Over the weekend, I saw Andy Baio post on Bluesky an amusing experiment in response to Mark Sample posting about how the name “David Mayer” appears to break ChatGPT:

The “David Mayer” issue got a fair bit of attention in some corners of the media, as lots of people tried to figure out what was going on. Pretty quickly, people started to turn up a small list of other names that broke ChatGPT in a similar way:

• Brian Hood
• Jonathan Turley
• Jonathan Zittrain
• David Faber
• David Mayer
• Guido Scorza

I actually knew about Brian Hood, and had meant to write about him a while back, but never got around to it. A year and a half ago, a commenter here at Techdirt had posted a few times about the fact that ChatGPT broke on “Brian Hood.” That was about a month after Brian Hood, an Australian mayor, threatened to sue OpenAI for defamation, after someone generated some false statements about Hood.

OpenAI’s apparent “solution” was to hardcode ChatGPT to break on certain names like “Brian Hood.” When I tried to generate text about Brian Hood, using a similar method to Andy Baio’s test above, I got this error:

There has been widespread speculation online about why these specific names are blocked. A fairly comprehensive Reddit post explores the likely reasons each person ended up on ChatGPT’s blocklist.

There are many David Mayers, but one likely culprit is a UK-based American theater historian who made news a few years ago when terrorist watch lists confused him with a Chechen ISIS member who sometimes went by the name “David Mayer.” As of Monday when I was writing this article, the hard coding on the name “David Mayer” had been removed, though the reasons for that are unclear.

Jonathan Turley and Jonathan Zittrain are both high-profile professors (though one is nutty and one is very thoughtful). Turley freaked out last year (around the same time Brian Hood did) when he claimed that someone generated false information about him via ChatGPT.

Unlike the others on the list, with Zittrain there’s no such trail of freaking out or raising alarms about AI-generated content. Zittrain is a Harvard professor and the Faculty Director at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. He writes a lot about the problems of the internet though (his book The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It is worth reading, even if a bit out of date). He is, apparently, writing a similar book about his concerns regarding AI agents, so perhaps that triggered it? For what it’s worth, Zittrain also seems to have no idea why he’s on the list. He hasn’t threatened to sue or demanded his name be blocked.

Guido Scorza, an Italian data protection expert, wrote on ExTwitter last year about how to use the GDPR’s problematic “right to be forgotten” to delete all the data ChatGPT had on him. This is something that doesn’t quite make sense, given that it’s not a database storing information on him. But, it appears that the way OpenAI dealt with that deletion request was to just… blocklist his name. Easy way out, etc., etc.

No one seems to have any idea why David Faber is on the list, but it could certainly be another GDPR right to be forgotten request.

While I was finishing up this post, I saw that Benj Edwards at Ars Technica wrote a similar exploration of the topic, though he falsely claims he “knows why” these names are blocked, and his reporting doesn’t reveal much more than the same speculation others have.

Still, all of this is kind of silly. Hard coding names that break ChatGPT may be the least costly way for AI companies to avoid nuisance legal threats, but it’s hardly sustainable, scalable or (importantly), sensible.

LLMs are tools. Like most tools, the focus of liability for misuse should fall on the users, not the tool. Users need to learn that the output of LLMs may not be accurate and shouldn’t be relied upon as factual. Many people know this, but obviously, it still trips up some folks.

If someone takes hallucinating output and publishes it or does something else with it without first checking to see if it’s legitimate, the liability should fall on that person who failed to do the proper due diligence and relied on a fantasy-making machine to tell the truth.

But, of course, for these services, convincing the world of these concepts is a lot harder than just saying “fuck it, remove the loud threatening complainers.” But that kind of solution can’t last.

Allegedly it's hard to get ahead at the chipmaker unless you speak Mandarin

Updated  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has been accused of “pervasive discrimination” against some of its workers in the USA.…

Mark Gurman and Ashley Carman, reporting for Bloomberg (Gurman has been killing it this week on the Vision Pro apps beat — he’s breaking all of these stories):

Google’s YouTube and Spotify Technology SA, the world’s most popular video and music services, are joining Netflix Inc. in steering clear of Apple Inc.’s upcoming mixed-reality headset.

YouTube said in a statement Thursday that it isn’t planning to launch a new app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will it allow its longstanding iPad application to work on the device — at least, for now. YouTube, like Netflix, is recommending that customers use a web browser if they want to see its content: “YouTube users will be able to use YouTube in Safari on the Vision Pro at launch.”

Spotify also isn’t currently planning a new app for visionOS — the Vision Pro’s operating system — and doesn’t expect to enable its iPad app to run on the device when it launches, according to a person familiar with matter. But the music service will still likely work from a web browser.

Spotify’s fuck-you to Apple I don’t find surprising, given the longstanding animosity between them. But YouTube is a surprise to me, and it’s a sign of how profoundly different the relationship is between Google and Apple today from the pre-Android era. In 2007, before third-party apps were even supported on iOS, YouTube was a built-in app on the original iPhone. (Apple designed and made the app; Google provided the back-end APIs and, obviously, the content.) Then-Google-CEO (and then-Apple-board-member!) Eric Schmidt was invited on stage by Steve Jobs to demo the YouTube app and sing the praises of both the iPhone and the Apple-Google partnership. That Apple-made Google-supported YouTube app was still a built-in default app on iOS when the iPad launched in 2010.

So for both the original iPhone and iPad, YouTube was part of the system software. For Vision Pro, there’s no app at all, not even the iPad app.

Regarding Netflix’s pass on Vision Pro, a little birdie informed me that until this week, the Netflix iPad app was available for those with access to Vision Pro hardware, and it worked just fine. This birdie still has the Netflix iPad app installed on their Vision Pro. Perhaps people at Netflix would disagree with just how well it worked — I don’t know — but I get the strong impression that the decision was political/strategic/spiteful, not technical. Entertainment is not the sole purpose of Vision Pro, but it’s a major one — and surely the primary one for many buyers — and it’s launching without the two biggest video entertainment apps in the world. Apple expected Netflix’s iPad app to be there on launch day.

This isn’t a dealbreaker — watching Netflix through Safari should be OK (albeit without offline downloads, a huge factor for using Vision Pro on airplanes), and many people think of YouTube as a website, not an app. But there’s no way around it: this is a bad look for Apple, not for Netflix or Google. The buck stops with Tim Cook on this. He should have been on the horn with Ted Sarandos and Sundar Pichai and worked this out. It’s his company that’s launching a $3,500 headset.

It’s also worth pointing out that these corporate pissing matches are reciprocal. They work in both directions. I doubt we’ll see any calls for Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify to be investigated by antitrust regulators over their refusal to allow their iPad apps to run on Vision Pro. But imagine if Netflix and Spotify wanted to be on Vision Pro on launch day and Apple refused, to leave more room in the spotlight for Apple TV+ and Apple Music. Or what happens if the Vision platform becomes a huge hit, and only then do Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify submit native apps — and Apple turns them down, on the grounds of “Where were you when we needed you?” People would lose their shit. We might even get a testy tweet from Elizabeth Warren.

Let’s start this post out by noting that a key reason Elon Musk said he was getting rid of the legacy Twitter verification system was that it was arbitrary and unfair and created a “lords and peasants” scenario. Keep that in mind, because you’re going to want to remember that by the end of this article.

Anyway… what a weird few days on Twitter. Late last week, Twitter finally got around to doing the thing Elon Musk had promised would happen at several earlier dates (including a firm deadline promised at the beginning of April): remove the “blue checkmarks” from those who were legacy verified accounts.

As we’ve detailed over and over again, Elon’s nonsensical decision to combine Twitter Blue and Twitter “verification” (loosely speaking) never made any sense. It misunderstands the point of verification as well as undermines the value of Twitter Blue. It’s kind of self-defeating, and basically most people recognize this. It’s why he’s struggled to get most people to sign up for it.

As part of the great removal, Musk seemed to think that maybe it would push those legacy verified accounts to pay up. That, well, didn’t happen. Travis Brown, a researcher who’s been the most thorough in tracking all of this and had created a database of the over 400,000 legacy verified accounts, noted that as the blue checks were removed… a net total of 28 new Twitter Blue accounts were created.

28.

Yes. Just 28. That’s net total, meaning that somewhat more than 28 people who had been legacy verified signed up, but a bunch of people also canceled their Twitter Blue account, so when you net it out, it was plus 28. Which is… nothing.

Again, as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, there are all sorts of things that Elon Musk could have done to make Twitter Blue worth subscribing to. But, instead, he focused on the “blue check” as if that was valuable. It was never valuable. And by changing it from a verified to a “this mfer paid for Elon’s Twitter” badge, he actually devalued it massively.

Either way, this resulted in a pretty stupid Twitter war, in which some people started pushing a kinda silly “Block the Blue” campaign, urging Twitter users to block anyone with the blue checkmark. And then Elon supporters with the blue checkmark went on an equally silly campaign to yell at people for not giving a billionaire $8. Frankly, neither side looked particularly good in all of this.

But, into that mix came chaos in the form of (of course) Elon Musk.

First, a few people noticed that a few celebrities who had very, very publicly stated that they would not pay for Twitter Blue were showing up as having paid “and verified” by their phone number. This included LeBron James and Stephen King among others. Elon admitted in a response to King that he had gifted him a Twitter Blue account:

Musk separately admitted that he was “paying for a few personally” to give them a Twitter Blue account, though he later said it was just LeBron James, Stephen King, and William Shatner — all three of whom had very publicly stated they had no interest in paying.

This made me wonder if he was opening himself up to yet another lawsuit. Given how much Elon has basically turned paying for Twitter Blue into an “endorsement” of the new Twitter and Elon himself, putting that label on the accounts of people who have not paid for it and don’t seem to want it could violate a number of laws, including the Lanham Act’s prohibition on false endorsement as well as a variety of publicity rights claims.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of publicity rights claims, because they are commonly used by the rich and powerful to silence speech. The original point of publicity rights laws was to stop false endorsement claims, whereby a commercial entity was using the implied association of a famous person to act as a promotion or endorsement of the commercial entity or its products.

Which, uh, seems to be exactly what Musk was doing in paying for Blue for some celebrities.

Separately, there are a bunch of questions about how this might violate EU data protection laws, but we’ll wait and see how the EU handles that.

Of course, then things got stupider. Remember the deal with Elon Musk: it can always get stupider.

As that “Block the Blue” campaign started getting more attention (and even started trending on Twitter), Musk gave the ringleaders of the campaign Twitter Blue. Yes, you read that right. Musk gave the people who were telling everyone to block anyone with a blue checkmark… a blue checkmark. And then admitted it by joking about how he was a troll.

Of course… as Twitter user Mobute noted, this is Musk admitting that the trolliest insult he can think of is to say someone is associated with him and his company:

Seems… kinda… like a self own?

Anyway, a few hours later, people started noticing that a ton of other accounts of famous people also started showing up with Twitter Blue despite not paying for it, nor wanting it. Some people said that it was being given to anyone with over 1 million followers, though there were some other accounts with fewer that got it and said they didn’t want it, like Terry Pratchett.

Still, it seemed that most accounts suddenly getting Blue without paying, requesting, or verifying their phone numbers had a million or more followers. And this included a large number of dead celebrities, where Twitter claims (if you click on their blue checkmark) that they paid and verified their phone number, which is pretty hard to do when you’re dead. There were lots of people who fell into this camp, including Chadwick Boseman, Norm MacDonald, Michael Jackson, and the aforementioned Terry Pratchett.

Oh, and Jamal Khashoggi, who was somewhat famously murdered by the Saudi government. I get the feeling he did not, in fact, confirm his phone number.

There have been questions about the publicity rights of dead people, and I’m a strong believer in the idea that publicity rights go away after death. But, you know, it’s still a bad look.

The end result though, is bizarre. Even as Musk is claiming that “everyone has to pay the same” that’s clearly no longer true:

He’s literally handing them out for free (1) based on levels of fame via follower counts (2) if he just decides to arbitrarily or (3) to troll people.

Which, you know, his site, he can do whatever the fuck he wants, but remember what I said up top? His entire reason for going down this path was to get rid of the arbitrary check mark system that created a “lords and peasants” setup where people deemed notable by Twitter got a check mark, and he was bring back “power to the people.”

But… as seems to keep happening, Elon Musk brings back a system he decried as stupid, but brings it back in a much stupider, and much worse, manner. So now there’s still an arbitrary lords and peasants system, but rather than one where at least someone is trying to determine if a person is notable and needs to be verified, it’s now an arbitrary cut-off on followers, or if Elon thinks it’s funny. Which seems way more arbitrary and stupid than the old system.

During Toyota's annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas last week, which was called "Playing to Win," CEO Akio Toyoda explained why the company isn't all-in on electric vehicles. CNBC reports: Toyoda last week simply stated what he would like his legacy to be: "I love cars." Despite criticism from some investors and environmental groups, Toyoda this past week doubled down on his strategy to continue investing in a range of electrified vehicles as opposed to competitors such as Volkswagen and General Motors, which have said they are going all-in on all-electric vehicles. The plans could arguably cement Toyoda's "I love cars" legacy or tarnish it, depending on how quickly drivers adopt electric vehicles. "For me, playing to win also means doing things differently. Doing things that others may question, but that we believe will put us in the winner's circle the longest," he said [...]. Toyoda, who described Toyota as a large department store, said the company's goal "remains the same, pleasing the widest possible range of customers with the widest possible range of powertrains." Those powertrains will include hybrids and plug-in hybrids like the Prius, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles like the Mirai and 15 all-electric battery models by 2025. Toyoda reiterated that he does not believe all-electric vehicles will be adopted as quickly as policy regulators and competitors think, due to a variety of reasons. He cited lack of infrastructure, pricing and how customers' choices vary region to region as examples of possible roadblocks. He believes it will be "difficult" to fulfill recent regulations that call for banning traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, like California and New York have said they will adopt. "Just like the free autonomous cars that we are all supposed to be driving by now, EVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than media would like us to believe," Toyoda said in a recording of the remarks to dealers shown to reporters. "In the meantime, you have many options for customers." Toyoda also believes there will be "tremendous shortages" of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to 10 years, leading to production and supply chain problems. Toyota's goal is carbon neutrality by 2050, and not just through all-electric vehicles. Some have questioned the environmental impact of EVs when factoring in raw material mining and overall vehicle production. Since the Prius launched in 1997, Toyota says it has sold more than 20 million electrified vehicles worldwide. The company says those sales have avoided 160 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent to the impact of 5.5 million all-electric battery vehicles. "Toyota can produce eight 40-mile plug-in hybrids for every one 320-mile battery electric vehicle and save up to eight times the carbon emitted into the atmosphere," according to prepared remarks for Toyoda provided to media. Toyoda also said the company has no plans to overhaul its franchised dealership network as it invests in electrified vehicles, like some competitors have announced. "I know you are anxious about the future. I know you are worried about how this business will change. While I can't predict the future, I can promise you this: You, me, us, this business, this franchised model is not going anywhere. It's staying just as it is," he told dealers to resounding applause.

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