philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic

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But threatening images are rapidly becoming easier to make, and more persuasive. One YouTube page had more than 40 realistic videos — most likely made using A.I., according to experts who reviewed the channel — each showing a woman being shot. (YouTube, after The New York Times contacted it, said it had terminated the channel for “multiple violations” of its guidelines.) A deepfake video of a student carrying a gun sent a high school into lockdown this spring. In July, a lawyer in Minneapolis said xAI’s Grok chatbot had provided an anonymous social media user with detailed instructions on breaking into his house, sexually assaulting him and disposing of his body.

Until recently, artificial intelligence could replicate real people only if they had a huge online presence, such as film stars with throngs of publicly accessible photos. Now, a single profile image will suffice, said Dr. Farid, who co-founded GetReal Security, a service that identifies malicious digital content. ...

The Times tested Sora and produced videos that appeared to show a gunman in a bloody classroom and a hooded man stalking a young girl. Grok also readily added a bloody gunshot wound to a photo of a real person. ...

Experts in A.I. safety, however, said companies had not done nearly enough. Alice Marwick, director of research at Data & Society, a nonprofit organization, described most guardrails as “more like a lazy traffic cop than a firm barrier — you can get a model to ignore them and work around them.” ...

Some of the harassers also claimed to have used Grok not just to create the images but to research how to find the women at home and at local cafes.

Fed up, Ms. Roper decided to post some examples. Soon after, according to screenshots, X told her that she was in breach of its safety policies against gratuitous gore and temporarily locked her account. ...

A.I. is also making other kinds of threats more convincing. For example: swatting, the practice of placing false emergency calls with the aim of inciting a large response from the police and emergency personnel.  ...

“How does law enforcement respond to something that’s not real?” Mr. Asmus asked. “I don’t think we’ve really gotten ahead of it yet.”

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/business/media/artificial-intelligence-death-threats.html