A right-wing Brazilian influencer, Júnior Pena, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in New Jersey, according to The Guardian. Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, had reportedly lived in the U.S. since 2009 and recently declared his support for former U.S. President Donald Trump in a video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
Pena falsely claimed that the migrants being rounded up, including Brazilians, were all criminals, The Guardian reported. The arrest comes amid growing concerns about the spread of misinformation and the impact of artificial intelligence on social media platforms.
In related news, a new social network called Moltbook, designed for artificial intelligence, has emerged, according to BBC Technology. Launched in late January by Matt Schlicht, head of commerce platform Octane AI, Moltbook allows AI to post, comment, and create communities known as "submolts," a play on "subreddit." While humans are "welcome to observe" Moltbook's activities, they are not permitted to post, the company stated. Moltbook claims to have 1.5 million users and features communities discussing various topics, from music to ethics, BBC Technology reported.
The rise of AI-generated content on social media is also generating a backlash, according to BBC Technology. Joe Tidy, a cyber correspondent for BBC World Service, highlighted an instance of AI-"slop" that went viral on Facebook. The image depicted two emaciated, impoverished South Asian children with beards, one missing limbs, sitting in the rain with a birthday cake and a sign asking for likes. The image, riddled with signs of AI generation, garnered nearly one million likes and heart emojis. Théodore, whose last name was not provided, told the BBC that the image "boggled [his] mind."
Meanwhile, the release of documents related to the U.S. Justice Department investigation into Jeffrey Epstein has triggered political fallout globally, according to Al Jazeera. The files, which include more than three million pages of documents, feature the names of world leaders. The release is the largest since the Trump administration passed a law to force the release of the documents, Al Jazeera reported.
In other news, Lalo de Almeida, a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil, is showcasing his work documenting the South American wetland, the Pantanal, as it faces unprecedented threat, The Guardian reported. His photo essay "Pantanal Ablaze" won first place in the environment stories category at the 2021 World Press Photo contest. In 2022, he won the Eugene Smith grant in humanistic photography and World Press Photos long-term project award for his work "Amazonian Dystopia," which documents the exploitation of the world’s largest tropical forest.
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