How Bellingcat finds the truth in the age of AI

Once someone believes a conspiracy theory, can anything change their mind? Researchers tried something unexpected: an AI chatbot. After just eight minutes of conversation, some conspiracy theorists were significantly less convinced. What did the bot know about changing minds that we don’t? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Eliot Higgins built Bellingcat on a simple idea: give enough people the right tools, and they can figure out what really happened. It’s called open-source intelligence, or OSINT. But AI can now generate convincing fakes in seconds. Higgins tells us what happens when finding the truth becomes a race against the internet itself. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

States are passing age-verification laws designed to keep kids safer on social media. But figuring out who’s a kid means finding a way to check everyone’s age. Three decades after the first fights over kids’ rights online, we look at a new question: Could protecting minors end up changing the internet for all of us? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A Texas company is testing drones designed to stop school shooters using sirens, strobe lights and pepper spray. The idea isn’t new. In 2022, Taser-maker Axon proposed putting drones in schools — a plan that led most of its AI Ethics Board to resign. We revisit our story about the fight over whether drones belong in schools — and what happens when a company’s own ethics advisers say it has gone too far. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Generative AI can write, compose music and make art. But it learned by training on work made by humans — often without their permission. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU and NPR’s 1A, we ask: should we allow AI to train on human work? And if it does… what can we do about it? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We’ve tried laws. Parental controls. Age restrictions. And demands that tech companies make social media safer for kids. But there’s one group adults don’t always think to consult: the kids themselves. This week on Click Here, what online safety looks like when teenagers get a say. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Arturo Bejar was a Meta employee who tried to warn the company that its platforms were harming kids. Eventually, he told a California jury, and a week later, Meta announced its landmark $17 billion settlement. We sat down with the whistleblower who tried to get Meta to listen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

U.S. officials say Iran-linked hackers are targeting water utilities across the country. So we’re revisiting the story of Nick Lawler, who got a call from the FBI one day in 2023. Chinese state hackers, they told him, had somehow found their way inside the small-town utility he ran in Littleton, Massachusetts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When North Korea targeted security researcher Alejandro Caceres, he did something Americans aren’t supposed to do: he struck back — and knocked the country’s entire internet offline. Now, a new Trump administration memo is raising the possibility that, under special circumstances, Americans could strike back at cybercriminals — legally. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Journalist Jason Rezaian spent a year and a half in an Iranian prison, cut off from the outside world. So when Iran shut down the internet across the country for 88 days during the early weeks of the war, he had some idea of what that kind of isolation felt like. And he saw something else: just how closely the internet and power are now intertwined. Iran understands that. Rezaian thinks the U.S. should too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices