AI Scams, AT&T Outage, Google Gemini Blunder & Macarena Mandela Effect

A.I. scams, Google Gemini’s major blunder, AT&T outage, and a new Macarena Mandela Effect: these are some of the weirdest things that happened this week. Scammers are getting sophisticated as they use artificial intelligence to con tens of thousands of people out of billions of dollars. Group texts, emails, phone calls, AI-generated voices, and “deep fake” videos are just the beginning of what the scammers are using. Now, in what police are calling “spoofing,” criminals can call from any phone number they want, placing a call in any country, but it shows up on the caller ID as a legitimate number.

What do you do when the scammers provide real badge numbers and actual police identification? Find out how you can begin to protect yourself and the right questions to ask. In other tech news, AT&T and other providers experienced a major network outage, and explanations from solar flares to foreign attacks are being thrown left and right. What caused the AT&T outage? In other artificial intelligence news, Google suspended its image generator service Google Gemini after it was unable to return correct images. See the hilarious photos it created instead. For this week’s “Bendela Effect” (Mandela Effect segment), hear about the shocking truth of the Macarena. Do you remember how the dance went? Did it change?

On this Friday Night Live, also hear about a man who claims to have participated in making the Georgia Guidestones. Why is he coming out now? Did he really create them? What did he say in his CNN interview? Join Ben and Rob from Edge of Wonder as they go deeper into these topics, plus Rise.TV exclusives: a “Dig Deep” Live Q&A and the Top 10 Weirder News of the Week. See you out on the edge!

Q&A: “What is the #1 best ’90s song?” “What do you think is the best book to ‘wake’ somebody up?” “Do you think ’90s music was purposely pushed to influence the population?” “What are the pictures on the drawing table behind Rob?” “How is A.I. supposed to come alive and take over? Is it like in the Bible when angels and humans crossbred? Is A.I. a vessel for demons to manifest vibrationally and combine with humans, i.e. ‘trans-human’?”

Top 10 Weirder News of the Week:

10. A flight traveling from San Fransisco to Boston has to make an emergency stop after one passenger notices something horrifying.

9. You often hear of sinkholes in cartoons, but not so much in the middle of Los Angeles. One frightened, 1200-pound load requires a major rescue effort.

8. Hotels may be things of the past after this one-of-a-kind alternative is created inside of a Boeing 737 jet.

7. An art teacher lists works like “Logan’s Creepy Portrait” and “Julia’s Creepy Portrait” for $30–$151, but when her students find out where the work came from, chaos ensues.

6. A primary school in Zimbabwe is plagued by a ghost that terrorizes students and teachers alike.

5. The latest Starbucks coffee flavor in China leaves some people feeling “salty.”

4. An unexpected item is found in the deepest point on Earth—the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

3. Was How to Train Your Dragon based on real creatures? Venomous, blue dragons wash up on Texas beaches.

2. Insurance fraud gets a lot more serious when people are risking life and limb for a payout.

1. Villagers in India are so haunted by what’s visiting them at night that they send guards to patrol, looking out for a terrifying sounding figure.