Really enjoyed this paper by @nataliastanusch.bsky.social and Richard Rogers. Their term 'techno-hagiography' (performative writing of a mythology of AI and its spokespeople) and its relationship to temporarily is apt to describe future-making in the present. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Grateful to the organizers and participants for important discussions on EU platform regulation in todayโs challenging political climateโand how best to use the DSA and DMA going forward.
๐ Read our AI Search report: tinyurl.com/3zf7vvcj
๐ค Read our TikTok Research API report: tinyurl.com/4mrw3v95
๐น @nataliastanusch.bsky.social presented our report โFrom โGooglingโ to โAsking ChatGPTโ: Governing AI Search.โ
It argues for:
โ expanding moderation to account for AI search systems
โ distinguishing content moderation from behaviour moderation
โ a complementary role for the DSA and the AI Act
๐น Our Head of Research, Salvatore Romano, spoke on โScraping, APIs, and Access to Platform Data.โ
Drawing on our TikTok Research API investigation, he showed how unreliable or error-prone APIs can obstruct independent researchโoften pushing researchers back to scraping.
The API Was Official. The Problems Were Also Official.
Governing AI Search presentation.
At the DSA and Platform Regulation Conference.
Last week marked two years of the DSA.
To mark the occasion, AI Forensics joined the DSA & Platform Regulation Conference, organized by the @dsaobservatory.bsky.social, to share our research and reflect on the future of platform governance in the EU.
We contributed two presentations.๐
โScraping, APIs & Access to Platform Dataโ: Our Head of Research Salvatore Romano will present our work on data access under the DSA.
โAI and the DSAโ: Our Researcher @nataliastanusch.bsky.social will present our work on regulating and moderating AI-powered search.
See you there!
Planning on joining @dsaobservatory.bsky.socialโs #DSA #Conference in #Amsterdam next week?
Come say hi and learn about some of our latest research on Tuesday, February 17 ๐
๐Safer Internet Day is a good moment to reflect on how our investigations are helping push the internet in a safer direction โ and how we can continue being a catalyst for change in 2026. ๐งต
Stay tuned!
Weโve received many requests in recent days for updates on our Grok report. Weโre currently conducting additional monitoring and analysis and will have more to share shortly. ๐
A yearโs work with my colleague @nataliastanusch.bsky.social on โmoderationโ & regulation of AI search !
Researcher Natalia Stanusch presents the findings, "Investigating AI Chatbots."
Head of Policy โชRaziye Buse รetinโฌ presents the findings from the report "Governing AI Search."
โชHead of Policy Raziye Buse รetinโฌ presenting at CDT Europe's DSA roundtable.
๐ As the EU calls for โsimplification,โ our year-long study of LLM chatbots shows a growing regulatory gap.
LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini increasingly act like search engines. But do they fall under the DSA, the AI Act, or somewhere in between?
โ ๏ธ AI chatbots are reshaping how we search. But EU rules havenโt caught up.
Our new policy report digs into the risks of LLM-powered search and the gap in Europeโs regulatory approach.
So how do we fix it?
๐ Full report + recommendations:
tinyurl.com/2p2h77et
๐จ354 automated AI accounts generated 4.5 billion views on TikTok through more than 43,000 AI-made posts.
Our investigation finds Agentic AI Accounts spreading harmful content. Yet TikTok labels around 1.38% of these posts. โ ๏ธ
Full report: tinyurl.com/4kkfm4nn
๐ฏ Targeted Ads, TikTok & Meme Resistance
New in Big Data & Society by @nataliastanusch.bsky.social
What do TikTok memes reveal about how users understand โ and resist โ being watched by algorithms?
๐ journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
New AIF report: is AI-generated imagery really gaming the platformsโ algorithms? We investigated search results on #TikTok and #Instagram across countries, languages, and topics. #genai #aislop -> more in our report:
๐ข In a joint civil society effort, we filed a formal DSA complaint against ๐ (formerly Twitter) for violating Article 26(3) โ which bans targeting ads based on sensitive data like sexuality, politics, religion, health.
๐ Read the joint statement: aiforensics.org/uploads/Join...
New report just dropped. TikTok, content labelling, and genAI in the context of PL elections 2025. Also the report just got covered in PL by @demagog.org.pl
๐งตHow TikTok failed Polish democracy during the 2025 Presidential Election
Our new investigation exposes serious gaps in TikTok's election content moderation that disproportionately harmed the Polish diaspora : aiforensics.org/work/tiktok-...
๐ซต Will you help us spread the word about AIxDESIGN Festival? ๐ซต
๐ We're throwing our first-ever festival and need your help reaching the people it's made for! > bit.ly/aixd-festiva...
Tag us if you share - we love to see it!
๐๏ธ TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE ๐๏ธ
๐ชย AIxD Festival: On Slow AI ๐ชย May 1-3 in Amsterdam
Imagine a cosy space to deconstruct mainstream AI stories, dream up new ones, and figure out how we make them real. It will be a fever dream ofย talks,ย workshops, anย art exhibition, and film screening โ ๐ lu.ma/yiaccf39
It's Monday, time to repeat the week again but before you do... โจ On a scale of esoteric Sun, how do you feel today after reading our chapter on Esoteric AI? ๐
And in case the horrors of Capitalism persisted, take a moment to vibe and summon the full chapter โ ๐ lnkd.in/gKE-HRfq ๐ฎ
This chapter is the manifestation of Natalia and the teamโs past 12 months of research into Esoteric AI โณ A labour of love, weโd love to hear your thoughts!
๐๏ธ DREAM TEAM: Sofia Vieira, Kaashvi Kothari, @nataliastanusch.bsky.social , Ploipailin Flynn, @nadiapiet.bsky.social
RELEASE ALERT ๐จ (3/9) โEsoteric AI: To disenchant the enchanted, and enchant the disenchantedโ chapter is out now! ๐ Summon the full chapter on our website โ lnkd.in/gKE-HRfq ๐ง
Augury season
The AIxD Festival (@aixdesign.bsky.social) is going to be fantastic โ and theyโre looking to livestream! If youโre keen, theyโre asking folks to book (or donate!) early so the funds can go straight to the livestream setup. Can you throw them some Euros? www.kickstarter.com/projects/aix...
โซ๏ธLast week I joined #FeelingsInc. Symposium as a panelist. We talked about #chatbots across layers, from the metaphor of mirror and beyond, and about the need to reimagine chatbots from the design, regulation, and end userโs standpoints. Thanks again to Privacy Salon for having me โจ
โ๏ธ๐ฌ #Doppelganger actors continue to monetize via Meta ads @aiforensics.org @reset.tech @checkfirst.network estimated almost half a million dollars in revenue in 2 years despite sanctions! ๐ต
โจ and, as part of Esoteric AI @aixdesign.bsky.social , I also talked about Gaston Welisch's BIRD: Bird Informed Remote Divination art research project ๐ฆโโฌ โ aixdesign.co/posts/bird 4/4
โจI also discussed Esoteric AI @aixdesign.bsky.social where we bring together magic, history, technology, and art, so I mentioned both our recent zine publication (big credits to internet teapot ๐ซ โ aixdesign.metalabel.com/esoteric-ai-... 3/4
โจI talked about my ongoing cross-disciplinary research where media archeology & STS intertwine. I discussed the notion of AI imaginaries both in tech industry and online spaces like Wikipedia, & ways of challenging them by historicizing AI through the lens of other technologies & techniques 2/4
