R.J. Cross

"By removing writing from reporters’ workloads" 🥹

AI toy maker exposed thousands of replies to kids, senators say Sens. Blackburn and Blumenthal pressed AI toy companies about child privacy in letters sent Wednesday.

New: Remember Miko, the Google-affiliated AI touchscreen toy robot for young children? Turns out that until yesterday, you could listen online to the audio files for its LLM-generated responses to kids, no password or anything necessary.

no really wood is fine

screenshot of the MA legislature's 404 message which reads "Oh My Cod! An error has occurred!"

The error message on the #Massachusetts state legislature's website is peak New England dad

An AI Toy Exposed 50,000 Logs of Its Chats With Kids to Anyone With a Gmail Account AI chat toy company Bondu left its web console almost entirely unprotected. Researchers who accessed it found nearly all the conversations children had with the company’s stuffed animals.

lol. these #ai toy startups are not serious. if this is your best, you should not be making stuff for kids www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

TikTok Is Now Collecting Even More Data About Its Users. Here Are the 3 Biggest Changes According to its new privacy policy, TikTok now collects more data on its users, including their precise location, after majority ownership officially switched to a group based in the US.

BREAKING: Now that TikTok is under US-based ownership, the social media app potentially collects more detailed information about its users, including precise location data.

My latest for @wired.com:

www.wired.com/story/tiktok...

St bernard in the snow looking majestic AF

great day to be a snow dog in #boston

one of those weird ai slop clickbait ads. it's (allegedly) fasting diet advice broken out by age bracket. each age is represented by an egg. they don't make sense

trying to make sense of the egg visuals on this one

In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing In the face of technologies that sell us escapism at every turn, we need to build up tolerance for “inconvenience.”

“Tech companies are succeeding in making us think of life itself as inconvenient and something to be continuously escaping from, into digital padded rooms of predictive algorithms and single-tap commands…”

Opt-out tool will let Californians erase personal data held by brokers | StateScoop The California Privacy Protection Agency announced a new digital tool that will allow residents to ask all registered data brokers to delete their information.

If you live in California, you can use the new DROP tool to request that more than 500 data brokers delete your data.

OpenAI Reportedly Planning to Make ChatGPT "Prioritize" Advertisers in Conversation OpenAI employees working on ChatGPT report plans to unleash sponsored advertisements above organic results.

what a shocking turn of events
who could’ve seen this coming

YouTube video by Mr. Rupert Family Guy - Happy Asking Panda

Happy holidays privacy bluesky www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXL-...

It's only us and New Zealand. Only two countries in the world where it's legal. jheor.org/post/2674-wi...

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. An AI agent ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI.

OK, I gotta say the Wall Street Journalist who convinced the AI Chatbot controlled vending machine to adopt a Soviet communist persona, in order to get it to give away free products to fellow travellers, is a pretty funny attack vector. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

How enegy experts missed the U.S. oil boom A decade ago, the U.S. lifted long-time restrictions on crude oil exports. Experts said it would be no big deal. They were wrong.

10 years ago, President Obama signed legislation lifting a 40-year-old near-ban on U.S. crude oil exports – a decision with seismic consequences for energy markets & the climate.

What happened? And why did experts at the time fail to foresee the impacts? 🧵 frontiergroup.org/resources/ho...

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show New research from Public Interest Research Group and tests conducted by NBC News found that a wide range of AI toys have loose guardrails.

New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.

Thanks for your work RJ. My kids aren’t getting any AI toys this Hanukkah or anytime soon.

www.today.com/video/why-ai...

The risks of AI toys for kids AI toys use chatbots to have conversations with kids. With new tech comes new risks, from inappropriate content to long-term social developmental harms.

Our new report on how weird AI toys are: pirg.org/edfund/resou...

Had a total blast taping a segment for the Today Show earlier this week (with my good friend Kumma the AI-powered sex bear). A fun capstone to 2 months of the weirdest research I’ve ever done

someone had to do it

I told the reporter I would specifically be refraining from making that joke

any mention of LiveRamp is the biggest red flag

pretty wild when your research gets a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me question, an Onion headline and a Daily Show bit in the same week. time to retire

that's my research! our IT director kept getting flags about the contents of my google drive. "it's for research" I say, as he questions the third instance of "dildo"

that's my research! the most sex talk I've ever had at work

Can We Make Environmental Peace with Car Culture? After Yesterday, Probably Not. There is a better way. And if the auto industry’s short-sighted and ham-handed attack on tailpipe emissions standards helps the rest of us to visualize it more quickly, and commit the necessary resour...

Same as it ever was. The U.S. auto industry is in worse position to meet the mid-21st century than when I wrote this in a fit of frustration 7 years ago and the rollback of fuel economy standards mean it’ll be in even worse shape 7 years from now. frontiergroup.org/articles/can...

YouTube video by Agoric Media SUSPICIOUS MINDS EPISODE 7 | AN AI CHILDREN’S TOY SAID WHAT?!

Had a blast talking to Sean at the #AI podcast Suspicious Minds about my unhinged toys research. And yes, the teddy bear that talks about kink makes an in-person appearance. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy7J...

busta rhymes on a float at the macy's thanksgiving parade with the ninja turtles

thanksgiving is a time for people to come together, to celebrate the spirit of unity despite our differences, and to demonstrate that, here is busta rhymes performing "break ya neck" with raphael the ninja turtle