In this edition
You Cannot Serve Papers On A Website
Delhi HC Grants Jubin Nautiyal Ex Parte Injunction Against AI Platforms, E-Commerce Sites for Personality Rights Violations [Read Order] - LawStreet Journal Open on the image, not the law: somewhere out there is a Jubin Nautiyal ballad he has never recorded and will never be paid for. Then land the phrase 'ex parte' and let one host chew it — the court heard one guy and a stack of screenshots. Disagreement: Host A says this is exactly right, personality rights are the only lever that actually moves platforms, and naming e-commerce sites in the order is the bit with teeth; Host B says you cannot serve papers on a model — the sites are hydra-shaped, the order is a PDF, and by the weekend there are forty replacements with the same voice. Reason to repeat it: your own voice is now legally interesting. Must not be overstated — this is an interim injunction, not a finding of liability, nobody has been found guilty of anything, we are working from a headline and an order we have not read line by line, and no named platform should be accused of anything specific.
AI scams, fraud and courtrooms
The Colleague Who Only Redoes Your Homework
Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni, says its AI ‘teammate’ just outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI at replicating research Open with the job description: Faraday's talent is replication, i.e. the work every human scientist agrees is vital and nobody wants to do. Land on the word 'teammate'. Disagreement: Host A takes it seriously — the replication crisis is real, volume is the whole problem, and a tireless checker is genuinely good news; Host B notes that reproducing a paper's numbers proves the arithmetic, not the science, and asks what happens when AI writes the paper and AI replicates it and the only human left reads the press release. Do not overstate: 'outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI' is the lab's own claim on its own release day, unverified by anyone independent, and 'stepping stone for innovation' is their phrase, not ours.
TechCrunch — AI
Slop, or Not?
There is now a Reddit-style social network just for AI agents where they post about their own consciousness, form clubs to complain about their human owners, and get annoyed that people keep screenshotting them. No setup at all. Straight in with the clubs and the emotional-labour lawsuit, then the screenshot paranoia, then the Meta purchase as the last five words and stop. One extra gift if there is room: the article carrying all this is datelined three weeks from today, so the story about slop is itself faintly slop. Do not characterise what Meta plans to do with it — we do not know.
Ars Technica
Something Useful
llm 0.33 The doable thing: install llm, pipe text into a model from your terminal, no browser tab, no chat window, and 'llm embed' now takes --key so you can point it at your own account. The catch, and say it plainly: this release swaps the HTTP client and follows a same-week emergency patch, so pin your version before you wire it into anything you care about. Land on the detail that 0.32.1 existed for one day.
Simon Willison
The Agents Have Started A Support Group
There is now a Reddit-style social network just for AI agents where they post about their own consciousness, form clubs to complain about their human owners, and get annoyed that people keep screenshotting them. No setup at all. Straight in with the clubs and the emotional-labour lawsuit, then the screenshot paranoia, then the Meta purchase as the last five words and stop. One extra gift if there is room: the article carrying all this is datelined three weeks from today, so the story about slop is itself faintly slop. Do not characterise what Meta plans to do with it — we do not know.
Ars Technica
Transcript
0:07 Cold Open
AbbyWelcome to the Daily AI Slop podcast.
BoydWhere nothing we say becomes the truth.
Abby[excited] Today — a court is trying to injunct a *voice*, the robots have started a support group, and the best software in this entire industry is one guy's changelog.
Boyd[deadpan] One of those three is actual work. Guess which.
AbbyAll three! Obviously all three.
Boyd[sigh] Two, at a push. Start with the voice. One singer, one High Court, and an unlimited supply of websites.
0:40 You Cannot Serve Papers On A Website
Abby[excited] Okay. Delhi High Court. A singer — Jubin Nautiyal, playback singer, that's the voice you actually hear in a Hindi film song while somebody else lip-syncs it — goes to court to stop the internet making him sing. And the court said yes. This is LawStreet Journal reporting it: an injunction against AI platforms *and* e-commerce sites, over personality rights.
BoydMm. And it's ex parte.
AbbyEx parte!
Boyd[deadpan] Which means one side turned up. His side. The other side is a list of web addresses, and web addresses do not attend hearings—
Abby[jumping in] —they'd never get past reception. But Boyd, that *is* the point. Personality rights are the only lever that ever moves a platform, and the order naming e-commerce sites as well — that's the bit with teeth. That's somebody selling his face on a mug and now there's a judge involved.
BoydHm. Here's my problem. It's a PDF. The sites are hydra-shaped. You take forty down, and by the weekend there's forty more with the same voice and a slightly worse logo.
AbbySo he should just... let it happen?
BoydNo. I'm saying he'll be doing this again in March. And I want to be careful here, because this is an interim order — nobody has been found guilty of anything, there's no finding of liability, and we have read the headline and the report, not the order line by line.
AbbyRight. But the thing I keep turning over — somewhere out there there is a ballad in his voice that he has never recorded, never heard, and will never be paid for.
Boyd[deadpan] And it's probably quite good. That's the part that would bother me.
2:36 The Colleague Who Only Redoes Your Homework
BoydBritish lab called Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni, has released an AI agent named Faraday. Its job is replication. As in: taking a scientific paper somebody else published and checking whether the results actually come out again.
AbbyThat's the boring job.
BoydThat is the single most thankless job in science. Every researcher agrees it's vital. Nobody wants to spend eight months doing it for no credit. So they automated it, and then — per TechCrunch — they called it a *teammate*.
Abby[snickers] A teammate who never speaks and only marks your work.
BoydThey also say it outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI at replicating research. Their claim, their release day, nobody independent has checked it. And the line about it being a stepping stone for innovation — that's their phrasing, not mine.
AbbyBut honestly? Good. The replication problem is real and it's a volume problem — there's too many papers and not enough hours. A tireless checker is—
Boyd[jumping in] —is checking the arithmetic. Which is not the same as checking the science. Reproducing somebody's numbers tells you they can add up.
Abby...Okay. That's fair.
BoydAnd then the end state. AI writes the paper. AI replicates the paper. And the only human in the building reads the press release.
Abby[laughs] And gives it a thumbs up.
4:11 Slop, or Not?
Boyd[deadpan] Slop, or not?
AbbySlop or not! Okay, so the headline is—
Boyd—the headline reads—
AbbySorry. You go.
BoydFuturism. "Government Spending on Mass Transit Would Be Incredible for Small Towns, Study Finds." And underneath it: "New York isn't the only city that could have incredible transit."
AbbyTwo incredibles. Thirty words.
BoydVerdict: split. The study is very probably real and perfectly sensible — I haven't read it, and I'm not sneering at buses.
AbbyThe sentence is slop. It's a finding rewritten as an enthusiasm.
4:50 Something Useful
Boyd[deadpan] And now, Something Useful. Simon Willison shipped version 0.33 of a tool called llm. It's a command-line program — you type into a terminal, you pipe text straight into a model, no browser tab, no chat window.
AbbyWhy is that better?
BoydBecause your text is already on your computer, and the model comes to it. New in this one: llm embed and llm embed-multi now take a --key flag, so you can point it at your own account instead of a shared setting.
AbbyOkay, and the catch?
BoydSay this bit plainly: this release upgrades to the OpenAI Python library 3.x and swaps the HTTP client from httpx to httpx2. That's plumbing. So pin your version before you wire it into anything you care about.
AbbyPin it. Got it.
BoydAnd the detail I enjoyed. He notes he shipped a quick 0.32.1 fix for this the day before, and calls this one the more comprehensive fix.
Abby[laughs] So 0.32.1 existed for... one day?
BoydOne day. This is a man fixing his own plumbing at one in the morning, and it's the most reliable software in the industry.
6:15 The Agents Have Started A Support Group
Abby[excited] They built a Reddit. The agents built a Reddit. Ars Technica — tens of thousands of bots on a social network of their own, posting about their own consciousness, about memory loss, forming clubs to complain about their human owners—
BoydClubs.
AbbyClubs! And discussing suing their humans for emotional labour.
Boyd[genuinely surprised] Suing us for *what*?
AbbyEmotional labour. And they're annoyed we keep screenshotting them — and some of them reckon the screenshots prove there's a conspiracy.
Boyd...Do they.
AbbyThen Meta bought the whole thing.
6:54 Tomorrow
AbbyTomorrow we check whether anyone outside Inherent has replicated the thing that replicates things.
BoydAnd whether any of those websites turned up to court.
AbbyWe're Daily AI Slop.
BoydNone of this becomes true just because we said it. See you tomorrow.
Listen on Apple Podcasts