afternoonbuzz

Bronze Age Anatolia, Google, Mexico Disinformation, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 15, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

Phys.org: Searchable Bronze Age site database could help answer key questions about ancient Anatolia. “To boost our understanding of a little-known civilization that thrived more than 3,000 years ago, scientists have built an easy-to-use digital catalog of 483 Bronze Age sites in western Anatolia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Deadline: Google Takes Down Disney AI Videos Following Cease & Desist. “Google is cooperating with Disney‘s cease and desist, removing dozens of AI-generated videos featuring characters belonging to the century-old entertainment conglomerate. Following the Disney’s $1B deal with OpenAI for three-year licensing of several characters on Sora, Google has taken down dozens of AI videos from YouTube featuring Mickey Mouse, Deadpool, Moana and more.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Odessa Journal: Center for Counteracting Disinformation: Russia rapidly expands its information and intelligence influence in Mexico. “After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian propaganda channels RT and Sputnik have significantly expanded their presence in Mexico, spreading anti-American and anti-Ukrainian narratives, according to the Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.”

The Guardian: Elon Musk teams with El Salvador to bring Grok chatbot to public schools. “Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to ‘deploy’ the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an ‘AI-powered education program’.” yikes.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Hackers tricked ChatGPT, Grok and Google into helping them install malware. “… hackers are apparently using AI prompts to seed Google search results with dangerous commands. When executed by unknowing users, these commands prompt computers to give the hackers the access they need to install malware.”

The Moscow Times: Cyberattack Reportedly Paralyzes Russia’s Military Registration Database . “Anonymous hackers have breached a key developer of Russia’s digital military draft system, the head of the draft-dodging nonprofit Idite Lesom said Thursday…. [Grigory] Sverdlin said his group received a large set of documents from the hackers, including the source code, technical documentation and internal communications from the developer, Russia’s software and digital solutions provider Micord.”

WTTW: Judge’s Footnote on Immigration Agents Using AI in Chicago Area Raises Accuracy and Privacy Concerns. “Tucked in a two-sentence footnote in a voluminous court opinion, a federal judge recently called out immigration agents using artificial intelligence to write use-of-force reports, raising concerns that it could lead to inaccuracies and further erode public confidence in how police have handled the immigration crackdown in the Chicago area and ensuing protests.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Alex Chan: Hard problems in social media archiving. “Institutional archiving has different constraints to individual collections – institutions serve a much wider audience, so their decisions need consistency and boundaries. My own scrapbook is tiny and personal, and comparing it alongside institutional efforts really highlights the differences and difficulties. It’s why I usually call it a ‘scrapbook’, not an ‘archive’: it’s informal and a bit chaotic, and that’s fine because it’s only for me. In this post, I’ll explain what I see as the key issues facing institutional social media archiving: what can be saved, what resists preservation, and how context is so hard to keep.”

University of Exeter: UK-US research project launched to study the relationship between Wikipedia and generative AI. “Experts in Artificial Intelligence are to collaborate on a transatlantic research project looking at the relationship between Wikipedia and generative AI. Curating the Commons – AI, Wikipedia, and the Reconstruction of Notability will explore how the globally renowned repository of information both shapes, and is shaped by, the rise of AI and large language models (LLMs).”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Rochester: When people see themselves in science, they trust it more. “White men make up about two-thirds of the scientific workforce in the United States, and nearly all scientists—92 percent—are from non-rural areas, according to the study. That the scientific community looks a lot less like the country it serves is more than symbolic, the authors argue. Indeed, it influences how different groups of people trust scientists and scientific institutions, and how likely recommendations of scientists are to become public policy.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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