oh dear ...

 

drunk online shopping is big business

... but who is responsible?

few checks where profit is involved?

European non-profit AI Forensics found Hugging Face is being used to create non-consensual, sexualised images of women and children with seemingly little or no monitoring or safeguarding in place. Analysis of usage of models hosted on the platform found the 73% of monitored requests were sexual in nature, and, of those, 83% sought to undress or otherwise sexualise a person (almost always a woman), while 6.7% targeted a minor. Output moderation was observed in just 3% of the instances audited - this despite Hugging Face’s own policies explicitly prohibiting the creation of sexual materials of an individual without their consent 

Source: Private Eye August 2026. Issue number 1681.

it's funny 'cos it's true

 

It reminds me of this pic that I've using for years.

more bots than humans visit websites

Internet security company Cloudflare estimates that the proportion of web traffic driven by AI bots is now greater than that from humans. It says automated traffic crossed the 50% measured in June 2026 and now accounts were nearly 58% of all webpage requests.

Source: Private Eye August 2026. Issue number 1681.

apparently, the message in this ad may - or may not - be true

 You can either believe, or not.

really? why?

The folk trying to sell you ai don't actually know how to use it

 Reuters obtained internal Meta data on what happened after Zuckerberg cut 8,000 workers and moved 7,000 into AI roles. AI-generated code changes jumped 220%. New features reaching users only rose 36%. Major incidents spiked 40%. Time spent firefighting those incidents up 70%. Employee sentiment dropped from 74% to 55% favorable. Hours before the first round of layoffs went out, Zuckerberg quietly cancelled the second round that was planned for November.

Hedgie@hedgieMarkets

you know when you just click on 'agree to all' ...

 

pricing problems

This is an odd one that I'm going to put down to perhaps being a bit lazy [reusing an add originally developed for an EU country, and/or poor copy editing before it was released.

First off, the email image quotes prices in euros [I'm in the UK, we use pounds]. Hmmm, I thought, that might be a problem [ie it could be illegal as 25 euros is worth less than 25 pounds, so if the prices are in pounds there could be a case for 'bait-and-switch'].

So I clicked on the link to check - and got this ... 

Yep, the prices were in pounds - but they were from £14.99, not £24.99.

So the email message could have highlighted prices that were significantly lower - and so might have increased responses.

Update: Less than an hour later I got the same email but with the lead price in pounds not euros. But the landing page still had lower prices than the from headline. 

Marketers Keep the Paid Media Focus on Audience Targeting & Segmentation

The numbers on this don't surprise me - but I would raise the issue of how little emphasis is given to the landing page. In my opinion, if you get everything else right, but the landing page wrong everything fails.

Source: 

https://www.marketingcharts.com/customer-centric/analytics-automated-and-martech-239174

excellent way of saying goodbye

This message from sustainable fashion brand Spilt Milk reflects the nature of the organization ... it helps the unsubscriber leave with a fond memory of the business.

it's funny 'cos it's true, and ...

If you've read any of my books, you will know that I use em dashes a lot.

it's a pack of batteries ...

 

is there a human doctor in the house?