On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The two donations "are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization," the FSF said in a statement.

"The donors wish to remain anonymous," according to the FSF's statement: The organization is in its annual winter fundraising drive, currently at three-quarters of its $400,000 USD winter goal, and will now switch its focus to a member drive thanks in part to these donations... The donation will support the organization's technical team and infrastructure capacity, as well as strengthen its campaigns, education, licensing, and advocacy initiatives, and future opportunities. The FSF is seeking donations until year-end after which they aim to gain 100 associate members through its year-end fundraising ending January 16.
The FSF's executive director said the donations prove "that software freedom is recognized more and more as a principal issue today, at the core of several other social movements people care about like privacy, ownership, and the right to repair...

"We are proudly supported by a large variety of contributors who care about digital rights. All donations matter, whether $5 or $500,000."

Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users' mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday. From a report: "Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use," Hochul said in a statement.

This month Australia imposed a social media ban for children under 16. New York joins states like California and Minnesota that have similar social media laws. The New York law includes platforms that offer "addictive feeds," auto play or infinite scroll, according to the legislation. The law applies to conduct occurring partly or wholly in New York but not when the platform is accessed by users physically outside the state.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese social media users criticized two key government policies, rare signs of public dissent in the country where the internet is heavily censored. The death of the former head of China's one-child policy agency -- which for decades forced women to carry out abortions and sterilizations -- sparked criticism of the demographic effort, with one netizen lamenting the "children who were lost."

Others, meanwhile, criticized Beijing's leadership over its ongoing row with Tokyo, sparked by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi saying her country could intervene to defend Taiwan in a potential Chinese attack on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Concerned that artificial intelligence could threaten Communist Party rule, Beijing is taking extraordinary steps to keep it under control. Although China's government sees AI as crucial to the country's economic and military future, regulations and recent purges of online content show it also fears AI could destabilize society. Chatbots pose a particular problem: Their ability to think for themselves could generate responses that spur people to question party rule.

In November, Beijing formalized rules it has been working on with AI companies to ensure their chatbots are trained on data filtered for politically sensitive content, and that they can pass an ideological test before going public. All AI-generated texts, videos and images must be explicitly labeled and traceable, making it easier to track and punish anyone spreading undesirable content. Authorities recently said they removed 960,000 pieces of what they regarded as illegal or harmful AI-generated content during three months of an enforcement campaign. Authorities have officially classified AI as a major potential threat, adding it alongside earthquakes and epidemics to its National Emergency Response Plan.

Chinese authorities don't want to regulate too much, people familiar with the government's thinking said. Doing so could extinguish innovation and condemn China to second-tier status in the global AI race behind the U.S., which is taking a more hands-off approach toward policing AI. But Beijing also can't afford to let AI run amok. Chinese leader Xi Jinping said earlier this year that AI brought "unprecedented risks," according to state media. A lieutenant called AI without safety like driving on a highway without brakes. There are signs that China is, for now, finding a way to thread the needle.

Chinese models are scoring well in international rankings, both overall and in specific areas such as computer coding, even as they censor responses about the Tiananmen Square massacre, human-rights concerns and other sensitive topics. Major American AI models are for the most part unavailable in China. It could become harder for DeepSeek and other Chinese models to keep up with U.S. models as AI systems become more sophisticated. Researchers outside of China who have reviewed both Chinese and American models also say that China's regulatory approach has some benefits: Its chatbots are often safer by some metrics, with less violence and pornography, and are less likely to steer people toward self-harm. "The Communist Party's top priority has always been regulating political content, but there are people in the system who deeply care about the other social impacts of AI, especially on children," said Matt Sheehan, who studies Chinese AI at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank. "That may lead models to produce less dangerous content on certain dimensions."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as "radical" activists and "weaponized" nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States. "For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose," Rubio posted on X. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."

The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. [...] The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs. Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the "mastermind" behind the EU's Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech. She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible "amplification of harmful content" by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.

theodp writes: We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications. So why not in our code? That's the premise of "Fun With Python and Emoji: What Might Adding Pictures to Text Programming Languages Look Like?" (two-image Bluesky explainer; full slides), which takes a look at what mixing emoji with Python and SQL might look like. A GitHub repo includes a Google Colab-ready Python notebook proof of concept that does rudimentary emoji-to-text translation via an IPython input transformer.

So, in the Golden Age of AI -- some 60+ years after Kenneth Iverson introduced the chock-full-of-symbols APL -- are valid technical reasons still keeping symbols and pictures out of code, or is their absence more of a programming dogma thing?

Tech giants Google and Apple are asking some employees with H-1B visas to reconsider international travel, as their legal teams warned that visa processing delays could keep employees abroad for months, according to Business Insider. From a report: Law firms representing the tech giants sent memos advising staff who require visa stamps for reentry to stay in the U.S., warning that international travel could entangle them in visa screening delays following the introduction of a new social media screening requirement, according to the news agency. The policy subjects H-1B workers and their dependents to reviews of their social media histories.

"Please be aware that some US Embassies and Consulates are experiencing significant visa stamping appointment delays, currently reported as up to 12 months," BAL Immigration Law, which represents Google, said in a memo obtained by Business Insider. The law firm said the delays were affecting H-1B, H-4, F, J and M visas.

Uber and Lyft plan to trial robotaxis in London starting in 2026 using autonomous vehicles from Baidu, as the UK fast-tracks approvals for self-driving cars on public roads. CNBC reports: Lyft's testing of Baidu's initial fleet of dozens of vehicles will begin in 2026, pending regulatory approval, "with plans to scale to hundreds from there," Lyft CEO David Risher said in a post on social media platform X on Monday. Meanwhile, Uber said that its first pilot is expected to start in the first half of 2026. "We're excited to accelerate Britain's leadership in the future of mobility, bringing another safe and reliable travel option to Londoners next year," the company added.

The moves add to Baidu's growing global footprint, which it says includes 22 cities and more than 250,000 weekly trips, as it races against other Chinese players like WeRide and Western giants like Alphabet's Waymo. The UK, in particular, has seen a wave of interest from driverless taxi companies, following the government's announcement in June that it would accelerate its plans to allow autonomous vehicle tech on public roads. The government now aims to begin permitting robotaxis to operate in small-scale pilots starting in spring 2026, with Baidu likely aiming to be among the first. The city of London has also established a "Vision Zero" goal to eliminate all serious injuries and deaths in its transportation systems by 2041, with autonomous driving technology expected to play a large role.

"Garmin's Collier Trophy award-winning Autonomi emergency Autoland, a system designed to safely land an aircraft in the event of pilot incapacitation, made its first real-world use and save on Saturday," writes Slashdot reader slipped_bit. AvBrief.com reports: Social media posts from flight tracking hobbyists reported a King Air 200 squawked 7700 about 2 p.m. local time today. The Autoland system was initiated and landed the aircraft at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Denver. A recording from LiveATC's feed of the airport's tower frequency includes a robotic female voice declaring a pilot incapacitation and the intention to land on Runway 30. The aircraft landed successfully and there have been no reports of injuries. The nature of the incapacitation and the condition of the pilot have not been released. VASAviation put together this nice animation of the event [here].

The aircraft, N479BR, was being operated by Buffalo River Outfitters from Aspen to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan. It's not clear how many people were on board. The system appeared to work flawlessly, and the controller at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan seemed to take it in stride, accommodating as many requests as he could before shutting down the airport for the landing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: With just three days to go before Christmas, a cyberattack knocked France's national postal service offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments. The timing was miserable for millions of people at the height of the Christmas season, as frazzled postal workers fended off frustrated customers. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicions abounded.

What the postal service La Poste called a ''major network incident'' remained unresolved by Monday evening, more than eight hours after it was first reported. For a company that delivered 2.6 billion packages last year and employs more than 200,000 people, that's a big hit. La Poste said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, "rendered its online services inaccessible." It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package delivery. Letters, including holiday greeting cards, could still be mailed and delivered. But transactions requiring tracking or access to the postal service internal computer systems were impossible.

The cyberattack also hurt online banking. Customers of the company's banking arm, La Banque Postale, were blocked from using the application to approve payments or conduct other banking services. The bank redirected approvals to text messages instead. "Our teams are mobilized to resolve the situation quickly," the bank said in messages posted on social networks. The disruption came a week after France's government was targeted by a cyberattack that targeted the Interior Ministry, in charge of national security.

Australian restaurants facing a mounting cost-of-doing-business crisis are turning to automatic service charges as a way to shore up revenue. The practice is legal under Australian consumer law as long as customers are notified beforehand and can opt out, but it risks alienating diners in a country where tipping has traditionally been optional.

Wes Lambert, chief executive of the Australian Cafe and Restaurant Association, said only a handful of businesses in central business districts currently add automatic tips to bills, but the practice may spread as cost pressures continue. Automatic tipping is more common at venues frequented by international tourists, who view the practice as normal rather than exceptional. With international tourism now near pre-COVID levels, Lambert expects more restaurants to include tips on bills by default.

A Sydney wine bar recently abandoned its 10 per cent automatic tip after a diner's social media post triggered public backlash. University of New South Wales professor Rob Nichols said Australia's resistance to tipping stems from the expectation that hospitality workers earn at least minimum wage, unlike in the United States where tips constitute most of a server's income. Australians and tourists tip an estimated $3.5 billion annually, and tipping transactions grew 13% year over year in fiscal 2024-25.

They call it "the business-impersonator scam". And it's fooled 396,227 Americans in just the first nine months of 2025 — 18% more than the 335,785 in the same nine months of 2024. That's according to a Bloomberg reporter (who also fell for it in late November), citing the official statistics from America's Federal Trade Commission: Some pose as airline staff on social media and respond to consumer complaints. Others use texts or e-mails claiming to be an airline reporting a delayed or cancelled flight to phish for travellers' data. But the objective is always the same: to hit a stressed out, overwhelmed traveller at their most vulnerable. In my case, the scammer exploited weaknesses in Google's automated ad-screening system, so that fraudulent sponsored results rose to the top [They'd typed "United airlines agent on demand" into Google, and the top search result on their phone said United.com, had a 1-888 number next to it and said it had had 1M+ visits in past month. "It looked legit. I tapped the number..." ]

After I reported the fake "United Airlines" ad to Google, via an online form for consumers, it was taken down. But a few days later, I entered the same search terms and the identical ad featuring the same 1-888 number was back at the top of my results. I reported it again, and it was quickly removed again... A [Google] spokesperson there said the company is constantly evolving its tactics "to stay ahead of bad actors." Of the 5.1 billion ads blocked by the company last year, she said, 415 million were taken down for "scam-related violations." Google updated its ads misrepresentation policy in 2024 to include "impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with a public figure, brand or organization to entice users to provide money or information." Still, many impostor ads slip through the cracks.
"Reported losses from business-impostor scams in the United States rose 30 per cent, to US$835 million, in the first three quarters of 2025," the article points out (citing more figures from the America's Federal Trade Commision). An updated version of the article also includes a response from United Airlines. "We encourage customers to only use customer-service contact information that is listed on our website and app."

And what happened to the scammed reporter? "I called American Express and contested the charge before cancelling my credit card. I then contacted Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, to put a fraud alert on my file. Next, I filed a complaint with the FTC and reported the fake ad to Google.

"American Express wound up resolving the dispute in my favour, but the memories of this chaotic Thanksgiving will stay with us forever. "

"On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Independent notes that "Without working traffic lights, the driverless cars were seemingly left confused, with many halting in their tracks and causing major traffic jams. Local riders and pedestrians shared photos and videos of the vehicles stuck at intersections with long lines of drivers piling up behind them..." In some instances, several Waymos were piled up in front of a single intersection. "6 Waymos parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage," another social media user wrote.
More from CNBC: San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m. local time, including one he photographed near Arguello Boulevard and Geary Street. "They were just stopping in the middle of the street," Schoolfield said.

The power outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco. PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in "significant and extensive" damage, and said it could not yet provide a precise timeline for full restoration...

Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X: "Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage." Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco. Tesla's local ride-hailing service uses vehicles equipped with "FSD (Supervised)," a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times...

The Waymo pause in San Francisco indicates cities are not yet ready for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of "How to Make AI Useful." "Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is," he said. [He recommends "human backup systems in place around highly automated systems, including robotaxis."] State and city regulators will need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for "chaos gridlock," just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a blackout.

Waymo did not say when its service would resume and did not specify whether collisions involving its vehicles had occurred during the blackout.

"Perhaps no group of fans, industry workers, and consumers is more intense about AI use than gamers...." writes New York magazine's "Intelligencer" column: Just this month, the latest Postal game was axed by its publisher, which was "overwhelmed with negative responses" from the "concerned Postal community" after fans spotted AI-generated material in the game's trailer. The developers of Arc Raiders were accused of using AI instead of voice actors, leading to calls for boycotts, while the developers of the Call of Duty franchise were called out for AI-generated assets that players found strewn across Black Ops 7.Games that weren't developed with generative AI are getting caught up in accusations anyway, while workers at Electronic Arts are going to the press to describe pressure from bosses to adopt AI tools. Nintendo has sworn off using generative AI, as has the company behind the Cyberpunk series. Valve, the company that operates Steam, now requires AI disclosures on listed games and surveys all submitters. Perhaps sensing the emergence of a new constituency, California congressman Ro Khanna responded in November to the Call of Duty backlash:"We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits," he posted on X....

AI is often seen as a tool for managers to extract more productivity and justify layoffs. Among players, it can foster a sense that gamers are being tricked or ripped off, while also dovetailing with more general objections to generative AI. It can sometimes be hard to tell whether gamer backlash is a bellwether or an outlier, an early signal from our youngest major creative industry or a localized and unique fit of rage. The sheer number of incidents here suggests the former, which foretells bitter, messy, and confusing fights to come in entertainment beyond gaming — where, notably, technologies referred to as "AI" have previously been embraced with open arms.
And now "the price of the sort of memory PC gamers most want to buy has skyrocketed" (per Tom's Hardware). "The rush to build data centers is making it much more expensive to game. Nobody's going to be happy about that."

Insider Gaming shares another example of anti-AI sentiment in the gaming industry: The Indie Game Awards took place on December 18, and, as many could assume, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home the awards for Game of the Year and Debut Game. However, things have changed and The Indie Game Awards are making a big decision to strip the Clair Obscur and developer Sandfall Interactive of their awards over the use of gen AI in the game.

In an announcement made on Saturday afternoon, Six One Indie, the creators of the show, said that it's removal comes after the discovery after voting was done, and the show was recorded. "The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself," the statement reads. "When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Polygon notes the award-stripping is "due to inclusion of generative AI assets at launch that were quickly patched out." Quotes from earlier in the year from Sandfall Interactive's FranÃois Meurisse made the rounds on social media last week amid a news cycle caught up in the use of generative AI in games... In June, the Spanish outlet El País published a story including an interview conducted around Clair Obscur's launch, in which Meurisse admitted that Sandfall used a minimal amount generative AI in some form during the game's development... Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release.

Archive.org now has a page with "the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum's Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek's readtape tool." A Berlin-based retrocomputing enthusiast has created a page with the contents of the tape ready for bootstrapping, "including a tar file of the filesystem," and instructions on dumping an RK05 disk image from tape to disk (and what to do next).

Research professor Rob Ricci at the University of Utah's school of computing posted pictures and video of the tape-reading process, along with several updates. ("So far some of our folks think they have found Hunt The Wumpus and the C code for a Snobol interpreter.") University researcher Mike Hibler noted the code predates the famous comment "You are not expected to understand this" — and found part of the C compiler with a copyright of 1972.

The version of Unix recovered seems to have some (but not all) of the commands that later appeared in Unix v5, according to discussion on social media. "UNIX wasn't versioned as we know it today," explains University of Utah PhD student Thalia Archibald, who researched early Unix history (including the tape) and also worked on its upload. "In the early days, when you wanted to cut a tape, you'd ask Ken if it was a good day — whether the system was relatively bug-free — and copy off the research machine... I've been saying It's probably V5 minus a tiny bit, which turned out to be quite true."

An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux: After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla's new CEO that Firefox will evolve into "a modern AI browser," the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser...

What was not made clear [in Tuesday's comments by new Mozilla CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo] is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier Thursday to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.... "...that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this," said Firefox developer Jake Archibald on Mastodon.

In addition, Jake Archibald said that all the AI features that are or will be included in Firefox will also be opt-in. "I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That's unambiguous..."

Mozilla has contacted me shortly after writing the story to confirm that the "AI Kill Switch" will be implemented in Q1 2026."
The article also cites this quote left by Mozilla's new CEO on Reddit:

"Rest assured, Firefox will always remain a browser built around user control. That includes AI. You will have a clear way to turn AI features off. A real kill switch is coming in Q1 of 2026. Choice matters and demonstrating our commitment to choice is how we build and maintain trust."

echo123 shares a report from PBS: The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, moving to dissolve a research lab that a top White House official described as "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country." White House budget director Russ Vought criticized the lab in a social media post Tuesday night and said a comprehensive review of the lab is underway. "Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location, Vought said.

The research lab, which houses the largest federal research program on climate change, supports research to predict, prepare for and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters. The research lab is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities on behalf of the National Science Foundation. A senior White House official cited two instances of the lab's "woke direction" that wastes taxpayer funds on what the official called frivolous pursuits and ideologies. One funded an Indigenous and Earth Sciences center that aimed to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered," while another experiment traced air pollution to "demonize motor vehicles, oil and gas operations." The lab "is quite literally our global mothership," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, in a post on X. "Nearly everyone who researches climate and weather -- not only in the U.S., but around the world -- has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources."

She continued: "NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes -- the largest community climate model in the world. That too. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual "Year in Sport" wrap-up -- a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user's athletic achievements. But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ($80 per year), rather than making it free to everyone, as it had been historically since the review's debut in 2016. This decision has roiled numerous Strava users, particularly those who have relished the app's social encouragement features.

One Strava user in India, Shobhit Srivastava, "begged" Strava to "let the plebs see their Year in Sport too, please." He later explained to Ars that having this little animated video is more than just a collection of raw numbers. "When someone makes a video of you and your achievements and tells you that these are the people who stood right behind you, motivated you, cheered for you -- that feeling is of great significance to me!" he said by email. "Our goal was to give our users ample notice before the personalized Year In Sport was released," said Strava spokesperson Chris Morris. "With the relaunch of our subscription this year, we wanted to clarify the core benefits of Strava -- uploading activities, finding your community, sharing and giving kudos -- remain as accessible as possible."

TikTok's owner ByteDance has signed a deal creating a U.S.-focused joint venture majority-owned by American and global investors, allowing the app to avoid a U.S. ban while ByteDance retains a minority stake. The BBC reports: Half of the joint venture will be owned by a group of investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX, according to a memo sent by chief executive Shou Zi Chew. The deal, which is set to close on January 22, would end years of efforts by Washington to force ByteDance to sell its US operations over national security concerns. It is in-line with a deal unveiled in September, when US President Donald Trump delayed the enforcement of a law that would ban the app unless it was sold.

TikTok said in the memo that the deal would enable "over 170 million Americans to continue discovering a world of endless possibilities as part of a vital global community." Under the agreement, ByteDance will retain 19.9% of the business, while Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will hold 15% each. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors, according to the memo.

Google's AI Mode is synthesizing "Frankenstein" recipes from multiple creators, often stripping away context and accuracy and siphoning traffic and ad revenue away from food bloggers in the process. Many recipe writers warn this shift amounts to an "extinction event" for ad-supported food sites. The Guardian reports: Over the past few years, bloggers who have not secured their sites behind a paywall have seen their carefully developed and tested recipes show up, often without attribution and in a bastardized form, in ChatGPT replies. They have seen dumbed-down versions of their recipes in AI-assembled cookbooks available for digital downloads on Etsy or on AI-built websites that bear a superficial resemblance to an old-school human-written blog. Their photos and videos, meanwhile, are repurposed in Facebook posts and Pinterest pins that link back to this digital slop.

Recipe writers have no legal recourse because recipes generally are not copyrightable. Although copyright protects published or recorded work, they do not cover sets of instructions (although it can apply to the particular wording of those instructions). Without this essential IP, many food bloggers earn their living by offering their work for free while using ads to make money. But now they fear that casual users who rely on search engines or social media to find a recipe for dinner will conflate their work with AI slop and stop trusting online recipe sites altogether. "For websites that depend on the advertising model," says Matt Rodbard, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Taste, "I think this is an extinction event in many ways."