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Hello again, human brain, and welcome back to your daily munch of AI news.

Here’s what’s on the menu today:

• Willy Wonka's evil AI twin?🤖

  Willy’s Chocolate Experience. Wow.

• Free AI writes 90x more code😳

  Google released Gemini Code Assist for free.

  New here? Subscribe! 😎

Peep today's Spot the AI at the bottom. 👇

MAIN COURSE

AI scams 1000 families🍫

Monday was the 1-year anniversary of an AI-powered disaster called Willy’s Chocolate Experience. Buckle up. This one’s a doozy. 🤭

Meet Billy Coull. He’s a self-proclaimed entrepreneur who boldly promised an hour-long, mind-blowing journey through a chocolate wonderland. What he delivered? A nightmare.

What did he do?

Imagine paying $45 for an enchanted escape with cascading chocolate fountains, giant mushroom sweets, and mind-expanding “imagination labs.” The website dazzled with vibrant AI-generated backdrops, quirky copy, and spellbinding promises of interactive magic. 1000 families across Glasgow lined up with visions of sugar-coated delight dancing in their heads.

But when they arrived at the Box Hub Warehouse, they were greeted by the eerie, musty setting of what many described as a “meth lab.” Cheap props, sticky floors, and a hastily rigged maze of ragged fabric and gaffing tape replaced the promised utopia. The digital allure had fizzled into a far cry from the cinematic spectacle it had billed. It left parents and their pint-sized chocoholics fuming.

Wow…

We’re just getting started. Behind the glossy façade of a high-budget immersive experience lurked an insidious secret. Every tantalizing promise, every dazzling image, and even the event’s meticulously choreographed script was churned out by cheap AI.

Billy Coull’s digital Frankenstein relied on AI tools to generate the website’s visuals (with glaring spelling errors and laughable mistakes) and the entire narrative of the event. Promised attractions like “the Enchanted Garden” and “Twilight Tunnel” were nothing more than buzzwords to sell tickets. Instead, attendees found themselves in a scene of chaos. Children’s tears, enraged parents snapping photos, a hastily issued apology from Billy, and the police were called to shut it all down.

Was there at least chocolate?

Nah. In fact, each child received 1 jelly bean and ¼ cup of store-bought lemonade. The site also promised a “three-course meal,” but that didn’t happen. Some people drove 2 hours to come to this thing.

What the hell, Billy?

Billy Coull isn’t new to scams. His résumé boasts fake Ph.Ds, and he has a history of putting on questionable events. He’s held dubious charity fundraisers, political escapades, shell companies, and more. The fallout was immediate: social media exploded with memes, online petitions soared, and a dedicated Facebook group dubbed “House of Illuminati Scam” reeked of digital vengeance.

House of Illuminati?

It’s the company that hosted this event. The only person in the business? Billy. 🙄

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SIDE SALAD

Google killed GitHub Copilot😳

Google just released a free version of Gemini Code Assist. It has usage limits that blow away the competition.

What's included?

180,000 monthly code completions (90 times more than GitHub Copilot's 2,000 limit). Plus, it comes with free AI code reviews for all GitHub repositories.

Who can use it?

Anyone with a Gmail account. It’s available globally with no credit card needed.

How good is it?

Powered by Gemini 2.0 with a massive 128,000 token context window. Google says it already generates 25% of their own internal code.

What about the competition?

This directly challenges GitHub Copilot. Google ranks “in the top five” on LM Arena benchmarks.

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Think Piece 🧠

OpenAI banned Chinese accounts? A group used ChatGPT to create a social media surveillance tool. They also generated negative posts and shared insights with authorities.

Startup News 💰

Google DeepMind priced Veo 2 at $0.50 per second. It’s an AI video generator available now on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

Research 👨‍🔬 

Is That Your Final Answer? — How AI models improve accuracy and self-awareness by extending processing time and knowing when to stay silent.

S* — combines parallel sampling with iterative debugging to improve the coverage and correctness of code generation.

SPOT THE AI

3 of these are pics of real candy. 1 is fake. 🍬

Which one is AI-generated? 👇

Ideas? Comments? Complaints?

Respond to this email or hit me up on 𝕏.

Until next time 🤖😋🧠