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AI bot personas may be undercover police.

404 Media reports US police departments are utilizing Overwatch — an AI tool that “deploys lifelike virtual agents” to “infiltrate and engage criminal networks” — to collect incriminating evidence against anyone from suspected drug and human traffickers, to “radicalized” political activists and “college protesters.”

One example of a “radicalized” AI persona that developer Massive Blue says it has created is one pretending to be a 36-year-old child-free divorced woman, described as outspoken, lonely, and body positive. Her hobbies include baking and, vaguely, “activism.”

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