Civitai, an online marketplace for sharing AI models, just introduced a new feature called “bounties” to encourage its community to develop passable deepfakes of real people, as originally reported by 404 Media. Whoever concocts the best AI model gets a virtual currency called “Buzz” that users can buy with actual money.

Many of the bounties posted to the site ask users to recreate the likeness of celebrities and social media influencers, most of them female. The reporting also calls out the lion’s share of these results as “nonconsensual sexual images.” This is the kind of thing that has been proliferating across the internet for years and years, but artificial intelligence allows for a more realistic end result. Additionally, 404 Media found some requests for private people with no significant online presence, making this even more creepy.

“I am very afraid of what this can become,” Michele Alves, an Instagram influencer who has a bounty on Civitai, told 404 Media. “I don't know what measures I could take, since the internet seems like a place out of control.”

According to market firm Andreessen Horowitz, Civitai is the seventh most popular generative AI platform at the moment. In other words, there are a whole lot of eyeballs on these bounty requests. It only took staffers at 404 Media moments to source images sent via a bounty request to a private person with personal social media accounts boasting just a few followers. The person who posted the bounty claimed it was his wife, but her social media accounts said otherwise. Gross.

One Civitai user declined the bounty on the grounds that it was “asking for legal problems in the future.” To that end, Virginia just updated its revenge porn laws to punish deekfake creators with up to one year in jail. Still, this particular request was fulfilled and several images were uploaded to the site, though they were non-sexual in nature.

It’s worth noting that very few of the bounty requests specifically state the poster’s looking for sexual material, couching the request in vague language. Some, however, go all-in, using terms like “degenerate request” along with comments on female breast size. Civitai, for its part, says that these bounties should not be used to create non-consensual AI-generated sexual images of real people.

However, both sexual images of public-facing figures and non-sexual images of regular people are allowed. After that, it’s just a matter of combining the two. 404 Media used the company's text-to-image tool to create non-consensual sexual images of a real person “in seconds.”

The Game Awards 2023 are almost upon us and this year's nominations have been revealed. Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 lead the pack with eight nods each. They're both up for the top prize of Game of the Year alongside Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (seven nominations overall), the Resident Evil 4 remake (four nods), Super Mario Bros. Wonder (five) and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (five).

Nintendo snagged the most nominations of any publisher with 15, followed by Sony (13), Microsoft (10, including Bethesda and Activision Blizzard's nods) and Epic Games (nine). There are 31 awards in total, including Best Adaptation. The nominees in that category this year are Castlevania: Nocturne, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Twisted Metal.

A bunch of deserving indies picked up nominations as well, including Cocoon, Dave the Diver, Dredge, Tchia, Viewfinder, Pizza Tower and Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Meanwhile, continuing a redemption arc after its disastrous debut three years ago, Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 and its Phantom Liberty expansion racked up four nominations in total.

The results of a fan poll will be added to votes from a jury of more than 100 global media publications and influencer outlets to determine the winners. You can watch The Game Awards live on December 7, where the hosts will undoubtedly zip through many of the awards to get to the next big trailer (which may just include one for Grand Theft Auto VI).

Meta now lets Threads users avoid automatically sharing their posts with its other apps. When activated, the opt-out feature prevents Meta’s Twitter clone from sharing posts to Instagram and Facebook without user consent. Software engineer Alessandro Paluzzi spotted early signs of the privacy toggle earlier this month.

Threads users can turn off automatic cross-platform content sharing by heading to their profile page, selecting the menu at the top right, then Privacy > Suggesting posts on other apps, and toggling off Instagram and Facebook individually. Note that changing this feature only prevents your posts from being used in cross-promotions; you’ll still see other people’s Threads posts on Instagram and Facebook, irrespective of your privacy settings.

Some Threads users were upset about Meta automatically sharing their content from the nascent X competitor, mainly because people often use the apps to connect with different crowds (for example, Threads for news and politics with strangers, Facebook for extended family and old friends). TechCrunch highlighted several comments from people describing Threads posts automatically posted on other platforms as odd clickbait seemingly “designed to get comments” by stripping bold statements of context. In October, the company said it was “listening to feedback” in response to a Threads user’s complaint about automatic sharing to Meta’s more established platforms.

Meta is no stranger to using its existing stockpile of social apps to turbocharge its newest ones. It used easy onboarding and promotion via Instagram to vault Threads to the fastest app to reach 150 million downloads. Although growth appeared to slow after that, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said Threads had tallied nearly 100 million users. The Facebook founder said he sees a path for the Twitter clone to reach the one-billion user milestone.

The hype surrounding emerging technologies like generative AI creates a wild west, of sorts, for bad actors seeking to capitalize on consumer confusion. To that end, Google is suing some scammers who allegedly tricked people into downloading an “unpublished” version of its Bard AI software. Instead of a helpful chatbot, this Bard was reportedly stuffed with malware.

The lawsuit was filed today in California and it alleges that individuals based in Vietnam have been setting up social media pages and running ads encouraging users to download a version of Bard, but this version doesn’t deliver helpful answers on how to cook risotto or whatever. This Bard, once downloaded by some rube, worms its way into the system and steals passwords and social media credentials. The lawsuit notes that these scammers have specifically used Facebook as their preferred distribution method.

Google’s official blog post on the matter notes that it sent over 300 takedown requests before opting for the lawsuit. The suit doesn’t seek financial compensation, but rather an order to stop the alleged fraudsters from setting up similar domains, particularly with US-based domain registrars. The company says that this outcome will “serve as a deterrent and provide a clear mechanism for preventing similar scams in the future.”

The lawsuit goes on to highlight how emerging technologies are ripe for this kind of anti-consumer weaponization. In this case, the alleged scammers said that Bard is a paid service that required a download. In reality, it’s a free web service.

Netflix is giving the Terminator franchise the anime treatment in a new series that’s set to hit the streaming platform “soon.” The company dropped the first teaser for Terminator: The Anime Series this weekend during its Geeked Week event. Details so far are scant, but we do know it’ll be produced by Production IG, the Japanese animation studio behind the original Ghost in the Shell movie and spinoff TV series.

Terminator: The Anime Series will take us back to August 1997, when the Skynet AI has first become self-aware and turned against humans. It will feature a cast of new characters, according to Variety. 

Also on board as executive producers are Skydance and Project Power writer Mattson Tomlin, who will be the series’ writer and showrunner. Netflix hasn’t announced a release date yet or shown any preview scenes, so here’s hoping we get an expanded trailer soon. The Terminator franchise has had quite a few installments, not all of them good, but going back to the beginning could be just the refresh it needs.

Netflix now has more than 80 games that subscribers can dive into at no extra cost on iOS and Android (and TVs and desktops, in some cases). As part of its Geeked Week event, the company has revealed some more titles that are on the way to the service, including some indie classics.

Hades, one of the very best games of 2020, will soon be available to Netflix subscribers on iOS, but not Android for the time being. It's a rogue-lite dungeon crawler that places a heavy emphasis on replayability. 

You'll play as Zagreus, the prince of the Underworld. Whenever he dies (which will probably be often to begin with), he'll go back to the beginning. It's different every time you play, but you'll carry knowledge — and some weapons and abilities — from one run into the next. The Hugo award-winning Hades has a rich cast of characters too. It's a real treat, and you might find yourself sinking hundreds of hours into this one.

Classic time-manipulation platformer Braid is on the way to iOS and Android for Netflix users. The long-delayed Braid, Anniversary Edition features upgraded audio, hand-repainted visuals, fresh animations "and a whole new world of puzzles to solve." In a neat touch, there will also be over 15 hours of commentary that delves into game design, programming and other aspects of development. Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed that the new edition of Braid is coming to Netflix Games, Windows, PlayStation and Xbox on April 30

Death's Door was one of the standout indies of 2021, and the Zelda-esque adventure title will soon be a mobile exclusive for Netflix subscribers. You control a crow that's tasked with collecting souls for the Reaping Commission Headquarters, a bureaucratic entity in the afterlife.

Slick action platformer Katana Zero is on the way to Netflix Games too, along with a string of titles based on the company's shows and movies. Shadow and Bone: Enter the Fold, which is set between the first two seasons of the show, is available now. Top-down heist game Chicken Run: Eggstraction and co-op action RPG The Dragon Prince: Xadia will arrive in 2024.

A game based on one of Netflix's biggest hits is coming soon too. In Money Heist, you'll get to take part in a version of the heist from the franchise's original series. Netflix says the game will arrive alongside spinoff series Berlin.

The live-action adaptation of the classic shonen manga and anime YuYu Hakusho is hitting Netflix on December 14, and the streaming service has given fans some idea of what they can expect in a short teaser video. Live-action adaptations of anime shows are a hit or miss. Some, like Netflix's Death Note, were generally panned and poorly received, while others like the Rurouni Kenshin movies starring Takeru Satoh and Netflix's One Piece had managed to win over existing fans and new audiences alike. 

As a long-time fan of Yoshihiro Togashi's YuYu Hakusho, I have witnessed fellow fans dread its arrival after the streaming service published the first posters for the series. Certain actors were a miscast, they said, and even the actors in YuYu Hakusho's stage production had better costumes and styling. The teaser, however, actually looked pretty good, and fans seem to be hopeful that the show will end up becoming of the better anime adaptations out there. 

When Netflix announced the series' streaming date, it hinted that it will not be an exact copy of the manga and the anime. "The series breathes new life into the story, and fans old and new can expect to encounter their favorite characters in ways that have never been seen before," it said. The teaser's too short to reveal most of the changes the show has made, but eagle-eyed viewers might find some in the video below. 

Netflix has given The Witcher fans their first look at a new animated film that's set to hit the streaming service in late 2024. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is based on A Little Sacrifice, a short story written by the universe's creator Andrzej Sapkowski. It will have Geralt of Rivia investigating a series of attacks in a seaside village in the midst of rising conflict between its human inhabitants and merpeople from the ocean. Netflix says the film is set between episodes 5 and 6 of the live-action series' first season, and it does show: The Geralt in the film resembles original Witcher actor Henry Cavill more than the Geralt in the games. 

The live action's stars Anya Chalotra and Joey Batey will also be reprising their roles as Yennefer of Vengerberg and Jaskier in the animated film. But Geralt will be voiced by Doug Cockle, who's known for voicing the White Wolf in the Witcher games. The movie is directed by Kang Hei Chul, who served as a storyboard artist for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which featured the story of Vesemir before he became Geralt's mentor. It was also animated by Studio MIR, the same South Korean studio that worked on Nightmare of the Wolf. 

The film may be the last time those who were particularly fond of Cavill as Geralt can see, well, a version of him play the role. He left the live-action show after its third season and is set to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth. 

Netflix’s new prestige sci-fi show is delayed until March 22, 2024. 3 Body Problem was originally scheduled to debut in 2023, before being pushed back to January 2024, and now March. Just as the initial delay was accompanied by a teaser trailer, so too is this one:

3 Body Problem is being adapted by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (who created HBO's Game of Thrones) alongside screenwriter Alexander Woo. The new trailer gives us our first look at the series’ key “video game,” Three-Body, which involves a nebulous and extremely shiny VR headset. According to John Bradley’s character Jack Rooney, the headset has "no screen... no headphone jack... not even a charging port." Donning the headset transports Rooney to a hyper-realistic world, before he’s swiftly ejected and the trailer ends.

The show's source material is The Three-Body Problem, the first novel in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth's Past series. Originally released in the mid ’00s in China, it gained international recognition and a Hugo award when Tor Books published an English-language translation in 2014. Netflix’s ill-grammared take on the book was announced in 2020, and stars Benedict Wong, Eiza González and several Game of Thrones alums including Jonathan Pryce and the aforementioned Bradley.

That Netflix subscription you're suddenly paying another couple of bucks for every month will soon give you a bit more value for money. The Super Mario Bros. Movie — the second highest-grossing film of the year so far after Barbie — is coming to Netflix on December 3. 

It's been a Peacock streaming exclusive since early August. Peacock has 28 million paid subscribers, while Netflix has around 74 million paying members in the US, so many more folks will be able to be able to legally watch the movie at home without renting or buying it. 

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun, but predictably safe trip to the Mushroom Kingdom with a memorable turn from Jack Black as Bowser. A word of warning for anyone checking out the film on Netflix for the first time: good luck getting that "Peaches" song out of your head any time soon. Oh, and Chris Pratt is completely fine as Mario!

Although the Mario movie is the highest-grossing film adaptation of a video game franchise ever, Nintendo and its partners (Universal Pictures and Illumination) have yet to announce the inevitable sequel. However, it emerged this week that Nintendo is teaming up with Sony Pictures for a live-action take on The Legend of Zelda, which seems like a far riskier bet.