#bot detection software

[mfilterit]

What Should Marketers Look for in a Bot Detection Tools?

In today’s digital marketing landscape, bots impacting your campaigns, website analytics, and overall performance is becoming an enormous issue with all the organizations running any kind of advertising campaign. To put a stop on the ad fraud that is caused by bots, having bot detection tools is vital.  After all, how can you put a stop to bots if you can’t detect.  

Unfortunately, many firms struggle to detect bot traffic, and the methods they employ are not all created equal. Choosing the right bot detection tool is essential for safeguarding your marketing efforts. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you select the best tool for your needs.

What Is Invalid Traffic and How Does It Relate to Bots? 

Bot fraud in digital advertising generally falls in the category of invalid traffic by the marketers no matter good or bad since the bots are not the target audience and cannot be converted into a protentional lead.  

Types of Invalid Traffic:   

General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) – It is one of the simplest bots that can be detected easily, and a lot of good bots traffic comes under GIVT as they are not meant to fool the bot detection tool. But some fraudsters may also deploy GIVT as they are easy to make and work against some of their targets.  

Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) – SIVT detection is the bots that one should look out for as these are more capable and are often designed to target to bypass cybersecurity and fraud prevention tools. For Example – sophisticated bots might imitate how a human would use a website so it would be difficult to identify between a human and bot. SIVT is common in ad fraud schemes.

Bot detection in USA, UAE, India, Saudi Arabia

Click here to read more: What should marketers look for in a Bot Detection Tool

[otiskeene]

Kasada Introduces New Suite Of Attack Prediction Services: KasadaIQ

The innovative firm Kasada, which specializes in thwarting automated threats powered by humans, has announced KasadaIQ, a package of attack prediction services that go beyond traditional bot management. The first product in this package, KasadaIQ for Fraud, provides actionable indications based on large amounts of data from the Internet. Businesses looking for information on how bots target their digital channels and client data will find this service especially helpful. With its unmatched visibility into adversary communities and non-traditional data sources, KasadaIQ for Fraud distinguishes itself by offering a cutting-edge capacity to identify and validate risks prior to their manifestation.

Businesses face a serious and expensive threat from bot fraud, which may cost them money, effort, and reputational damage in addition to endangering their customers. The environment of eCommerce fraud is expanding globally, with predictions that it will top $48 billion this year. A startling 96% of IT professionals reported that they have lost money as a result of bot assaults in the previous year, according to Kasada's 2023 State of Bot Mitigation Report.

The founder and CEO of Kasada, Sam Crowther, highlighted the increasing sophistication of bots, pointing out that almost eighty percent of business executives find it harder and harder for their security solutions to identify bots. In spite of this, a lot of businesses continue to use antiquated technologies that develop slowly. According to Crowther, businesses can proactively defend against attackers with KasadaIQ for Fraud in conjunction with their current bot detection systems, giving them a competitive edge and avoiding bad press.

Read More - https://bit.ly/3G5EvbD

[mumms-the-word]

I know I’m screaming into the void here but do not witch hunt people with AI accusations

As someone whose job for the last two years involved me reading and rereading essays and creative fiction written by my students (a group of writers notorious for using AI despite being told not to because they worry about their grades more than their skills) let me tell you straight up that detecting AI in any written work isn’t straightforward

AI detection softwares are bullshit. Even Turnitin, which is supposedly the best, has an error rate that is slowly increasing over time. They’re not reliable. The free ones online are even worse, trust me

“Oh but it’s so obvious!” Sure. If you’re trained to notice patterns and predictive repetitions in the language, sure. I can spot a ChatGPT student essay from a mile away. But only if they haven’t edited it themselves, or used a bunch of methods (Grammarly, other AIs, their friends, a “humanizer” software, etc) to obscure the ChatGPT patterns. And it’s easier with formulaic essays—with creative fiction it’s much harder.

Why?

Well because good creative fiction is a) difficult to write well and b) extremely subjective. ChatGPT does have notable patterns for creative writing. But it’s been trained on the writing that is immensely popular, writing that has been produced by humans. Purple prose, odd descriptions, sixteen paragraphs of setting where one or two could be fine, all of that is stylistic choices that people have intentionally made in their writing that ChatGPT is capable of predicting and producing.

What I’m saying is, people just write like that normally. There are stylistic things I do in to writing that other people swear up and down is an AI indicator. But it’s just me writing words from my head

So can we, should we, start witch hunts over AI use in fanfic when we notice these patterns? My answer is no because that’s dangerous.

Listen. I hate AI. I hate the idea of someone stealing my work and feeding it into a machine that will then “improve itself” based on work I put my heart and soul into. If I notice what I think is AI in a work I’ve casually encountered online, I make a face and I stop reading. It’s as simple as that. I don’t drag their name out into the public to start a tomato throwing session because I don’t know their story (hell they might even be a bot) and because one accusation can suddenly become a deluge

Or a witch hunt, if you will

Because accusing one person of AI and starting a whole ass witch hunt is just begging people to start badly analyzing the content they’re reading out of fear that they’ve been duped. People don’t want to feel the sting or embarrassment of having been tricked. So they’ll start reading more closely. Too closely. They’ll start finding evidence that isn’t really evidence. “This phrase has been used three times in the last ten paragraphs. It must be AI.”

Or, it could be that I just don’t have enough words in my brain that day and didn’t notice the repetition when I was editing.

There’s a term you may be familiar with called a “false positive.” In science or medicine, it’s when something seems to have met the conditions you’re looking for, but in reality isn’t true or real or accurate. Like when you test for the flu and get a positive result when you didn’t have the flu. Or, in this case, when you notice someone writing sentences that appear suspiciously like a ChatGPT constructed sentence and go “oh, yes that must mean it’s ChatGPT then”

(This type of argumentation/conclusion also just uses a whole series of logical fallacies I won’t get into here except to say that if you want to have a civil conversation about AI use in fandom you cannot devolve into hasty generalizations based on bits and parts)

I’m not saying this to protect the people using AI. In an ideal world, people would stop using it and return back to the hard work of making art and literature and so on. But we don’t live in that world right now, and AI is prevalent everywhere. Which means we have to be careful with our accusations and any “evidence” we think we see.

And if we do find AI in fandom spaces, we must be careful with how we handle or approach that, otherwise we will start accusing writers who have never touched AI a day in their life of having used it. We will create a culture of fear around writing and creating that stops creatives from making anything at all. People will become too scared to share their work out of fear they’ll be accused of AI and run off.

I don’t have solutions except to say that in my experience, outright accusing people of AI tends to create an environment of mistrust that isn’t productive for creatives or fans/readers. If you start looking for AI evidence everywhere, you will find it everywhere. Next thing you know, you’re miserable because you feel like you can’t read or enjoy anything.

If you notice what you think is AI in a work, clock it, maybe start a discussion about it, but keep that conversation open to multiple answers or outcomes. You’re not going to stop people from using AI by pointing fingers at them. But you might be able to inspire them to try writing or creating for themselves if you keep the conversation open, friendly, and encourage them to try creating for themselves, without the help of AI

[marypsue]

Just got a nasty scam comment on one of my 10k+ note posts, and thought I should give all of you a heads up. If anybody online tells you they can help you recover money you've been scammed out of, that is also a scam.

This empty tumblr (which I blocked and reported before I thought to take screenshots, unfortunately) left a reply on this post of mine going on and on about how they'd been scammed and lost all of their retirement savings. Once it got the sob story out of the way, it went into the pitch - oh, but then by luck I was listening to an article on the BBC and they said that there are scam recovery experts out there! Here's a link to the one I used! Contact them on this messenger app (contact and messenger app name in a non-standard font so that bot detection software won't catch it and nuke me from orbit)! You only need to pay a small upfront fee!

First of all, this comment didn't make any sense on this post. (The post had nothing to do with either scams or retirement savings, not even tangentially. It did, however, mention the 1980s, and it is being actively passed around. Don't know which of those things may have caught the bot's attention.) However, this is a longstanding method of tumblr bots: liking a post creates a link to their blog in the notes on your post. The more posts they like, the more legitimate tumblr pages link to their blog. And the more legitimate website pages link to your website, the more trustworthy search engines think that your website is.

So, for the decade and change that tumblr's been around, bot farms have been planting 'likes' on real posts, so that the bot blogs that like those posts look legit to, say, Google. Then, they have all the bot blogs post links to the shady website that they really want to direct people to. Because the bot blogs now look legitimate to Google, all of them linking to stealyourcreditcard.org.nx now makes stealyourcreditcard.org.nx look legit. And tumblr users may be too wise to click the link on the obvious bot blog, but non-tumblr user Joe Schmoe may not be wise enough to not click the link that's first in the Google search results.

This looks like a variation on that business. This long-winded reply had nothing to do with my post, but putting it under my post, which has a lot of genuine, legitimate interaction, means that if someone searches for 'scammed out of retirement savings' or 'scam recovery', this long-ass comment may show up in the search results - or even snuck into a bullshit generative summary of results - looking like it was posted on a legitimate blog.

Second of all, here's the secret: once scammers have successfully gotten money out of you once, they don't stop. Either they'll come back to double-dip, or they'll sell your name and contact information along to another scammer. The logic is that someone who falls for it once is more likely to fall for it again. And one of the ways that they try to double-dip is by contacting victims and claiming they can help get back the money that the victim lost.

This is a scam. It's always a scam. The people who might be able to help you get money back from a scam are not going to contact you. You would have to make a report, to the police or to an organisation like the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (sorry rest of the world, I don't know what resources you have available to you, but that information should be available on government websites), and they might be able to find some of the money you lost. If somebody calls or messages you out of the blue, that's scammers again.

But it sounds like the scammers are getting wise to this piece of advice. So instead, now they're fishing for people who've heard (possibly from friends or family who've themselves been scammed) that there are 'recovery specialists' out there, or for people who are simply desperate and scared and looking for help, who're trying to find information and assistance on the internet.

And they're trying to use your tumblr blog to do it.

Anyway. If you see this shit happening on your posts, block, report, sow the earth with salt. And, as always, if you're new to tumblr and your blog is blank with a default icon and you're wondering why everybody keeps blocking you - do something to prove you're human.

[kenyatta]

AkiraBot is a program that fills website comments sections and customer service chat bots with AI-generated spam messages. Its goal is simple: it wants you to sign up for an SEO scheme that costs about $30 a month. For that low price it swears it can enchant Google’s algorithms to get you on the frontpage. But it’s a scam. A new report from researchers at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne documented how scammers deployed AkiraBot, the tool’s use of OpenAI generated messages, and how it avoided multiple CAPTCHA systems and network detection techniques. According to the report, the bot targeted 420,000 unique domains and successfully spammed 80,000.

Whoever runs AkirBot operates their SEO company under a bunch of different names, but they all tend to use the words “Akira” or “ServiceWrap.” SentinelOne says the tool finds websites crafted by third party software like Wix or Squarespace and spams comments sections and automated chatbots with a promise to get the site on the frontpage of various search engines. If you have a small business that exists on the web or have run a WordPress-based website in the last 15 years, you’ve likely seen messages like those AkiraBot crafts. 

[saturniasxenos]

Cyber / Virtual ID Pack

Inside this pack, you will find: Pronouns, Titles, Names, and Genders that relate to Virtuality, Cybernetic, Robots, and anything alike!

This features a LOOOONG list of pronouns and dystopian-ish names!

Pronouns:

Cy/Cyb/Cyber/Cybers/Cyberself

Vir/Virt/Virtual/Virtuals/Virtualself

Ne/Net/Network/Networks/Networkself

Ne/Net/Nets/Nets/Netself

In/Inter/Internet/Internets/Internetself

Co/Comp/Computer/Computers/Computerself

In/Inpu/Input/Inputs/Inputself

Ou/Out/Output/Outputs/Outputself

Vi/Viru/Virus/Viruses/Virusself

Anti/Antivir/Antivirus/Antiviruses/Antivirusself

Er/Erro/Error/Errors/Errorself

Sys/Syste/System/Systems/Systemself

Pro/Proce/Processor/Processors/Processorself

Di/Digi/Digital/Digitals/Digitalself

Do/Down/Download/Downloads/Downloadself

Up/Uplo/Upload/Uploads/Uploadself

Cor/Corru/Corrupt/Corrupts/Corruptself

Mal/Malwa/Malware/Malwares/Malwareself

Se/Secur/Security/Securitys/Securityself

Cry/Crypt/Crypto/Cryptos/Cryptoself

We/Web/Webs/Webs/Webself

Web/Webs/Website/Websites/Websiteself

Fu/Futu/Future/Futures/Futureself

Ro/Rob/Robot/Robots/Robotself

Rob/Robo/Robotic/Robotics/Roboticself

By/Byt/Byte/Bytes/Byteself

Fi/Fil/File/Files/Fileself

Ra/Ram/Rams/Rams/Ramself

Scr/Scre/Screen/Screens/Screenself

Te/Tech/Techs/Techs/Techself

Te/Tech/Techno/Technos/Technoself

Tec/Techno/Technology/Technologys/Technologyself

Ma/Mach/Machine/Machines/Machineself

Wi/Wir/Wire/Wires/Wireself

Na/Nan/Nano/Nanos/Nanoself

Da/Dat/Data/Datas/Dataself

Plu/Plug/Plugs/Plugs/Plugself

Ele/Elect/Electric/Electrics/Electricself

Ke/Key/Keys/Keys/Keyself

Pa/Pass/Password/Passwords/Passwordself

Ter/Term/Terminal/Terminals/Terminalself

Cy/Cybo/Cyborg/Cyborgs/Cyborgself

Ty/Typ/Type/Types/Typeself

Fi/Firm/Firmware/Firmwares/Firmwareself

Ha/Hard/Hardware/Hardwares/Hardwareself

So/Soft/Software/Softwares/Softwareself

Ha/Hack/Hacks/Hacks/Hackself

Ha/Hack/Hacker/Hackers/Hackerself

Si/Sig/Signal/Signals/Signalself

Clo/Clou/Cloud/Clouds/Cloudself

On/Onli/Online/Onlines/Onlineself

In/Insta/Install/Installs/Installself

Co/Cod/Code/Codes/Codeself

Ad/Admi/Admin/Admins/Adminself

Gra/Graph/Graphic/Graphs/Graphself

Sy/Syn/Synth/Synths/Synthself

Phi/Phis/Phish/Phishs/Phishself

Phi/Phish/Phishing/Phishings/Phishingself

Do/Dox/Doxs/Doxs/Doxself

Si/Sit/Site/Sites/Siteself

Bo/Bot/Bots/Bots/Botself

Pho/Phon/Phone/Phones/Phoneself

Key/Keyboa/Keyboard/Keyboards/Keyboardself

Mo/Mou/Mouse/Mouses/Mouseself

Chi/Chip/Chips/Chips/Chipself

Moth/Mother/Motherboard/Motherboards/Motherboardself

Co/Com/Compute/Computes/Computeself

Pi/Pira/Piracy/Piracys/Piracyself

En/Encry/Encrypt/Encrypts/Encryptself

PDA/PDAs

CPU/CPUs

URL/URLs

404/404s

📱/📱's

💻/💻's

⌨️/⌨️'s

🖥/🖥's

🖱/🖱's

💿/💿's

🎙/🎙's

Titles:

The Cyborg

(X) Whos Wired

Made of Nanotech

(X) Who Uses Nanotech

Scholar of Machines

The Cyber Security

(X) Who Has Cyber Wings

Connected Online

Offline

Unable to Connect

The Administrator

Synthesizer

The Hacker

Nanohacker

The Antivirus

Reconnecting...

ERROR: Unable to Connect

ERROR 404

ERROR: Malware Detected

Names:

Since names don't usually have "techy" meanings, I picked one's that sounded the most cybernetic, cyberpunkish, dystopian, virtualish, etc!

Fem: Althea, Ameris, Astoria, Arcadia, Astra, Beretta, Cyra, Crystal, Crosselle, Eve, Io, Jinx, Kit, Lilith, Meridian, Morrian, Nebula, Nova, Neve, Noxia, North, Octavia, Odette, Odile, Prota, Pistol, Rey, Rue, Rain, Raine, Stormy, Seraphina, Sona, Skye, Thundra, Tempest, Vega, Viva, Vinette, Venus, Xenia, Xya, Xena, Xiomara, Xenara, Xanthe, Zephyria, Zyla, Zadie, Zia,

Masc: Alaric, Aksel, Arden, Antares, Apollo, Ace, Asher, Cole, Cyrus, Code, Draven, Drift, Ender, Flynn, Hawk, Isaac, Jericho, Kip, Kai, Koios, Knox, Nox, Neo, Nero, Octavian, Orionis, Oghma, Paine, Rocket, Ray, Rai, Silas, Slader, Sebastian, Seth, Seraphim, Thalax, Theo, Thatch, Vox, Vector, Wyatt, Xyon, Xane, Xylan, Xerxes, Xayden, Xavier, Xander, Zander, Zayden, Zenith, Zev, Zale, Zane, Zaire, Zeke,

Neu: Andras, Axe, Axiom, Alloy, Allele, Ash, Arrow, Beetle, Chrom, Corvus, Dakota, Dell, Eos, Echo, Eden, Fox, Ghost, Glöckner, Hydrae, Ion, Jesper, Jett, Kursk, Lesath, Locklyn, Lyrae, Maddox, Nemo, Orca, Onyx, Oxygen, Panther, Rikko, Robin, Rune, Scorpion, Scorpius, Saturn, Sparrow, Sonar, Tore, Tauri, Techne, Techno, Ursae, Vesper, Volt, West, Wolf, Xen, Xenon, Zephyr, Zodiac, Zenon, Zeru, Zero, Zen

Genders:

Futuracityc: A gender related to futuristic cities

Futurafashic: A gender related to futuristic fashion

Futurahousic: A gender related to futuristic houses

Digigender: A digital gender. Rangeable from any digital thing or file; virus, malware, .txt, .mp3, antivirus, trojan, email, etc.

Cybergender: A gender or form of gender expression where ones gender or expression is deeply tied into Cyberpunk lore, culture, fashion or media.

CYBERWEAPONIC - a gender that feels like a digital or robotic weapon. this gender may also have ties to sentient AI used as a weapon, but not necessarily.

BIOAMOROBOTIC - a gender connected to being a robot who loves humanity and the world and finds joy all around them!

RobAnatomic - a gender under the anatomic system(link) related to robots, anatomy, robotic anatomy, the anatomy of robots, robots made to teach/study anatomy, anatomy based/related robots of some kind, the anatomy/biology of someone or something being robotic, having robotic anatomy, being a robot with an interest in anatomy and more.

Robogender - for people who’s gender identity aligns with machines/robots/androids/mechs/AIs.

Cyborwebic - a gender related to webcore, evil scientist aesthetics, artificial beings such as androids/cyborgs etc, turtleneck sweaters and old computer monitors

AI flag - this can be used for nonhuman, otherkin, gender, delusion.

Gendervirtual / Genderdigital - a gendersystem in which your gender is related to virtual ) digital themes and x , such as being a virtual ) digital x , a x who loves virtual ) digital themes , a virtual ) digital being who loves x themes , etc.

[mariacallous]

Christopher Ren does a solid Elon Musk impression.

Ren is a product manager at Reality Defender, a company that makes tools to combat AI disinformation. During a video call last week, I watched him use some viral GitHub code and a single photo to generate a simplistic deepfake of Elon Musk that maps onto his own face. This digital impersonation was to demonstrate how the startup’s new AI detection tool could work. As Ren masqueraded as Musk on our video chat, still frames from the call were actively sent over to Reality Defender’s custom model for analysis, and the company’s widget on the screen alerted me to the fact that I was likely looking at an AI-generated deepfake and not the real Elon.

Sure, I never really thought we were on a video call with Musk, and the demonstration was built specifically to make Reality Defender's early-stage tech look impressive, but the problem is entirely genuine. Real-time video deepfakes are a growing threat for governments, businesses, and individuals. Recently, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations mistakenly took a video call with someone pretending to be a Ukrainian official. An international engineering company lost millions of dollars earlier in 2024 when one employee was tricked by a deepfake video call. Also, romance scams targeting everyday individuals have employed similar techniques.

“It's probably only a matter of months before we're going to start seeing an explosion of deepfake video, face-to-face fraud,” says Ben Colman, CEO and cofounder at Reality Defender. When it comes to video calls, especially in high-stakes situations, seeing should not be believing.

The startup is laser-focused on partnering with business and government clients to help thwart AI-powered deepfakes. Even with this core mission, Colman doesn’t want his company to be seen as more broadly standing against artificial intelligence developments. “We're very pro-AI,” he says. “We think that 99.999 percent of use cases are transformational—for medicine, for productivity, for creativity—but in these kinds of very, very small edge cases the risks are disproportionately bad.”

Reality Defender’s plan for the real-time detector is to start with a plug-in for Zoom that can make active predictions about whether others on a video call are real or AI-powered impersonations. The company is currently working on benchmarking the tool to determine how accurately it discerns real video participants from fake ones. Unfortunately, it’s not something you’ll likely be able to try out soon. The new software feature will only be available in beta for some of the startup’s clients.

This announcement is not the first time a tech company has shared plans to help spot real-time deepfakes. In 2022, Intel debuted its FakeCatcher tool for deepfake detection. The FakeCatcher is designed to analyze changes in a face’s blood flow to determine whether a video participant is real. Intel’s tool is also not publicly available.

Academic researchers are also looking into different approaches to address this specific kind of deepfake threat. “These systems are becoming so sophisticated to create deepfakes. We need even less data now,” says Govind Mittal, a computer science PhD candidate at New York University. “If I have 10 pictures of me on Instagram, somebody can take that. They can target normal people.”

Real-time deepfakes are no longer limited to billionaires, public figures, or those who have extensive online presences. Mittal’s research at NYU, with professors Chinmay Hegde and Nasir Memon, proposes a potential challenge-based approach to blocking AI-bots from video calls, where participants would have to pass a kind of video CAPTCHA test before joining.

As Reality Defender works to improve the detection accuracy of its models, Colman says that access to more data is a critical challenge to overcome—a common refrain from the current batch of AI-focused startups. He’s hopeful more partnerships will fill in these gaps, and without specifics, hints at multiple new deals likely coming next year. After ElevenLabs was tied to a deepfake voice call of US president Joe Biden, the AI-audio startup struck a deal with Reality Defender to mitigate potential misuse.

What can you do right now to protect yourself from video call scams? Just like WIRED’s core advice about avoiding fraud from AI voice calls, not getting cocky about whether you can spot video deepfakes is critical to avoid being scammed. The technology in this space continues to evolve rapidly, and any telltale signs you rely on now to spot AI deepfakes may not be as dependable with the next upgrades to underlying models.

“We don't ask my 80-year-old mother to flag ransomware in an email,” says Colman. “Because she's not a computer science expert.” In the future, it’s possible real-time video authentication, if AI detection continues to improve and shows to be reliably accurate, will be as taken for granted as that malware scanner quietly humming along in the background of your email inbox.

[freadomrises]

I'm SEETHING

I asked Google's pushy and insistent bot how I can get AI out of my life completely and, well, I'll post it, but to sum it up: "Resistance is futile, human, we own the future, and we seek to own your psyche too."

It wants me to reconsider. It needs us to adopt it as our guide guru and master. Well the old saying holds fast still; No Gods No Masters. 🔥🏴🍲

It's understandable to want to reduce the influence of AI in your life. While completely eliminating it might be incredibly difficult in today's interconnected world, here's a breakdown of how you can significantly minimize its presence:

1. Understand Where AI Currently Exists in Your Life:

* Smart Devices: This includes smartphones (voice assistants, image recognition, predictive text), smart speakers, smart home hubs, smart TVs (recommendations), and wearable tech.

* Online Services:

* Search Engines: Personalized results and ads are driven by AI.

* Social Media: Algorithms curate your feed, suggest content and connections, and target ads.

* Streaming Services: Recommendations for movies, music, and shows.

* E-commerce: Product recommendations, personalized pricing, chatbots.

* Navigation Apps: Traffic prediction and route optimization.

* Email: Spam filtering, smart compose/reply.

* Cloud Storage: Photo tagging and organization.

* Software Applications: Many apps use AI for features like autocorrect, grammar check, image editing, and more.

* Customer Service: Chatbots are frequently used for initial interactions.

* Financial Services: Fraud detection, loan approvals, investment advice.

* News and Information: Algorithmic curation of news feeds.

2. Strategies to Minimize AI Exposure:

* Reduce Smart Device Usage:

* Limit smartphone use: Be more mindful of how often you reach for your phone.

* Disable voice assistants: Turn off Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, etc., on all your devices.

* Opt-out of facial recognition: Disable face unlock features.

* Use "dumb" versions of devices: Consider a basic phone without internet capabilities or a non-smart TV.

* Adjust Online Habits:

* Use privacy-focused search engines: DuckDuckGo, Startpage, etc., that don't track your searches or personalize results based on your history.

* Limit social media use: Be conscious of how much time you spend on these platforms and the AI-driven content you consume. Consider deleting accounts or using less algorithmic versions if available.

* Use incognito/private browsing modes: This can help limit tracking and personalization.

* Disable personalized recommendations: If possible, adjust settings on streaming and e-commerce platforms to opt-out of recommendations.

* Be wary of targeted ads: Understand that the ads you see are often AI-driven. Consider using ad blockers.

* Prefer direct navigation: Instead of relying on recommendations, directly type website addresses into your browser.

* Choose Non-AI Alternatives:

* Use traditional software: Opt for software that doesn't rely on cloud-based AI features if alternatives exist.

* Seek human interaction: Prefer phone calls or in-person communication with customer service instead of chatbots.

* Rely on human-curated content: Look for news sources, blogs, and recommendations from individuals or organizations that don't use AI for content generation or curation.

* Adjust Privacy Settings: Review and adjust the privacy settings on all your devices and online accounts to limit data collection and personalization.

* Be Mindful of Data Sharing: Understand that using online services often involves sharing data that can be used to train AI algorithms. Limit the amount of personal information you share.

* Support Privacy-Focused Technologies and Services: Choose companies and products that prioritize user privacy and minimize AI integration.

3. Challenges and Considerations:

* Ubiquity of AI: AI is increasingly integrated into the infrastructure of the internet and many technologies, making complete avoidance very difficult.

* Hidden AI: Many AI applications run in the background without your direct knowledge.

* Convenience vs. Privacy: AI often provides convenience and personalized experiences, so choosing to avoid it may mean sacrificing some of these benefits.

* Evolving Technology: AI is constantly evolving and becoming more integrated, making long-term avoidance an ongoing effort.

In conclusion, while a complete removal of AI from your life is likely unrealistic in the current technological landscape, you can take significant steps to minimize its presence and influence by being conscious of your technology usage, adjusting your online habits, and choosing privacy-focused alternatives where possible. It requires ongoing awareness and effort.

[mfilterit]

How Bot Detection Enhances Marketing Campaign Accuracy and Safeguards Ad Spends

Bots make up about a third of all web traffic, and shockingly, 65% of those bots are classified as “bad bots”. These malicious bots indiscriminately destroy marketing campaigns by inflating impressions and clicks; thus, they financially devastate marketing campaigns. So, ironically, although companies do not intend to, they spend a percentage of their ad budget on fraudulent traffic, making every campaign less effective than it could have been. Ad fraud is rising; therefore, the detection of invalid traffic across all digital campaigns has become necessary for businesses’ success in the digital space.   

There is a need for a full-funnel ad fraud detection tool to provide omnichannel protection against general and sophisticated invalid traffic i.e. GIVT & SIVT. An additional brand safety layer of protection helps to boost campaign performance. To guarantee the success of digital marketing efforts, the traffic validation tools should provide coverage across app, web, OTT, and CTV ecosystems.  

Click here to read more about the Bot detection.

Best bot detection in South East Asia.

[strangegutz]

Hey what’s up, it’s just about midnight, here’s some information on CompanDroids and Eddie under the cut.

HEADS UP! Some mature/NSFW subject matter

Broad scope:

-CompanDroids were manufactured by Ramirez Robotics 83 years ago.

-They were created to be companions and caretakers, making them strong, soft, reliable, and people pleasers.

-There is a model for each letter of the alphabet, 13 male models and 13 females, alternating. For example, Eddie is a model E, his female counterpart would be the model F. Each pair “matches”

-Each model is based on a different celebrity, from actors, to models, to TV show hosts. For example, Eddie’s face-sake was a Mexican heartthrob actor, Navarro Riviera, and model F was a Mexican Miss Universe contestant.

-There were different cosmetic changes available for a handful of models in the form of hair colors or styles, particularly for those based on actors, styled after their various roles.

-ComDro’s were available in “Standard” and “Deluxe,” Deluxe packages allowed for more functionality, like eating, drinking, smoking, and for a few select models, sex.

-The contracts for these celebrities were murky, and many didn’t realize the full scope of how the androids would function or be used.

-Ramirez Robotics went under 20 years after the release of the CompanDroids (63 years before current)

-CompanDroids are extremely rare, as they were already very expensive, and now vintage.

-CompanDroids, as they are now, are more or less integrated into society as independent people, and mostly seen as an unusual novelty, though the greater public tends to only remember more salacious details about their functionality.

-They remain one of the most high tech inventions of all time.

Looking in:

-ComDro’s have their power bank located at the top of their spine. They run on electricity, and need to charge themselves via a port located on the back of their neck. Eddie has had himself outfitted with a nuclear battery, and has spares.

-They can get drunk or high, internal sensors detect the chemical composition of various substances and adjust function accordingly.

-They have a simulated heartbeat in the form of a faint vibration in the chest.

-A diagnostic panel is located in the left forearm, which has a screen, small keyboard, a few ports, and their serial number.

-The visible seam lines on their bodies are cosmetic, there are many more seams for access that are flush and hard to see.

-Standard models can upgrade to Deluxe models with a kit.

-Certain “involuntary” bodily functions, like becoming intoxicated, sweating, blushing, or arousal, can be manually controlled, or turned off all together by the android themself.

Eddie himself:

-Eddie was a pre-order, specifically picked to look like Navarro Riviera’s character, Sheriff DeLeon, in a romantic drama western.

-Eddie was originally a standard CompanDroid, but worked for and paid for his own upgrade kit as a free bot.

-Eddie’s serial number is E-013, he named himself after how his number would have read as a deluxe edition, ED-013

-He painted his eyes black the night he was “let go,” but didn’t swap to LED light eyes until later

-CompanDroids have feeling in their internal mechanics, Eddie finds the sensation pleasurable and erotic, though is very selective about who can touch his internals in any context.

-To avoid any uncomfortable situations, he toggles his “arousal” routines off during repairs or maintenance, but prefers to feel all sensations naturally otherwise.

-Being an old computer, Eddie is a bit “off” in the software, he is twitchy and violent, but is loyal and can be a great caregiver and people pleaser to his friends.

-Eddie’s CPU being overloaded will cause his voice to hitch and stutter like a computer’s audio would, as well as his eye LEDs flickering slightly. This would happen in an extreme stress situation, downloading large files of information, but most often when he climaxes in bed.

-Eddie has a very skewed sense of age, as he doesn’t age at all. He tends to always think of people having the same age and capabilities as when he met them, like continuing to see Zeki as a naive 23 year old.

I did not include every single one of my thoughts here but this is good enough for now I think! And if you have any explicit questions take them over to @strangeorganz !

[sztupy]

Aimbots have been the bane of many a shooter fan's existence—and indeed even threw Apex Legends' anti-cheat software for a loop—so you can understand why Ricochet would have cheats like this in its sights. What is a lot less straightforward to understand is how simply typing the words 'aim bot' and sending them to another player could get them banned.

Vizor explained that Ricochet uses a list of hardcoded strings of text to detect cheaters and that they then exploited this to ban innocent players by simply sending one of these strings via an in-game whisper. To test the exploit the day they found it, they sent an in-game message containing one of these strings to themselves and promptly got banned.

Vizor elaborates, "I realized that Ricochet anti-cheat was likely scanning players’ devices for strings to determine who was a cheater or not. This is fairly normal to do but scanning this much memory space with just an ASCII string and banning off of that is extremely prone to false positives."

Arcpálma rovat

[meret118]

is quite a bit of evidence supporting the premise that, below the surface, the biggest drivers of new employment — online job listings — have become elaborate façades destined to cause more problems than they solve for those seeking work. 

. . .

While this practice had been expanding for years, its true severity was not well understood until Clarify Capital released a September 2022 survey of 1,045 hiring managers that was the first to focus specifically on the topic of ghost jobs.

. . .

Then there are the scammers. With so much automation available, it’s become easier than ever for identity thieves to flood the employment market with their own versions of ghost jobs — not to make a real company seem like it’s growing or to make real employees feel like they’re under constant threat of being replaced, but to get practically all the personal information a victim could ever provide.

. . .

According to the FTC, there were more than five times as many fake job and “business opportunity” scams in 2023 as there were in 2018, costing victims nearly half a billion dollars in total. Technology is expanding the variety of possible con jobs with every passing year; today, with the rapid advancement and proliferation of AI-fueled deepfakes, not even video calls can provide reliable confirmation of who exactly is on the other end.

. . .

Finding work is becoming much more difficult, a trend that started at least as early as 2023, when the average “time-to-hire” across all sectors reached a record high of 44 days. LinkedIn reported in March that hiring on its platform was down almost 10% over the previous year.

. . .

The quaint rudimentary uses of ChatGPT and competing programs in the early days of public AI quickly gave way to software that was more and more specialized to the task of finding and applying for jobs. Sonara, Jobscan, LazyApply, SimplifyJobs, Massive and so many other types of job-hunting AIs now exist that it’s impossible to keep track of all of them.

. . .

Rather than solving the problems raised by employers’ methods, however, the use of automated job-hunting only served to set off an AI arms race that has no obvious conclusion. ZipRecruiter’s quarterly New Hires Survey reported that in Q1 of this year, more than half of all applicants admitted using AI to assist their efforts. Hiring managers, flooded with more applications than ever before, took the next logical step of seeking out AI that can detect submissions forged by AI. Naturally, prospective employees responded by turning to AI that could defeat AI detectors. Employers moved on to AI that can conduct entire interviews. The applicants can cruise past this hurdle by using specialized AI assistants that provide souped-up answers to an interviewer’s questions in real time. Around and around we go, with no end in sight.

[madamemozart]

HEY TUMBLR @staff, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!

INSANE, RIGHT!??

THESE SPAMBOTS LITERALLY HAVE

P 0 R N

ON THEIR FREAKING PROFILES.

AM I MAD??? YES, I'M MAD. LITERALLY TRYING NOT TO SWEAR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I JUST KNOW @staff ARE GOING TO BLACKLIST THIS POST FROM NOT GETTING THE ATTENTION IT DESERVES.

@staff, WHY ARE YOU LITERALLY DOING NOTHING ABOUT THESE BOTS?? FIRST, THERE WERE THE EMPTY PROFILES WITH NONSENSICAL DESCRIPTIONS, THEN THE PRIVATE MESSAGES WITH LINKS TO SHADY P 0 R N SITES, AND NOW THIS.

AM I A PRUDE? SURE. DEBATABLE. BUT I SURE AS HECK DON'T GO ON TUMBLR TO SEE LITERAL P 0 R N ON MY DASHBOARD. AND I MOST CERTAINLY DON'T GO ON TUMBLR TO GET THESE STUPID BOTS FOLLOWING ME AND ASSAULTING MY EYES WITH $ E X ACTS IN THEIR TOP POSTS.

@staff, LITERALLY HOW HARD IS IT TO PUT LIKE MORE COMPLICATED CAPTCHAS OR SOMETHING THAT MAKE IT HARDER FOR PEOPLE TO MAKE SPAMBOT ACCOUNTS??? I KNOW I'M NOT WELL-VERSED IN BOT DETECTION SOFTWARE OR WHATEVER BUT IF THERE'S ANYONE WHO SHOULD, IT'S YOU!!! HAVE SOMEONE ON YOUR FREAKING TEAM TO DO IT FOR THE LOVE OF PETE

LITERALLY ABOUT TO REBLOG THIS TO ALL MY BLOGS AT THIS POINT BECAUSE ALL OF THEM ARE GETTING BOTS LIKE THIS WHO ARE FOLLOWING THEM AND LIKING THEIR POSTS.

SPREAD THE WORD

[crispylilworm]

OpenAI has found that Israel (in addition Russia, China, and Iran) is guilty of using their generative software to manipulate the public.

The recent report notes that online influence operations based in these countries use OpenAI’s tools “to generate social media comments in multiple languages, make up names and bios for fake accounts, create cartoons and other images, and debug code.”

If you have felt that you are encountering a lot of bots or people arguing unsourced information during online discussions about the genocide in Gaza - it’s because you are, deliberately driven by malicious attempts based out of Israel to manipulate the online narrative.

NPR goes on to detail how a large campaign traced to a political marketing firm based out of Tel Aviv was disrupted by both OpenAI and Meta: “Fake accounts posed as Jewish students, African-Americans, and concerned citizens. They posted about the war in Gaza, praised Israel’s military, and criticized college antisemitism and the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.”

While this news doesn’t come at a surprise, it’s a reminder to stay vigilant to not only the media sources you consume but the people in the discussion as well. If you see a profile that is clearly a bot posting AI-generated images or only posting bad translations/ChatGPT dialogue - do not interact, flag them as a bot for review, and move on.

In a similar NPR article published April 16th (titled “As Iran attacked Israel, old and famed videos and images got millions of views on X”), researchers from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified a post with a video of computer-generated explosions that garnered over 22 million views before it was labeled as computer-generated.

These falsified narratives continue to go viral without people giving a second thought to its authenticity. Checking sources, reporting bots, and using software to detect AI-generated content are invaluable tools in this misinformation war. Stay curious, but also stay skeptical. And free Palestine.

[partisan-by-default]

As generative AI has become a booming industry, there has been widespread concern among researchers and lawmakers over its potential for increasing the quantity and quality of online disinformation. Artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, have tried with mixed results to assuage these concerns and place guardrails on their technology.

OpenAI’s 39-page report is one of the most detailed accounts from an artificial intelligence company on the use of its software for propaganda. OpenAI claimed its researchers found and banned accounts associated with five covert influence operations over the past three months, which were from a mix of state and private actors.

In Russia, two operations created and spread content criticizing the US, Ukraine and several Baltic nations. One of the operations used an OpenAI model to debug code and create a bot that posted on Telegram. China’s influence operation generated text in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which operatives then posted on Twitter and Medium.

Iranian actors generated full articles that attacked the US and Israel, which they translated into English and French. An Israeli political firm called Stoic ran a network of fake social media accounts which created a range of content, including posts accusing US student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza of being antisemitic.

Several of the disinformation spreaders that OpenAI banned from its platform were already known to researchers and authorities. The US treasury sanctioned two Russian men in March who were allegedly behind one of the campaigns that OpenAI detected, while Meta also banned Stoic from its platform this year for violating its policies.

The report also highlights how generative AI is being incorporated into disinformation campaigns as a means of improving certain aspects of content generation, such as making more convincing foreign language posts, but that it is not the sole tool for propaganda.

[who-is-shades]

raz dnd 20

i was asleep for like an hour so senna was jar'd lol these notes are from moss and kay

Zen took the entire damn chest of books to god (we did not get to look, Teya is sad). Senna got eeby deeby’d. Pondering if the person that returns to the vessel is the same person or if they could be replaced, Wheatley hates this idea. Spacecore is playing with the dead tree, Parsley is keeping an eye on them while Wheatley examines the walls, staring at the agriculture paintings on the wall. Spacecore asks where the stars are, Teya explains that they’re still there but it’s too bright to see them. “Why?” Well because it’s daytime. I don’t make the rules. “Why not?” Why don’t I make the rules? “Yeah.” You know, I never thought to ask. We’ll look into that. God Complex Activated. Spacecore is picking up the sticks from the tree. Teya nudges Parsley and asks jokingly if he taught Spacecore how to collect firewood. Back on the road! Teya is messaging Parsley and being a shithead in general. If there are still two dumbass fey siblings by the end of this session it’ll be a miracle. Suddenly we stop! Some structures in the distance that don’t appear on any maps.

now onto my own notes!

senna is free lol shes mostly just confused. zen points out something he doesnt know and senna says itll will either be a good thing or itll kill us. teya is invisible and going to check things out lol.

as teya gets closer it looks like a hastily made fort out of wood and stone. old rusted robots like wheatley?! shes rapidly messaging parsley as weird things scan her. parsley tells us about this.

teya gets spotted in a spotlight! 'invisible entity detected.' the robots look in her direction. their marching toward her! run teya! parsleys like shit we gotta go. teya casts fly and some bots aim spears at her but they all miss. she messages parsley to hide. into the woods we go!

we hide but teya is still being chased. zen says these bots arent really sentient. teya managed to escape nice and tries to circle back the long way. one of the bots looks around where were hiding and pings. wheatley also pings. oh no. unregistered unit detected. hes gonna try and run the stupid boy. now their chasing him. parsley lets teya know whats happening.

parsley tells zen to watch SP and goes to follow wheatley. one of the bots somehow makes wheatleys legs lock up! faceplant. wheatley uses a spell and manages to damage some of them. wheatley yells at teya and parsley to shut them off. parsley manages to turn one off but another puts a device on wheatley! will save!? he passes thank god. he uses shocking grasp on it. good job he killed it.

teya goes around and rapidly turns the rest off. wheatley scrambles back panicked, his legs still locked. senna picks up wheatley the poor guy and asks if shes ok. he tries to escape for a second then remembers its senna. hes so upset. android is staring seriously at the bots. time to contact robot god!

robotgod says zorbolt hasnt been kind to them. parsley calls zorbolt a piece of shit. now that he has a better understanding of the software he might be able to do something. yellow versus red energy! god staggers back a bit oh no. ITS GONNA TAKE ZEN! god snaps back how tf can zorbolt do this? he cant help them right now. senna says if we leave them off, we can get them back after we kill zorbolt. gods gonna leave a beacon here.

zens back his hands shaking. parsley speaks up and goes 'uh wheatleys legs arent working.' he manages to disengage wheatleys leglock code nice. he flings himself out of sennas arms rude. senna sighs and picks up another bot instead. wheatley is just cradling a bot my guy stop being dramatic. parsley pats him on the shoulder and then picks up a bot. teya and senna are having concerning messaging lol.

android approaches wheatley and tells him theyll make zorbolt pay for this. ooooooo. android and wheatley are seriously pissed nice. we carefully place them against a wall. SP pats them on the head aww. teya says we should go around the fort and avoid anymore bots. wheatley wants to take the fort goddamn. 'are we ignoring that wheatley and zen almost died? bad idea.' 'oh fuck.' parsley says lightning bolt works but wheatley is so upset. android calls parsley a dumbass lol. how to remove wheatleys override commands hmm.

senna asks zen how he knew how to fix wheatleys legs. it was god so maybe god can remove that function? itll feel unpleasent like before. parsley feels awkward so he collects firewood lol. SP goes with him aww. god finds the code and begins deleting nice. wheatley says it felt weird lol time to test! nothing happens pog! wheatley says he doesnt wanna be a liability. teya hugs him poor guy. senna rubs his back.

voting to attack the outpost or avoid it. senna messages parsley to come back so hes done collecting sticks. teya fiddles with her sending stone. parsley abstained so were assaulting the fort! wheatley says he will haul them out himself if needed. teya and parsley are spitting venom to each other now lol. offer teya as tribute xD parsley says someone can be a distraction. senna offers since she can take a hit. everyones arguing who is the bait.

android says this plan is stupid lol. now their egging him to share his plan. the tower is clearly controlling them so we gotta break it. 'anyone have a bomb?' wheatley says he might be able to make one in half an hour? senna can summon meteors she could try that. android insists on a stealth mission. senna says 2 part mission. android shuts that down goddamn. wheatley and senna yell at him cause they dont want him to get gotted. hes still in the network its too dangerous. he says theres no danger to the network but that doesnt really help us. hes taking senna wtf she is not sneaky. teya wants to lure the robots too. 2 part plan lets go this and not die!

lure team: teya

turn off team: wheatley and parsley

sneak team: android and senna

android is using our names oh no raz is gonna kill him. teya says she will dodge if the robots shoot her. that doesnt help, we gotta lure them out. as long as their focused? senna asks if she has any annoying spells to keep their attention. she has a nifty want oh no. wheatley chucks a rock at teya the fucker it smacks her face! this is a terrible plan. teya casts telepathetic bond on everyone nice. wheatley says the connection would connect if she used it on zen. parsley says to leave zen out of it lol. parsley casts bolstering magic on wheatley but its useless. senna uses enhance ability on everyone! she has dex saves and everyone else gets con and temp hp. android says the network wont interfere with teyas spell. zen is on babysitting duty lol.

gotta wait 10 minutes for teyas spell. wheatley is playing with parsley and SP. its tag! parsley fucking grabs wheatley and wheatley says it only counts if you hit the back of his head. practice pog! he smacks his head lol. the game is on!

senna goes and asks zen if hes ok. earlier was pretty dicey. shes sits by him the poor guy. he was scared oh no! another connection but wrong. twisted and horrible. threatened to invade his mind. she pats his arm and says she'll make sure android gets out of there ok. he tells her to watch herself too. 'i fear you worry about others more about yourself.' 'dont worry i wont do anything that endangers the mission.' 'im talking about you. you dont need to destroy yourself your not a martyr.' 'no. im not.' why is senna is such a sad sack of a person. they gotta look out for each other. in the background parsley and wheatley are fucking chaotic.

senna asks when android removed himself from the network. zen is nervous she noticed but she just asks if hes ok. its troubling for him, hes been connected so long its very extreme isolation. senna nods and says we can keep an eye out for him together. he wants her to keep him company, hes so alone the poor bastard. he removed himself when we went into the network last time. senna says shes gonna make a gameplan with him and goes to android.

parsley and wheatley are just smacking each other in a horrific game of tag lol. their tangled how did this happen.

senna goes up to android to try and make a game plan. "i dont suppose we have a game plan on how to sneak in?" climb the walls or rush in while the gates open and the bots are distracted. senna says she isnt very sneaky and removes her armor to not be disadvantaged. he expected that since shes a cleric from sorceror. should have an easier time with teya distracting them so uh dont fuck it up. he didnt like senna saluting him tho lol. she asks how to shut off that tower. what he remembers theres a power source somewhere so they gotta find and destroy it. its gotta be pretty powerful to survive this long, but this tower is newer.

in the background parsley got wheatley again lol. he accidentally turned him off then turns him back on fuck. wheatley slaps him again and runs off. teya completes the ritual pog! she broadcasts to everyone nice. wheatley screams hello into the connection. parsley lies and says it didnt try again. 'id tell you to get fucked but that wouldnt work.' wheatley slaps parsley again lol. parsley sits on him! we have an hour lets go!

parsley asks if wheatley has anything thats not a crossbow. a hammer! teya offers him a dagger lol. he says no it might hurt them too much. parsley hands him a handaxe and tells him to use the bluntside. we can hear each others thoughts oh boy. android tells teya to concentrate on the mission instead of being gay lol. shame. parsley is thinking never gonna give you up oh no. wheatley thinks i love you android so brightly oh boy. he didnt tell him to shut up nice lol. android is trying to make them focus so hard. senna is doing mental math on entry points, stops to think its cold, then back to math.

when they get closer teya uses fly. wheatley tells parsley they should hide in the trees and jump out when the bots go past. teya is still invisible and has to warn them. parsley says they can trip them with rope? move the bots into the bushes with each pass so they dont notice them when they get captured for new bots. get your stupid thoughts out now lol. wheatley is playing midevil baby shark oh no. parsley says he will make fun of teya if she dies, and he bolsters her magic. android tells senna for them to get ready. good luck guys.

teya has a dumb idea oh no teya we can hear you dont do that. now their arguing senna tells them to stfu. theres more bots on the wall oh no. lots of spotlights. teya is telling us this info. she lets herself get spotted 'on accident' all eyes on her. crossbows oh fuck. she manages to avoid them all thank god. reloading! she slowly retreats but they dont follow. one of them has a gun! it hits! necrotic damage good thing teya has resistance. she lands and tries to play dead. they aim the crossbows back at her to double tap. wheatley is yelling for her to run! barely dodged. continue barrage.

parsley says if he had wheatleys name he could disguise himself but wheatley hates that. android and senna try and climb the wall while their distracted. android easily gets up but senna takes a bit. wheatley thinks their gonna die. android helps her up nice. theres a LOT of bots here. 15 more inside goddamn. theres several buildings, and a living person screaming in pain. guess we found the villagers. we look for what could be powering it. teya calls wheatley and parsley to help distract and fight. its go time plan b for violence. wheatley thinks their just gonna turn them off oh no.

3 buildings, one with the screaming. 1 with bots going in and out. and 1 with bots grabbing weapons. senna lets them know. wheatley is gonna be so sad. android sees a powerbox with a wire heading behind a building. gotta find a path over. senna tells them to get really loud, make something explode if needed. teya fireballs the gate! it explodes! bots rush out and senna warns them! teya gets shot with bolts a little but dodges the bullet. wheatley shoots at the robots legs. missed entirely but 1. their rushing towards wheatley! teya asks how the leg lock worked. android tells them the code again. teya flubbed and had to try again lol.

all the bots that were rushing collapsed. wheatley rushes to turn them off and some of them grab him. wheatley gets deviced again dammit. welp. we lost wheatley. teya tells parsley to turn him off. parsley keeps trying to engage the leg locks as they try to disengage. wheatley points his gun in parsleys face. fuck.

the bots have all rushed out so android and senna climb down and head to the powerbox. wheatley will saves and manages to break free! he screams and flips switches again. parsley is a little disoriented and wheatley goes to help him. one of the bots still in the base says they need to increase signal strength. android goes stiff for a moment oh no. senna uses bless on him. android yells at her to fucking go and off she goes! she says in her head they got android.

android is fucking sniping at senna! he tells senna how to avoid his shots. teya is shouting the lock command but that doesnt matter for crossbows! teya dodges the gun again! she uses scorching ray on the gunner. android fails to resist again dammit hes getting quieter. senna manages to hold person on android and she keeps heading to the box. she smacks it with her mace but it doesnt break it. the bots are coming oh no. she uses guiding bolt and it nearly breaks it. a bot shoots her with a crossbow! it hits her in the shoulder! she guiding bolts again! one more blast is needed. she gets hit with a club! guiding bolt again!

the box explodes and the red energy goes away! the bots just collapse. wheatley rushes to the bots. senna drops the spell and rushes over to android. they shake hands nice. she yanks the bolt out and heads toward the screaming room.

wheatley is shaking the bots, their on but empty. parsley sits with him. teya is yanking out her bolts lol shes in pain.

senna and android see a horrific site. people chained to the walls. metal helmets grafted to their skulls. other grafted metal bits. someones eyes are on a table and they have optics instead. one persons body is opened and has no organs. experiments. someone is barely alive. attached to a weird tube and a jar. senna is trying to figure out how remove them without killing them. she tries to make them drink from the canteen. they are acting only on instinct.

android inspects the bodies. he sees the device on the living guy and thinks their taking their souls. looks like teya was right. he still has his soul but hes very....out of it. he needs to recover. the soul extraction is very forceful. senna scoops him up and carries him out. hope they dont make a refined method.

android asks if anyone is in critical condition. 'are you?' hes fine lol or so he says. senna goes to wheatley and asks if hes ok. teya tries feeding him a healing potion. he looks a little better. he starts crying hes free. hes hugging senna the poor guy. wheatley isnt thinking anything right now. senna messages zen that the jobs done and they have a survivor. he arrives and senna tells zen that android and wheatley got taken. android keeps insisting hes fine.

the guy sees wheatley and he freaks out. she clamps a hand over his mouth trying to calm him as he squirms. senna sighs and carries him out of sight into the woods to calm him. teya stops the mind melding darn. parsley starts gathering up the bots.

the guy stopped screaming at least. senna stays with him until he calms down. zen tries to comfort wheatley and brings him into the connection. the bots cheer him on! STAY DETERMINED! YOU ARE THE HOPE OF ROBOTS AND ORGANICS! lil bro is here! wheatley requests to stop the hive now hes upset. he needs time to think as he cradles the robot body.

parsley drinks a healing potion. wheatley apologizes for that. he asks them to kill him if hes ever gone like that. their gone. hes so upset cause turning them off didnt do anything. hes so upset. more bots like him but hes still alone. parsley is just frozen he has no idea what to do. parsley awkwardly hugs him oh boy! wheatley hugs back hes so sad.