Snake River dam supporters cry foul as feds plan update to study that rejected breaching
Cabinet approved Rs. 219.37 b supplementary estimate for remaining 2024 expensesBy HALELUYA HADERO The emergence of generative artificial intelligence tools that allow people to efficiently produce novel and detailed online reviews with almost no work has put merchants , service providers and consumers in uncharted territory, watchdog groups and researchers say. Phony reviews have long plagued many popular consumer websites, such as Amazon and Yelp. They are typically traded on private social media groups between fake review brokers and businesses willing to pay. Sometimes, such reviews are initiated by businesses that offer customers incentives such as gift cards for positive feedback. But AI-infused text generation tools, popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT , enable fraudsters to produce reviews faster and in greater volume, according to tech industry experts. The deceptive practice, which is illegal in the U.S. , is carried out year-round but becomes a bigger problem for consumers during the holiday shopping season , when many people rely on reviews to help them purchase gifts. Fake reviews are found across a wide range of industries, from e-commerce, lodging and restaurants, to services such as home repairs, medical care and piano lessons. The Transparency Company, a tech company and watchdog group that uses software to detect fake reviews, said it started to see AI-generated reviews show up in large numbers in mid-2023 and they have multiplied ever since. For a report released this month, The Transparency Company analyzed 73 million reviews in three sectors: home, legal and medical services. Nearly 14% of the reviews were likely fake, and the company expressed a “high degree of confidence” that 2.3 million reviews were partly or entirely AI-generated. “It’s just a really, really good tool for these review scammers,” said Maury Blackman, an investor and advisor to tech startups, who reviewed The Transparency Company’s work and is set to lead the organization starting Jan. 1. In August, software company DoubleVerify said it was observing a “significant increase” in mobile phone and smart TV apps with reviews crafted by generative AI. The reviews often were used to deceive customers into installing apps that could hijack devices or run ads constantly, the company said. The following month, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company behind an AI writing tool and content generator called Rytr, accusing it of offering a service that could pollute the marketplace with fraudulent reviews. The FTC, which this year banned the sale or purchase of fake reviews, said some of Rytr’s subscribers used the tool to produce hundreds and perhaps thousands of reviews for garage door repair companies, sellers of “replica” designer handbags and other businesses. Max Spero, CEO of AI detection company Pangram Labs, said the software his company uses has detected with almost certainty that some AI-generated appraisals posted on Amazon bubbled up to the top of review search results because they were so detailed and appeared to be well thought-out. But determining what is fake or not can be challenging. External parties can fall short because they don’t have “access to data signals that indicate patterns of abuse,” Amazon has said. Pangram Labs has done detection for some prominent online sites, which Spero declined to name due to non-disclosure agreements. He said he evaluated Amazon and Yelp independently. Many of the AI-generated comments on Yelp appeared to be posted by individuals who were trying to publish enough reviews to earn an “Elite” badge, which is intended to let users know they should trust the content, Spero said. The badge provides access to exclusive events with local business owners. Fraudsters also want it so their Yelp profiles can look more realistic, said Kay Dean, a former federal criminal investigator who runs a watchdog group called Fake Review Watch. To be sure, just because a review is AI-generated doesn’t necessarily mean its fake. Some consumers might experiment with AI tools to generate content that reflects their genuine sentiments. Some non-native English speakers say they turn to AI to make sure they use accurate language in the reviews they write. “It can help with reviews (and) make it more informative if it comes out of good intentions,” said Michigan State University marketing professor Sherry He, who has researched fake reviews. She says tech platforms should focus on the behavioral patters of bad actors, which prominent platforms already do, instead of discouraging legitimate users from turning to AI tools. Prominent companies are developing policies for how AI-generated content fits into their systems for removing phony or abusive reviews. Some already employ algorithms and investigative teams to detect and take down fake reviews but are giving users some flexibility to use AI. Spokespeople for Amazon and Trustpilot, for example, said they would allow customers to post AI-assisted reviews as long as they reflect their genuine experience. Yelp has taken a more cautious approach, saying its guidelines require reviewers to write their own copy. “With the recent rise in consumer adoption of AI tools, Yelp has significantly invested in methods to better detect and mitigate such content on our platform,” the company said in a statement. The Coalition for Trusted Reviews, which Amazon, Trustpilot, employment review site Glassdoor, and travel sites Tripadvisor, Expedia and Booking.com launched last year, said that even though deceivers may put AI to illicit use, the technology also presents “an opportunity to push back against those who seek to use reviews to mislead others.” “By sharing best practice and raising standards, including developing advanced AI detection systems, we can protect consumers and maintain the integrity of online reviews,” the group said. The FTC’s rule banning fake reviews, which took effect in October, allows the agency to fine businesses and individuals who engage in the practice. Tech companies hosting such reviews are shielded from the penalty because they are not legally liable under U.S. law for the content that outsiders post on their platforms. Tech companies, including Amazon, Yelp and Google, have sued fake review brokers they accuse of peddling counterfeit reviews on their sites. The companies say their technology has blocked or removed a huge swath of suspect reviews and suspicious accounts. However, some experts say they could be doing more. “Their efforts thus far are not nearly enough,” said Dean of Fake Review Watch. “If these tech companies are so committed to eliminating review fraud on their platforms, why is it that I, one individual who works with no automation, can find hundreds or even thousands of fake reviews on any given day?” Consumers can try to spot fake reviews by watching out for a few possible warning signs , according to researchers. Overly enthusiastic or negative reviews are red flags. Jargon that repeats a product’s full name or model number is another potential giveaway. When it comes to AI, research conducted by Balázs Kovács, a Yale professor of organization behavior, has shown that people can’t tell the difference between AI-generated and human-written reviews. Some AI detectors may also be fooled by shorter texts, which are common in online reviews, the study said. However, there are some “AI tells” that online shoppers and service seekers should keep it mind. Panagram Labs says reviews written with AI are typically longer, highly structured and include “empty descriptors,” such as generic phrases and attributes. The writing also tends to include cliches like “the first thing that struck me” and “game-changer.”
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Before streaming platforms forever altered the way we watch and consume entertainment, quantifying everything into easy-to-search, algorithmically managed apps, we used to just stumble across things on cable that felt like dreams. Maybe we’d forget about them almost immediately, but they’d remain a part of our consciousness, influencing our taste and reappearing as flashes of something half-remembered. This is how I discovered the gritty miniseries that would become a lifelong obsession. While the Wicked musical was treading the boards on Broadway, another Wizard of Oz adaptation took television by storm when the three-episode Tin Man miniseries premiered on the Syfy Channel in December 2007. Watching it now feels like being transported back to a wilder, riskier era of TV, when shows could cast Richard Dreyfuss as a drug-addled magician living in a steampunk speakeasy and win Emmys for it. This isn’t your grandparents’ Oz story. This version of the heroic Dorothy (nicknamed DG) rides a motorcycle to work, is good with tools, and is played by Zooey Deschanel, bangs and all. She lives in Kansas with her two loving parents, but a recurring dream about a mystical fantasyland makes her wonder if all is not as it seems. As it turns out, the world of DG’s visions is real, but it’s ruled over by an evil witch who plans to cast the entire realm into permanent, deadly darkness unless DG can figure out how to stop her. Tin Man was conceived as a “reimagining” of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , updating it for a modern audience more used to laser guns and leather jackets than obscure metaphors about the gold standard. The show “has everything” in exactly the way you might imagine Stefon describing an underground Lower East Side nightclub: Alan Cumming as a brilliant yet brainless scientist whose empty skull sports a silver zipper down the middle; Neal McDonough as a former city police officer, colloquially referred to as a “Tin Man,” hell-bent on avenging his murdered family; Richard Dreyfuss as a stuttering fortune teller who first appears in the form of a giant holographic head in the middle of a seedy dive bar whose inhabitants wouldn’t look out of place in a Star Wars movie; Beverly Hills, 90210 ’s Kathleen Robertson as a sexy villainess named Azkadellia whose chest tattoos transform into a flock of mangy winged monkeys. Tin Man is for the fans — assuming there are die-hard Wizard of Oz heads out there regularly tuning in to Syfy — and as such, its script is full of little references to Baum’s book and the 1939 movie, altered to suit the show’s grittier setting. The tornado that destroys DG’s family farm is a mode of inter-dimensional transportation used by the evil witch’s henchmen. The land of Oz is actually “the O.Z.,” an acronym for “Outer Zone.” Emerald City is “Central City.” The Cowardly Lion is a member of a half-human, half-animal race enslaved by Azkadellia for their powers of second sight. Given all this, it’s no surprise that the series was criticized at the time for being “too dark” in its treatment of Wizard of Oz lore — though, after ten years of “gritty” adaptations of other media, Tin Man ’s grimy steampunk aesthetic and parade of tragic backstories feel downright cheerful. (Honestly, if you’ve read the book on which the Wicked musical is based, you know things can get much, much bleaker.) Still, there’s a daringly mean streak running through this show that sets it apart from other reimaginings of its kind. Our heroes first find the eponymous Tin Man, for example, imprisoned in a metal sarcophagus, forced to watch video clips of his family being brutalized for decades. At least they didn’t show us Baum’s original backstory for the character, in which the Tin Woodman, once human, had to keep replacing his body parts with mechanical ones after being gradually dismembered by his own cursed axe. Maybe it’s just the late-aughts nostalgia talking, but there’s a charming “throwing spaghetti at the wall” vibe to Tin Man that the current era of carefully managed and edited and aggregated entertainment just can’t replicate. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” is not a metric that applies here. Of the nine Primetime Emmy Awards it was nominated for, it won one, for Outstanding Makeup for a Mini-series or a Movie (Non-Prosthetic). (Rude to the lion-people.) It is an exemplar of a time when a book whose characters serve as flat political or moral metaphors can be transformed into a science-fiction yarn about magical kingdoms in other dimensions populated by leather-clad henchmen and grimly heroic oddities, where a desire to escape from your sepia-toned small town is more than just a dream.
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The Container Store, buffeted by rough housing market and competition, seeks bankruptcy protectionBOSTON (AP) — UConn coach Jim Mora pulled a move that would make Bill Belichick proud while preparing the Huskies to play the notoriously churlish former New England Patriot's next team in his old backyard. Mora and his players were more than 45 minutes late for what was scheduled as a 30-minute media availability a day before Saturday's Fenway Bowl against North Carolina. Mora then gave a non-apology straight out of Belichick’s playbook. “We practice at a certain time the day before a game,” Mora said. “And we stuck to the script.” A six-time Super Bowl winner in New England with Tom Brady, Belichick was fired after going 4-13 in 2023, leaving him just 14 wins short of matching Don Shula’s all-time record for NFL victories. Unable to land a pro job at the age of 72, Belichick signed on with North Carolina — his first college gig — when they fired 73-year-old Mack Brown. Belichick hasn’t taken over on the Tar Heels' sideline yet; interim coach Freddie Kitchens — another ex-Cleveland Browns coach — will lead them in the Fenway Bowl. But the future Hall of Famer's potential return to a football field in Boston has been the biggest story ahead of Saturday’s game. Belichick did not attend media day, and Fenway Bowl executive director Brett Miller tried to preempt questions about him by asking reporters “to keep questions focusing on the players and coaches out here today.” “I don’t need to beat around the bush any more than that,” he said in comments that would have been cryptic if it weren’t so obvious to everyone who he meant. “I know there’s probably a lot of questions that you guys have about next year, particularly one side. Please do your best to keep it to these guys, because they’ve earned the right to be here.” The request wasn’t completely successful, with Kitchens taking a question about Belichick specifically and saying he talks to his new boss every day. Earlier this month, Kitchens said: “He asks questions; I answer the questions.” “I’m going to try to soak in all I can from him, and be a better coach because of it,” Kitchens said after Belichick was hired. “I love Carolina, I want what’s best for Carolina, and I know that right now at this moment in time, coach Belichick is what’s best for Carolina. “At the end of the day, he’s a ballcoach,” he said, “and I enjoy working for ballcoaches.” Mora also brushed off a question about whether the next Carolina coach would have any impact on Saturday's game. “It's irrelevant to us," said Mora, who was 0-1 against Belichick in four seasons as an NFL head coach. "We can't control the emotions of our opponents. And as far as I know, coach Belichick will not be taking the football field on Saturday, so it's not relevant to this football team in our preparation. North Carolina (6-6) will be playing in a bowl for the sixth straight year – the second-longest streak in program history. The Tar Heels climbed from back-to-back nine-loss seasons in the final years of Larry Fedora to reach into The Associated Top 25 in each of the previous four seasons under Brown, who also coached them from 1988-97 in one of the most successful eras of Carolina football history. After starting out 3-0 this year, the Tar Heels lost four straight — including a 70-50 loss to Sun Belt Conference team James Madison. They won three more to gain bowl eligibility before a loss to Boston College that sealed Brown's fate, and a season-ending loss to rival NC State. UConn is playing in its second bowl game in three seasons under Jim Mora, bouncing back from last year’s 3-9 record to post its first eight-win season since Randy Edsall took the Huskies to the Fiesta Bowl in 2010. An independent, UConn won all of its games against the non-Power 4 conferences and lost to Syracuse, Wake Forest and Duke of the Atlantic Coast Conference and Maryland of the Big Ten. Miller said the bowl, which has struggled to find traction in a city more focused on the success of its professional sports teams, sold more tickets this year than in its first two. The Belichick angle is certainly part of that, but the game has also had some good success picking teams, hosting Louisville in 2022 -- the year before the Cardinals climbed into The Associated Press Top 10 – and then SMU last year, one season before the Mustangs made the College Football Playoff. “Could one of these teams be next,” Miller said. “We’ll see.” Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-footballJolly Holiday Discoveries at the Southampton Inn