The Federal Trade Commission is investigating a company that sells courses on self-publishing AI-generated books, Business Insider reports. Publishing.com, which has also operated as Publishing Life, Audiobook Income Academy, and AI Publishing Academy, charges users $1,995 for guides on how to make extra money by self-publishing AI books on Amazon. Customers have complained that they have paid much more for materials, that refunds aren’t available, and that the company was dishonest about how much people can make by self-publishing. The FTC has hired an expert witness, which flagged the probe for Business Insider, but has not released any public information […]
Archives for January 2025
Customer Records Breached in Scholastic Data Hack
A hacker known as “Parasocial” has stolen personal details of millions of Scholastic customers, the Daily Dot reports. The leaked data has 8 million entries, including names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses of users who signed up on Scholastic’s website. (Excluding duplicates, there are more than 4 million unique email addresses.) The hacker told the site that they “gained access after stealing login credentials from an employee hit with malware” and “would have taken more data but were stopped due to an export limit on Scholastic’s server.” Parasocial also gained access to an employee portal with information about staff, invoices, […]
NY Magazine Expands Details of Neil Gaiman Sexual Assault Allegations
New York Magazine reports on the details of the Neil Gaiman sexual assault case, expanding on allegations first reported by New Zealand podcast Tortoise Media. Last July, five women accused Gaiman of assault, and one woman said she filed a complaint with New Zealand police. Four out of five of Gaiman’s accusers spoke to NY Magazine for the piece, and the publication reviewed journal entries, texts, emails, and police correspondence. Gaiman did not comment for the article, but he has denied all allegations. The piece, which is lengthy and thorough, spends the most time on the accusations brought by Scarlett […]
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Zuckerberg Approved Use of Pirated Books to Train AI, Suit Claims
Meta ceo Mark Zuckerberg himself knew that the books used to train the company’s AI tool were pirated, according to newly-public documents in one of the California class-action lawsuits against the tech company. Attorneys for a group of author plaintiffs (including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Andrew Sean Greer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Jacqueline Woodson) assert that Zuckerberg approved the use of a dataset from shadow library LibGen to train their Llama LLM, despite concerns from other employees about it provenance. “Meta has treated the so-called ‘public availability’ of shadow datasets as a get out of jail free card, notwithstanding that internal […]