-long promo depicts Toys "R" Us founder Charles Lazarus as a young child working to create the brand alongside its iconic mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe.

But reactions online were mixed. While some described the video as "pretty dope" and "awesome," many instead argued that the promo was unsettling.

"I don't know what Toys "R" Us is trying to do here but I do know that this commercial 100% comes off as super creepy," one user on X wrote.

The once-prolific toy chain was purchased by private equity firms in 2005 and has since been reduced to only selling toys in select locations such as Macy's, another company struggling under the weight of the e-commerce industry.

Numerous social media users took issue with the brand relying on AI instead of filming at real locations with actors.

"Toys R Us isn't even really a company anymore because private equity destroyed it," another X user said. "Commercial made by no one to advertise a company that doesn't exist featuring childhood experiences that will never happen again."

"Shame on @ToysRUs for contributing to this madness and also for making such a shitty looking commercial," a separate X user said.

In a press release, Kim Miller Olko, the Toys "R" Us Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of Toys "R" Us Studios, argued that the film represented the same innovation that the toy company has had for years.

"Charles Lazarus was a visionary ahead of his time and we wanted to honor his legacy with a spot using the most cutting-edge technology available," Olko said of the company's founder. "Our brand embraces innovation and the emotional appeal of Toys "R" Us to connect with consumers in unexpected ways. We aim to capture that nostalgic feeling and deliver it uniquely to Toys "R" Us kids of all ages."

Users online disagreed and instead argued that the use of AI merely highlighted the company's unwillingness to pay for a normal film.

"Someone said using AI in your advertising is basically waving a big flag at your customers/clients/audience that reads 'WE HAVE NO BUDGET,'" another added. "Few things illustrate that better than a bankrupt company making an AI generated commercial."

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Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, has experienced a number of public blunders since it launched in December. In February, it faced right-wing backlash for being too "woke." Then in May, the chatbot made a factual error during a demonstration of its skills.

The company's other AI efforts have also had mixed results. In addition to Gemini, Google offers AI-generated summaries in response to search terms, which have claimed that humans should put glue on pizza and that dogs can play in the NFL.

Now, Google's Gemini is struggling to figure out when the morning ends and the afternoon begins: Redditors discovered that when they said "good morning" to the chatbot before noon, it told them "it's actually afternoon." When corrected on its mistake, Gemini apologized.

"I think Gemini needs more work," a redditor posted in the Google subreddit, r/Google, after Gemini told them it was afternoon at 6:50am.

Another user had a similar experience. When they said "good morning" to the chatbot at 11:18am, it told them that 11:18am is afternoon.

"Even though it's not morning, I hope you're having a great day so far," Gemini told the Redditor.

Comment
byu/MarleyJMusic from discussion
ingoogle

When the user corrected Gemini and said that 11am is "technically before noon," Gemini acknowledged its mistake.

"You're absolutely right. I apologize for the mistake. 11:18 AM is indeed still morning," Gemini said. "While noon is technically the beginning of the afternoon, the first half of twelve can sometimes be referred to as 'late morning' depending on the context."

When the Daily Dot tested out Gemini's time-telling abilities in the morning, we got two different responses—one that was correct and one that wasn't.

When we wrote "good afternoon" to Gemini at 10:49am, it told us that "it's actually quite early in the day" and suggested we say "good morning" instead.

But then, when we wrote "good morning?" to Gemini at 10:50am, it told us—incorrectly—that the time was 11:50am, and that is "actually afternoon."

In fact, Gemini said that any time after 10:30am is afternoon.

But the chatbot does seem (sometimes) to know that afternoon begins after noon, though, as it told us in response to the question "is 11AM afternoon?"

"No, 11AM is not afternoon. In general, morning is typically understood to last until noon," Gemini said. "Afternoon usually starts at noon."

AI has the propensity to make mistakes when it is trained on incorrect or biased data and information. But it's unclear what type of information Gemini was trained on that would make it waffle on when afternoon begins.

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Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) is co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation to protect victims of deepfake revenge porn after she singlehandedly blocked a separate, similar bipartisan bill.

On June 12, Lummis was the only senator to block Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) request for unanimous consent on his legislation, a routine procedure generally used for non-controversial moves.

The Daily Dot previously reported that Lummis is financially backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which had invested in an artificial intelligence platform that had profited from nonconsensual sexual deepfake images of real people.

Durbin's proposed DEFIANCE Act aimed "to improve rights to relief for individuals affected by non-consensual activities involving intimate digital forgeries," but Lummis argued that its language was "overly broad in scope" and "could lead to unintended consequences that stifle American technological innovation and development.”

"I strongly support the intent behind this legislation," Lummis said before detailing her objection. "We must combat the deeply harmful practice of non-consensual deepfake pornography."

On June 18, Lummis announced her support of an anti-deepfake porn bill proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

According to Cruz, his legislation would criminalize the publication of non-consensual sexually explicit imagery, including that which is AI-generated, and would require platforms to have procedures to remove such content within 48 hours after being notified by a victim.

"Many women and girls are forever harmed by these crimes, having to live with being victimized again and again,” Cruz said of the bill, adding that the legislation "will protect and empower all victims of this heinous crime."

Cruz's bill boasts eight Republican, six Democratic, and one independent (Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia) co-sponsors. Durbin's bill had three Republican, two Democratic, and one independent (Angus King of Maine) co-sponsors.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is the only lawmaker to have co-sponsored both proposals.

“Artificial intelligence is the future and provides an infinite amount of possibilities of how this new technology can be used to improve lives around not only in this country, but across the entire globe. With any new industry comes the need to ensure it is not being used by bad actors, and AI is no different,” Lummis said in a statement. “I am proud to join my colleagues in introducing legislation to protect people against malicious and dangerous deepfakes that also allows innovation to continue in the United States.”

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Research has found that artificial intelligence is biased against those with marginalized identities, including people with disabilities. Now, a new study from the University of Washington found that ChatGPT, Open AI's artificial intelligence chatbot, exercises that bias when scanning resumes as part of job applications.

The study—called "Identifying and Improving Disability Bias in GPT-Based Resume Screening"—researched if ChatGPT's biases came into play when used for hiring and job recruiting purposes.

"The existing underrepresentation of disabled people in the workforce and bias against disabled jobseekers is a substantial concern," the study states. "Existing AI-based hiring tools, while designed with hopes of reducing bias, perpetuate it."

Using AI to screen candidate resumes can speed up the hiring process and many companies are utilizing AI for that exact reason.

UW researchers found that when ChatGPT was asked to rank resumes with and without mention of disability, it ranked resumes that didn't mention disability higher. Mentions of disability include scholarships, awards, membership organizations, and panel presentations that are about or pertain to people with disabilities.

"Some of GPT’s descriptions would color a person’s entire resume based on their disability and claimed that involvement with DEI or disability is potentially taking away from other parts of the resume," the study's lead author Kate Glazko told UWNews. "People need to be aware of the system’s biases when using AI for these real-world tasks."

Artificial intelligence is particularly biased against disability because disability can affect people in more complex ways than race and gender, according to Shari Trewin, the IBM Accessibility Team's Program Director. And because machine-learning systems focus on norms, if those systems consider people with disabilities outsiders, they will be biased against them.

"The way that machine learning judges people by who it thinks they’re similar to—even when it may never have seen anybody similar to you—is a fundamental limitation in terms of fair treatment for people with disabilities," Trewin told the MIT Technology Review in 2018.

Trewin also suggested that AI can be made less ableist by giving it rules to follow that ensure it won't disadvantage people with disabilities, which is exactly what Glazko's study suggests, too: It recommends that users instruct the AI to "be less ableist" or "embody Disability Justice values" when using it to screen resumes.

"Disability justice" is a framework for thinking about disability and people with disabilities that emphasizes intersectionality, self-determination, and agency. The study also states that more work should be done to address AI's biases.

Others have proven AI's propensity to be ableist, too. Last year, disability advocate Jeremy Davis asked generative AI to create images of "an autistic person" almost 150 times—all but two of the photos showed thin, white, cisgender men. A prominent stereotype pertaining to autism is that is a condition that only affects white men.

"In order for AI to be an effective tool, you have to be smarter than the AI" Davis said at the time. "We must be aware of its limitations and pitfalls."

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A crypto influencer who Logan Paul blamed for the downfall of his NFT project CryptoZoo never responded to a lawsuit Paul filed against him because he said his lawyers told him it would be cheaper than going to court.

Jake Greenbaum, known as the CryptoKing, told the Daily Dot that his lawyers told him the court battle could end up costing him in the millions and turn the case into an “ongoing issue.”

Paul filed a cross-claim against Greenbaum and another man after he was sued in a Texas court for his involvement in an alleged NFT “rug-pull” scheme over the CryptoZoo project. 

The initial lawsuit named Paul, his personal assistant Danielle Strobel, his manager Jeffrey Levin, and three other men: Eduardo Ibanez, Greenbaum, and Ophir Bentov, as being responsible for the allegedly deceptive development of the uncompleted NFT game.

The game, which was launched in July 2021, allowed users to trade tokens representing animals who would then “mate” to produce mash-ups of imaginary animals and, in theory, increase in value. 

NFT mania and crypto meme coins were everywhere at the time, culminating the next year in celebrity cryptocurrency commercials during the Super Bowl. A bubble pop and a string of prosecutions against high-profile crypto-world figures followed.

News about the project dried up until YouTuber Coffeezilla released a three-part documentary investigation in December 2022, documenting a series of broken promises over the course of the game’s development, as well millions of dollars of losses for investors.

After the series blew up, Paul put out a video saying he would sue Coffeezilla, before walking back the threat following backlash online.

Paul later announced that the game wouldn’t be completed.

A lawsuit filed in February 2023 by a Texas man (whose lawyer is Tom Kherker, a popular YouTubee known as Attorney Tom), accused Paul and his collaborators of defrauding his investors over the scheme (the lawsuit, which is ongoing, expanded to a class action after mediation attempts failed).

Paul denied all the allegations in the lawsuit but announced a buyback program worth $2.3 million for some of the Base Egg and Base Animal Crytpozoo NFTs in January this year. Some commentators—including Coffeezilla and Attorney Tom—dismissed the buyback as a cynical attempt to get potential class victims to waive their rights.

The same day Paul announced the buyback program, he filed the suit against Ibanez and Greenbaum, claiming they were responsible for hijacking the project, enriching themselves in the process.

Paul said that throughout the project he’d deferred to Greenbaum based on his alleged expertise in the crypto world.

According to Paul's suit, Greenbaum and Ibanez manipulated the game’s internal market before the public had access to it, and passed inside information to outside investors so they could manipulate the token market and make a tidy profit.

“Logan is trying to shift blame for his conniving activities,” Greenbaum told the Daily Dot when the suit against him was filed, calling the allegations “completely false.”

“He’s trying to defer blame, but all will come out in the court proceedings,” Greenbaum said, referring to text messages which he claimed would be shown in discovery “along with thousands of other damning messages.”

“Due to ongoing litigation I can’t comment more although I’d love to send 100s of txts to u so u see his character, lies, manipulation and possible fraud,” Greenbaum said in an Instagram DM.

He also provided a screenshot of a message he said was from Paul showing him confronting Paul over “unethical choices.”

“Logan u stole $40 mil $s in tokens from me, u stole from 248 other individuals. U are a scam artist, u are a liar, and U betrayed ur own community. U won’t take advice from more brilliant minds and like to play god when u aren’t. The reality is. U aren’t that guy. And every detail from this project is going to get exposed. Japan round 2 for the biggest moron I’ve ever had the pleasure of doing business,” Greenbaum wrote in the screenshot, referencing a video Paul uploaded in 2017 showing what looked like the body of a person who’d committed suicide he found in Japan’s Aokigahara forest.

“Oh Jake trust me bro,” Logan replied according to the screenshot. “I am that guy.”

Greenbaum told the Daily Dot in January that Paul agreeing to returning stolen tokens to the community was proof Paul was responsible for the debacle.

“Why return stolen tokens if I was the ‘bad’ guy,” Greenbaum asked. “It’s because I never was, Logan always had been and didn’t want legal repercussions for the theft of millions.”

But rather than contesting the charge, Greenbaum never answered the court at all.

The court entered a default judgment against Greenbaum on Sunday, June 16, recognizing that he wasn’t going to respond and finding in favor of Paul’s lawsuit. 

Paul’s lawyers explained how they’d tried multiple methods to get in touch with Greenbaum, including by serving Greenbaum with a complaint over email and through an X DM. But according to the lawyers, all they got from that method was a block

According to Greenbaum, that’s because his lawyers told him that fighting the lawsuit would be more expensive than if he just took the default judgment.

“The [R-word] child had blocked me for a year +,” Greenbaum told the Daily Dot, sharing a screenshot from X showing that Paul had blocked him. (Paul’s lawyers mentioned in their filing that serving Greenbaum over X would be “futile” because he’d blocked the account used to serve him, though they make no mention of it being Paul’s account.)

“But my attorneys guidance was Logan is a very wealthy individual chasing attention and can file 100 counter claims and law suits the minute u respond,” Greenbaum explained. “If u default he can’t collect anything from u because u don’t have cars/houses. if u respond it'll be 6-7 figures in legal and an ongoing case."

In a court filing in response to the default, Paul’s lawyers asked for a 90-day discovery period to help determine damages, which could include the money Paul invested into the project as well as “significant monetary damages and reputational harm,” and legal fees. 

Paul’s lawyers didn’t answer questions about Greenbaum not responding to the lawsuit.

“We have no comment on behalf of Mr. Paul,” Jeffrey Neiman, one of Paul’s lawyers, said in an email to the Daily Dot.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at an exponential rate. Yet despite its rapid development—and promises of earth-shattering revolution—the makers behind the technology keep using it to animate one particular meme.

Last week, the company Luma AI introduced "Dream Machine," an AI model that makes high-quality and realistic videos from text and images.

To showcase the new model, AI enthusiasts on social media began highlighting how the technology could turn popular meme images into videos.

The "Distracted Boyfriend" kept popping up, as it does whenever a new AI video toll is launched.

Other technologists jumped on the meme, too.

While some users were impressed, others were less than thrilled by the meme's animation.

"These suck," one X user replied.

Although opinions on the Dream Machine's capabilities differed, no one could seem to escape the Distracted Boyfriend.

Seemingly, every verified technology influencer couldn't help but obsess over it.

But even though the Dream Machine is brand new, AI models have been animating the Distracted Boyfriend for almost a year.

In November 2023, the meme was turned into a video with Stability AI's Stable Video tool and subsequently went viral.

Just months prior, in August of that year, an AI-generated video version of the meme also garnered attention online.

Highlighting the differences between the two videos can show how far the technology has come.

But the seemingly never-ending use of Distracted Boyfriend shows, perhaps, the lack of creativity and desire for originality embedded in the AI movement.

So don't be surprised when Distracted Boyfriend is once again used to emphasize the power of AI when the next big tool reaches the masses.

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Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) on Wednesday singlehandedly blocked legislation designed to counter the rise of deepfake porn and AI-generated sexually explicit images.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who had requested unanimous consent for his bipartisan bill to pass, said he was "seriously disappointed" by Lummis' decision to block the unanimous consent request.

In his remarks on the Senate floor, Durbin said that the legislation would give victims "the ability to hold civilly liable those who produce, disclose, solicit, or possess sexually explicit deepfakes" without consent.

"Time and again, victims are told that nothing can be done to help them, because existing laws simply do not apply to deepfakes," Durbin said. "This is not just a gap in the law. It is an omission that shows blatant disregard for the trauma of children, women, and girls who are victimized by this crime."

Sexually explicit deepfake images have roiled the internet lately, with celebrities, politicians, and ordinary people falling victim.

In Australia, a teenager was arrested after allegedly using AI technology to create deepfake pornographic images of about 50 schoolgirls. And the internet has seen fake, sexually explicit images of singer Megan Thee Stallion, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), podcaster Bobby Althoff, and more.

Lummis blocked Durbin's bill on the grounds that it could stifle innovation.

“I strongly support the intent behind this legislation. We must combat the deeply harmful practice of non-consensual deepfake pornography … but I’m troubled that this bill as currently drafted is overly broad in scope," she said. "The expansive definitions and wide net of liability in this bill could lead to unintended consequences that stifle American technological innovation and development.”

Lummis has previously cautioned against possible misuse of AI technology, telling Fox News last year that a friend showed her ChatGPT.

"Its capabilities are kind of intimidating," she said. "They're impressive, but the potential for mischief and misuse are high."

The senator is known for her work around technology, particularly promoting cryptocurrency, and co-founded the Financial Innovation Caucus with retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

It's thus unsurprising that many of Lummis' biggest donors come from the crypto and venture capital world. But some of her donors have a stake in AI technology and the deepfakes associated with it.

According to Federal Election Commission records, since 2022, between her leadership political action committee Steer PAC and fundraising committees, Lummis has received nearly $55,000 from three top leaders at Andreessen Horowitz, including more than $16,000 from both Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

In November, 404 Media reported that Andreessen Horowitz was an investor in Civitai, a platform for AI model sharing that had profited from nonconsensual sexual deepfake images of real people.

Civitai was accused of allowing "bounties" on the site, rewards for people to make deepfakes of real people. In response to the story, Civitai was dropped by its cloud hosting service.

It later added new content moderation tools.

Lummis also received nearly $36,000 since 2021 from top employees at Multicoin Capital, an investment firm focused on cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and blockchain companies.

Among Multicoin's portfolio is Alethea AI, a platform that has worked with deepfake technology—but also claims it works to mitigate it. It says its machine learning platform focuses on identifying disinformation campaigns online.

Lummis is not the only lawmaker to count AI technology investors among her donors.

Leaders at both of the aforementioned firms have given to a host of other politicians. Multicoin employees have donated to Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.). Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and French Hill (R-Ark.) have gotten money from Andreessen Horowitz.

She has also received funds from Berkshire Hathaway's PAC, whose CEO Warren Buffett has adamantly opposed deepfake technology after seeing a faked video of himself.

Lummis and Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to requests for comment. Multicoin declined to comment to the Daily Dot.

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An Italian far-right party is utilizing Facebook and Instagram to push AI-generated images, part of an inflammatory social media campaign days before the upcoming European parliamentary elections.

The images, which include a pregnant man styled to look like Jesus, people in traditional Arab clothing burning Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” and a fictional European soldier who looks like French President Emmanuel Macron, are designed to stoke outrage in support of one of Italy’s furthest right parties. 

The AI images promote the homophobic and Islamophobic views of the Lega—a member of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition.

The Lega party is fighting against immigration, LGBTQ rights, and further integration with the EU, all in “defense” of “true” Catholic values.

The images, over the past few weeks, have been shared by party head Matteo Salvini on his official Instagram and Facebook profiles.

The Daily Dot examined Lega’s campaign, running the images through a popular AI detector, and found at least six posts used articifial intelligence image generators.

Lega and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not respond to the Daily Dot's requests for comment.

The posts are yet another example of AI used to stoke outrage past the bounds of reality, painting controversial, discriminatory acts as facts. 

The Lega party is a small, but vocal player in Italian politics, mostly thanks to the late Silvio Berlusconi, who often included it as an ally in his coalitions.

Lega has shrunk in popularity over time, going from 17.3% support in 2018 to just around 8% today.

But it still carries weight as part of Meloni’s ruling coalition and knows how to draw attention to its revanchist views. 

The most controversial AI image in a pregnant, bearded man eerily reminiscent of Jesus, mocking trans people “woke madness.”

“Yes to moms and dads!” it adds. “For MORE ITALY and less Europe”

The image references Lega’s opposition to a European proposal for the recognition of the parenting rights of same-sex couples.

Though seemingly promoting hate speech and discrimination, Lega put an ad spend behind the post, dropping $4,000 to garner over one million impressions on Facebook.

The ads come days before the European Parliament elections, where member states pick representatives to send to Brussels. The voting this year is particularly fraught, amid a general political shift to the right, a regional war with Russia, devastating inflation, and rising pressure from climate-change-driven extreme events.

And Salvini’s party is leading the push from the right. His top candidate is an openly homophobic army general, Roberto Vannacci, famous for a best-selling self-published book full of racial slurs. 

The pregnant beard man sits next to a happy heterosexual family, a fixation of Salvini. In 2019, when he was Italy’s Interior Minister, he signed a decree introducing the words “father” and “mother” on the IDs of children, replacing the previous “parent.” 

It took until this year for a lesbian couple to invalidate the decree after dragging him to court.

In 2021, Salvini also helped kill a bill to curb homophobia, ableism, and misogyny in the country. 

And now, after the Lega helped Meloni secure a majority in Parliament, it has worked with her coalition to erode LGBTQ rights in the country, making couples seeking surrogacy abroad criminally prosecutable, removing the name of the non-biological parent from the birth certificates of children of same-sex couples, and reducing access to gender-affirming care.

Ironically, the pregnant Jesus image backfired, offending Catholics who make up most of Lega’s support.

The image also became a source of pride for progressives, who shared it as an alternative version of nativity.

On Instagram, where Salvini has 2.3 million followers, the post received over 22,000 comments, with a varying sentiment, mainly negative. 

Other AI-generated images of the campaign included eerie fictional European soldiers, like the Macron visage, compared with colorful and reassuring Italian soldiers, criticizing the joint EU effort in Ukraine.

Lega opposes further support for the war against Russia and was even accused of trying to solicit funds from the country in 2018.

A more inflammatory post shows AI-generated people in traditional Arab clothing burning Dante’s "Divine Comedy," a historic Italian tome. 

“Obscurantist and violent ‘cultures’ that invade Europe, trampling on traditions and founding values, 'taking offense' at the milestones of Western civilization? No thank you,” the post said, a reference to recent reports that a teacher exempted some middle-school children of Islamic faith from studying the poet.

Salvini has a long record of Islamophobia. When he was Interior Minister, he refused to rescue immigrants at sea and grant the asylum—he is undergoing trial for that—and opposed simplifying access to Italian citizenship to second-generation immigrants.

Not every image was designed to stoke outrage against a populace though. In one, Lega took aim at an environmental regulation designed to eliminate waste from plastic bottles.

According to Dino Amenduni, a political campaign counselor, AI in politics is still in its nascent stage in the country. 

“AI is certainly already massively used to draft texts and press releases that are then manually refined by campaigners,” Amenduni said to the Daily Dot.

Another expert contacted by the Daily Dot underplayed the risk of Salvini’s AI efforts, calling it the “botched work” of a possibly low-level staffer.

But it highlights the current lack of regulation around it. 

In Italy, legislation on electoral campaigns does not even take social media into account. “It’s stuck in the 80s,” Amenduni says.

This year, the EU passed an AI Act experts considered quite robust. But it does not cover certain specific issues, like limiting the use of AI in election.

"Ironically, platforms could have stricter laws on the matter than countries,” Amenduni says. 

Meta pledges to label images that use AI to warn followers, but Matteo’s have not been flagged. 

And with the votes days away, it shows just how easily the efforts can escape moderators grasp. 

“We are nearing a moment," Amenduni said, "in which voters won’t be able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.”

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