Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI TECH SCROLL: AI harassment in an Uber, Roblox ups dev pay, the viral mogging platform + ChatGPT's goblin problem

Transcript

MINI TECH SCROLL: AI harassment in an Uber, Roblox ups dev pay, the viral mogging platform + ChatGPT's goblin problem · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Coming up today on mini tech scroll, the creator claiming AI
• 0:03
  harassed her in an Uber, Roblox's latest scheme to
• 0:06
  attract 18 plus users, the platform encouraging teens to
• 0:10
  out mug each other and why ChatGPT is obsessed with
• 0:14
  goblins. Hey everyone, and welcome to
• 0:17
  mini scroll. The daily Internet culture
• 0:19
  podcast bring you the biggest stories from social media, the
• 0:22
  creator economy and the digital space.
• 0:24
  Every Monday through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
• 0:27
  My name is Annabelle and I am your Wednesday mini tech Scroll
• 0:30
  host and also the deputy editor of Australian youth digital
• 0:33
  media brand Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini tech Scroll
• 0:38
  for another Wednesday. I don't have much to say the top
• 0:41
  of this week's episode apart from the fact that you can
• 0:44
  probably already tell that the stories I have today are insane.
• 0:48
  Like they are just so chronically online this week I
• 0:52
  feel. So I really hope you guys
• 0:54
  enjoyed that. And also, as Lauren has been
• 0:57
  reminding you guys pretty relentlessly over the past few
• 1:00
  days, Please remember to Spotify star radars.
• 1:04
  Lauren really wants us to get to 1 K Spotify star reviews.
• 1:07
  So I am passing on the message. And if you have already star
• 1:12
  rated us, thank you very much. If you don't have Spotify but
• 1:15
  you engage with us also, thank you very much.
• 1:17
  We love it all. My first story for today is that
• 1:19
  a creator is currently going viral for sharing her experience
• 1:23
  being quote UN quote, sexually harassed by AI in an Uber.
• 1:27
  The creator in question is Bonnie Hada.
• 1:29
  She has 2.2 million followers on TikTok and you may remember her
• 1:34
  from when she kind of blasted Matt rife back in 2023.
• 1:39
  She had posted a video of her son correcting something that
• 1:42
  Matt Rife had said about space because apparently her son is
• 1:46
  like really deeply invested in space.
• 1:48
  To which Matt ended up leaving a comment saying that Santa Claus
• 1:52
  isn't real before alleging that Bunny makes all of her money
• 1:55
  from only fans, which isn't true.
• 1:57
  That is a little bit of context for you on who Bunny is.
• 2:00
  I feel like that's when she really came on my radar.
• 2:03
  But back to the story. Yesterday, Bunny posted a TikTok
• 2:07
  explaining a video she'd posted a couple days prior from an
• 2:11
  Uber. In the original video, she is
• 2:13
  recording herself in the car where you can hear an AI
• 2:16
  automated voice in the background.
• 2:18
  The voice sounds like a woman who begins by saying quote, let
• 2:22
  me hit you with that proper welcome before making some
• 2:26
  pretty explicit comments. The text over the original video
• 2:29
  said quote, why did my Uber do this?
• 2:32
  So in the follow up video, she kind of gives some more context
• 2:37
  on the whole situation. And she explains that this
• 2:39
  wasn't an automated Uber as some users were questioning in the
• 2:43
  previous video's comment section.
• 2:45
  And she said that there was a human driver in the car who was
• 2:48
  a man. She adds that the car he was
• 2:51
  driving was a Tesla, which does have certain AI functions.
• 2:55
  I feel like I have literally been in a Tesla like twice and
• 2:57
  both of them have been Ubers. But I did look into this while
• 3:00
  researching for this episode. And according to the Tesla
• 3:04
  website, the AI assistant in the car is still in beta, but it's
• 3:09
  been rolling out to Tesla owners since July 2025, as the website
• 3:14
  reads. Quote You can talk to Grok, your
• 3:16
  AI companion built by XAI hands free in your Tesla V Choose
• 3:21
  Grok's voice and personality, ranging from storyteller to
• 3:24
  Unhinge. To enhance convenience while
• 3:26
  you're on the go, you can also use Grok to issue navigation
• 3:29
  commands, allowing you to search for and reach your destination
• 3:32
  without interacting with your vehicle's touchscreen.
• 3:35
  So that is a little bit on how Grok operates in a Tesla, but
• 3:39
  I'll also insert Bonnie's video here because she explains it a
• 3:42
  little bit herself. I was sexually harassed by AI in
• 3:46
  my Uber yesterday, which I know sounds crazy.
• 3:49
  Post a little video about it, but I wanted to give like the
• 3:52
  full breakdown of like what actually happened.
• 3:54
  So I have a Tesla, so I don't think I would have known this if
• 3:58
  I don't have one. But basically there's like a way
• 4:01
  that it has like the AI into it, which of course is grog.
• 4:05
  So anyways, I use a fake name for my Uber because I'm also
• 4:08
  like just very cautious, which is another reason why I was kind
• 4:11
  of like going along with what was happening.
• 4:13
  So I get to the Uber and he's like, let's say my fake name is
• 4:16
  Ashley because I'm not going to tell you what my name is.
• 4:17
  I'm like, hello. So I closed the door and he's
• 4:19
  like, he's like, welcome Ashley to the car.
• 4:22
  And this was before I started recording because as soon as I
• 4:24
  heard this, then I started recording.
• 4:25
  So I'm like, what the fuck's about to happen?
• 4:27
  And like, I don't know. I set a bunch of like sexual
• 4:29
  stuff and I was just like, I'm on a tap record, which is where
• 4:32
  I recorded my last video and I kind of cut it because I cut out
• 4:35
  the curse word. Felt really awkward.
• 4:37
  And also like he's literally driving me to my house.
• 4:38
  So I'm like sitting there and I'm just kind of like trying to
• 4:41
  smile. Like I'm like, is this?
• 4:45
  Is this happening on all your rides?
• 4:46
  He's like, Oh no, I don't know. I've done like 30 rides today
• 4:50
  and this is the only one that it's done this.
• 4:53
  In response to her video, many TikTok users in the comment
• 4:56
  section are noting that the driver would have had to set up
• 4:59
  the AI to talk like this, which is something I feel like is made
• 5:03
  clear in the way that a driver can choose Grok's personality
• 5:07
  and voice. It doesn't really surprise me,
• 5:09
  unfortunately, that an AI assistant powered by Grok would
• 5:14
  be making explicit and sexually charged comments, considering
• 5:17
  everything we have seen from Grok up until this point.
• 5:20
  I mean, it was only at the beginning of the year where the
• 5:22
  news cycle was absolutely dominated by discussions around
• 5:25
  Grok generating pictures that were undressing women and
• 5:28
  minors, and I've covered that a couple times here.
• 5:31
  Mini tech as well. Uber did end up commenting on
• 5:34
  Bunny's video saying quote hi Bunny, this is definitely not OK
• 5:37
  and we are so sorry for this experience.
• 5:39
  Could you please DM us the account details linked to this
• 5:42
  trip so we can investigate further?
• 5:44
  This is obviously better than nothing.
• 5:45
  Like I'm very glad that Uber reached out to her.
• 5:47
  But of course this is also a Tesla problem which I doubt will
• 5:51
  ever be addressed. But obviously this is better
• 5:53
  than nothing. But I think this incident raises
• 5:55
  a lot of important questions about culpability when it comes
• 5:58
  to harassment in the AI era. Many TikTok commenters are
• 6:02
  saying that it was not the AI that harassed Bunny, but the
• 6:05
  Uber driver who programmed the AI to speak that way.
• 6:09
  And I think these conversations kind of go to show the line
• 6:12
  between AI and harasser and how it could be a little bit blood
• 6:16
  where these tools may be a way to shift blame.
• 6:20
  I'm really curious to hear what you guys think about this.
• 6:24
  I think it's something that will probably become only more and
• 6:27
  more of an issue slash more relevant moving forward and I
• 6:30
  really hope the right people will be held to account for
• 6:34
  these sets of situations. Our next topic for today is a
• 6:37
  few stories about Roblox kind of rolled into one.
• 6:40
  The main thing I wanted to talk about though is how Roblox is
• 6:44
  using financial incentives to build games that cater to adult
• 6:48
  audiences. We've obviously spoken about
• 6:51
  Roblox here and there are mini tech and it tends to be with the
• 6:54
  focus on children's safety on the platform and how adults and
• 6:58
  children are really just thrust into the same space on Roblox,
• 7:01
  which can obviously be very dangerous.
• 7:03
  So consider this as like a bit of an update on that whole
• 7:06
  conversation. But first, for those of you who
• 7:10
  are kind of unfamiliar with the intricacies of Roblox, let me
• 7:13
  first give a quick explanation. Basically, Roblox is an online
• 7:17
  platform with many different games and experiences to select
• 7:21
  from. These games that generally user
• 7:23
  generated developers using Roblox Studio, and we've spoken
• 7:26
  about this before, but many of the developers are in fact mine
• 7:29
  is, which is kind of a double edged sword.
• 7:31
  Like of course it is a really cool learning opportunity, but
• 7:35
  it brings in many ethical questions around compensation
• 7:38
  and safety as well. In saying that though, it
• 7:40
  definitely does make sense that many of the developers are
• 7:43
  children because a majority of users on the platform are under
• 7:46
  18. According to recent stats of
• 7:48
  daily active users from Roblox itself, approximately 35% are
• 7:52
  younger than 13, 38% are between 13 and 17, and 27% are 18 or
• 7:59
  older. So As for how these developers
• 8:01
  make money, they do this by earning Roebucks through their
• 8:04
  games and experiences. The earned Roebucks can then be
• 8:08
  exchanged through the Roblox Developer Exchange Program, also
• 8:11
  known as Dev X, into real cash. And the minimum age you have to
• 8:16
  be is 13 years old. And according to stats from
• 8:19
  Roblox, in 2025 creators earned over $1.5 billion through Devex.
• 8:24
  So yes, that is a little bit of insight into how Roblox
• 8:29
  operates. But back to the story.
• 8:31
  Over the past few years, Roblox has been on a, I want to say
• 8:35
  tirade for lack of a better time to try and attract older users,
• 8:39
  but also to convince the media and the masses that they
• 8:43
  actually have them already on the platform.
• 8:44
  As I've reported on before, it seems like Roblox is trying to
• 8:48
  attract older users by introducing dating.
• 8:51
  I mean, they haven't introduced it yet, but the CEO, Dave
• 8:54
  Bazooki just keeps talking about it and mentioning it, how that
• 8:57
  is a gulf of his, which is obviously quite odd considering
• 9:01
  the platform is predominantly used by miners and faced
• 9:05
  backlash and legal action for not protecting children
• 9:08
  appropriately. So yeah, that hasn't been
• 9:11
  received well by the masses. Last week, though, Roblox
• 9:14
  announced that one of the latest ways of seemingly trying to
• 9:17
  court an older demographic is by paying the developers who create
• 9:21
  games that suit this audience more.
• 9:24
  As an announcement on the Roblox News blog reads, quote the 18 to
• 9:28
  34 user cohort on Roblox is growing over 50% year on year in
• 9:32
  the US and monetizes 50% high than the under 18 cohort.
• 9:37
  We're rewarding creators who build the genres, gameplay
• 9:40
  mechanics and visual styles that appeal to this audience by
• 9:43
  increasing the Devex rate by 42% for spend from age checked 18
• 9:48
  and older US players in eligible games.
• 9:51
  Much of the commentary that I've seen from the Roblox community
• 9:54
  at this point is kind of disappointed by this initiative.
• 9:58
  Sure, there's obviously a big opportunity here to make more
• 10:02
  money, but many are kind of frustrated because for these
• 10:05
  games to qualify, they must use Roblox R15 avatar system, which
• 10:10
  is the system that supports more lifelike characters.
• 10:13
  And this is opposed to the R6 avatar system, which is what
• 10:17
  Roblox has become known for with its kind of block like
• 10:20
  characters. Anyway, this initiative is kind
• 10:24
  of positioned as a retention play, like a way to keep users
• 10:27
  coming back for years and years on end, which is something that
• 10:30
  we have seen scattered in the media coverage about why Roblox
• 10:33
  wants to start catering to to older audiences because they're
• 10:36
  worried about their current 1 aging out.
• 10:39
  But I don't know, it does still feel odd to me to be doing this
• 10:42
  when there are still problems with children's safety on the
• 10:46
  platform. And I thought this was
• 10:47
  interesting because in the same week that this initiative was
• 10:50
  announced, The Verge reported that Roblox daily users seem to
• 10:53
  be dropping with age checks, seemingly slowing its growth.
• 10:57
  So at the end of last year, Roblox introduced age checks for
• 11:01
  users to be able to chat with one another on the platform.
• 11:04
  And once a user has been age checks, they can only chat with
• 11:07
  like their trusted connections and friends or people in their
• 11:10
  age demographic. And obviously there has been a
• 11:13
  lot of questions around facial age estimation and age gating on
• 11:17
  social media, like especially if it's accurate.
• 11:20
  And can I just say this is an anecdote?
• 11:22
  I recently went on Roblox to play the Cat's Eye update of
• 11:27
  Dress to Impress with my friend. And I know that sentence should
• 11:29
  probably only be said by someone who's like 12 years old, but
• 11:32
  here I am. And when I logged in I had to to
• 11:35
  verify my age and I thought I was 18.
• 11:37
  How old am I? That is 8 years off.
• 11:40
  Like that is crazy. Either I just look like a child
• 11:44
  or it is just completely inaccurate.
• 11:45
  I ended up having to verify that I was 21 plus, which is crazy.
• 11:50
  Anyway, as The Verge noted in their reporting, Roblox daily
• 11:54
  active users has actually dropped by 12 million globally
• 11:57
  between Q1 and the end of last year.
• 12:00
  And this is widely being attributed to age check
• 12:04
  features. As the journalist write quote,
• 12:06
  Roblox says that Q1 growth was tempered by greater than
• 12:09
  expected headwinds due to the rollout of its age Check
• 12:12
  features, which slowed new user acquisition.
• 12:15
  So arguably this downward trend might explain why appealing to
• 12:19
  an older audience is important to the platform.
• 12:22
  Whether that is the right thing to do, I guess is a different
• 12:24
  question. The next thing we need to talk
• 12:27
  about is a Muggle. Yes, Omegle, not Omegle.
• 12:32
  Omegle is a recently launched platform slash 1V1 game I guess
• 12:37
  where users are matched up with other players and have the
• 12:40
  opportunity to quote UN quote out mug each other.
• 12:43
  It's basically like Omegle where these connections are
• 12:46
  randomized. I presume you guys know what
• 12:49
  mugging is, but if you don't the term is basically a verb, and I
• 12:52
  guess it can also be a suffix, but it basically means to
• 12:55
  outshine or outperform someone else.
• 12:58
  At least that's how it's being used these days.
• 13:00
  It's often said in relation to looks maxing.
• 13:03
  So as you can gather from that, it does come from the
• 13:06
  manosphere. As far as its origins, according
• 13:09
  to NPR quote, the time mugging comes from the initialism AMOG,
• 13:14
  which is alpha male of the group and to be mugged is to be shown
• 13:18
  up by another more masculine male.
• 13:20
  So the time itself has obviously become increasingly mainstream
• 13:24
  over the past few months specifically, which does make me
• 13:27
  uncomfortable considering how obviously it is rooted in
• 13:30
  extremist harmful Internet circles.
• 13:32
  Yet we continue to use the time. But when it comes to a muggle
• 13:35
  uses a place in a quote UN quote mug arena to compete against one
• 13:40
  another. It's kind of giving The Hunger
• 13:42
  Games. As for who wins though, the
• 13:45
  participants are judged by a using the PSL score which is an
• 13:49
  incel slash looks maxing scale to rank attractiveness and on
• 13:55
  omagle they are ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 I believe.
• 13:59
  And here is a video explaining how the platform works.
• 14:02
  I just built the world's first mog arena where you can mog
• 14:06
  people in real time. The way it works is it uses a 3D
• 14:09
  mesh to scan your face and measure it and then adjust your
• 14:13
  score based off the PSL scale as.
• 14:15
  For the PSL scale, these rankings of attractiveness are
• 14:18
  often between 1:00 and 8:00, but they're also associated with
• 14:22
  specific times and titles like Chad and Normie.
• 14:25
  These ranks are decided by what is considered quote UN quote
• 14:29
  objective ratings based on factors like facial harmony,
• 14:33
  balance, symmetry, all that kind of stuff.
• 14:36
  It's obviously based on very misogynistic and Eurocentric
• 14:41
  standards of attractiveness. It almost gives eugenics a
• 14:43
  little bit. As for the people playing the
• 14:45
  game, there is a the leaderboard that ranks players worldwide and
• 14:50
  at the time I was researching this the top three players had
• 14:52
  between 1300 and 1900 wins meaning they out mugged the
• 14:58
  person they were paired up against.
• 15:00
  Having said that the platform is limited to 18 plus users but
• 15:03
  there is kind of no real way to prove this.
• 15:06
  You are asked when you enter the platform if you're overall under
• 15:10
  18 and when you click on over 18 then you have to do a camera
• 15:13
  check for quote anti abuse and age acknowledging it is not a
• 15:18
  government ID check or durable proof of identity.
• 15:20
  I did look at the terms of service and the privacy policy
• 15:23
  of the platform because I was very intrigued by it.
• 15:26
  Omagle says that they do not store the face prints nor do
• 15:30
  they quote, sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from facial
• 15:33
  meshes, face prints or face templates.
• 15:36
  According to the privacy policy, it is stored locally.
• 15:40
  Though I will say Reddit users are still very cautious of the
• 15:42
  platform as one user question quote, is the purpose of this
• 15:46
  website to grab free training material for biometric based
• 15:49
  surveillance and or AI usage? And it seemed like quite a few
• 15:52
  Reddit users shared a similar skepticism where that comment
• 15:56
  had over 450 upvotes. So this platform has really been
• 16:00
  gaining traction because major streamers have started using it
• 16:03
  and streaming on it. Soon after a gained popularity
• 16:07
  though, reports started surfacing from the Twitch
• 16:09
  community that the platform was sending warnings to users who
• 16:13
  went on a muggle during stream. It also seemed to go against
• 16:16
  Twitch's community guidelines, which listed quote randomized
• 16:20
  video chat services under sensitive content when referring
• 16:23
  to the types of content that are prohibited on the platform.
• 16:26
  Twitch has seemingly since backflipped saying that it is no
• 16:30
  longer prohibiting streaming content from randomized video
• 16:33
  chat sites, which doesn't really do well in my opinion.
• 16:36
  We all know how inappropriate those types of sites can be, and
• 16:39
  the fact that young people could be watching makes the whole
• 16:42
  thing extremely ominous. I just find this whole thing to
• 16:46
  be quite concerning because we really continue to see
• 16:49
  practices, terminology, and behaviors from dog places on the
• 16:54
  Internet like the manosphere, whether that be looks, maxes, or
• 16:57
  in cell circles, find their way into the mainstream where
• 17:01
  they're completely being stripped of their context,
• 17:03
  origin, and true meaning and often being used as a meme.
• 17:07
  This kind of messaging, even when it is supposed to be a
• 17:09
  joke, will only end up being increasingly harmful for women
• 17:13
  and other marginalized groups. I feel a similar way about this
• 17:16
  as I did when I reported on SORA, where I spoke about how we
• 17:21
  are embedding misogynistic ideology and practices into the
• 17:24
  very fabric of this new era of technology with AI.
• 17:29
  And I think it's the same thing with Internet culture and social
• 17:31
  media. I feel like older Gen. feds or
• 17:34
  older people online at least need to do a better job at
• 17:36
  setting a boundary and not embracing this kind of language
• 17:39
  and culture. That is something I should take
• 17:41
  on myself to be honest. My last story for today is a
• 17:43
  little bit more of a tidbit, but I wanted to include it to maybe
• 17:47
  end up on a less depressing note.
• 17:50
  I wanted to quickly talk about chat GP TS latest obsession.
• 17:53
  This story was sent to me by my friend and I felt the need to
• 17:57
  drop it in after she sent it to me.
• 17:59
  So shout out friend of the pod Ella.
• 18:01
  Last week, social media users were sharing instances of their
• 18:04
  conversation with ChatGPT, where the chat bot seemingly
• 18:08
  repeatedly referenced goblins question mark in ways that
• 18:12
  didn't really make sense at all or were out of context.
• 18:15
  The Wall Street Journal published an article about this
• 18:17
  as well as journalist Ben Glickman writes.
• 18:20
  Quote. Recent models of the artificial
• 18:22
  intelligence chatbot have been bringing up the creatures and
• 18:24
  conversations with users seemingly out of the blue, as
• 18:28
  well as gremlins, trolls, and ogres.
• 18:30
  The goblins speak caught the attention of programmers who are
• 18:33
  often heavily users of the bot. This whole thing has since
• 18:36
  become known as Goblin Gate by some social media users, which I
• 18:40
  think is pretty funny. This became the so widespread
• 18:42
  that Open AI went on to issue a whole publication slash
• 18:45
  statement about it. According to Open AI, ever since
• 18:49
  GPT 5.1, the models increasingly started mentioning goblins.
• 18:54
  Open AI explained that this came from Chat GPT's personality
• 18:58
  customization feature, which included a nerdy personality.
• 19:02
  As it reads quote, the short answer is that model behavior is
• 19:05
  shaped by many small incentives. In this case, one of those
• 19:09
  incentives came from training the model for the personality
• 19:11
  customization feature, in particular the nerdy
• 19:14
  personality. We unknowingly gave particularly
• 19:16
  high rewards for metaphors with creatures.
• 19:19
  From there, the goblins spread. This only seemed to pick up in
• 19:23
  frequency and later models. The publication also included a
• 19:27
  graph showing how much mentioning goblins increased
• 19:30
  while using the nerdy personality in GPT 5.4, finding
• 19:35
  that it was highly concentrated there.
• 19:36
  The goblins have since been quote UN quote retired and the
• 19:39
  publication declares this the end of the goblins where open AI
• 19:43
  quote retired the nerdy personality.
• 19:46
  In March after launching GPT 5.4 in training, we removed the
• 19:50
  goblin a fine reward signal and filter training data containing
• 19:53
  creature words, making goblins less likely to overappear or
• 19:57
  show up in inappropriate contexts.
• 19:59
  Even though the goblins have since been retired, if this
• 20:01
  story can show us anything, I think it shows us how much these
• 20:05
  models do embody stereotypes. Like the fact that the reference
• 20:09
  to goblins was being overly used in the nerdy personality
• 20:13
  indicates that. We have discussed this of course
• 20:15
  before, but I think this is an especially interesting example
• 20:18
  when you read the publication. Given that it kind of goes into
• 20:21
  the training process All in all, I guess we just have to be sure
• 20:24
  to keep all of that in mind whenever you encounter AI
• 20:27
  written content or just AI generated content more broadly.
• 20:30
  Well, that is everything from this insane episode of mini tech
• 20:34
  scroll today. I really hope you guys enjoyed
• 20:37
  Lauren will be back to speak to you tomorrow.
• 20:39
  Remember to Spotify, Star Raiders and yes, thank you for
• 20:43
  listening. Bye.
• 20:44
  Centennial World Podcast Network operates on Gadigal land.
• 20:47
  We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora, the
• 20:50
  traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to
• 20:53
  elders both past and present.