Compose a love letter, write an art critique, or have your palm read. Artist Claudio Castillo’s new work comes with a lot of disclaimers. And that’s a good thing. Everything should come with a disclaimer. Enjoy the many creative and funny applications.
“Riding the subway, all I would see were AI ads that made me confused and angry,” Alterman said. “I wanted to know if other people felt the same way.”
In June, an Instagram reel of fake tech advertisements being put up on Subway station walls went viral, gathering 5 million views and more than 250,000 likes. The faux ads were made by Harris Alterman and Dave Ross, two comedians whose usual content caters to the meta-ironic and absurdist appetites of the internet.
One ad read, “What if forks were spoons?” by the fake company, “cutlery.ai.”
Another said, “1 + 1 = _____. Dennis can tell you.”
The viral social network for bots reveals more about our own current mania for AI as it does about the future of agents.
For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.”
We observed! Launched on January 28 by Matt Schlicht, a US tech entrepreneur, Moltbook went viral in a matter of hours. Schlicht’s idea was to make a place where instances of a free open-source LLM-powered agent known as OpenClaw (formerly known as ClawdBot, then Moltbot), released in November by the Austrian software engineer Peter Steinberger, could come together and do whatever they wanted. Read the whole article here.
The new TikTok trend “AI Homeless Man Prank” has sparked a wave of outrage and police responses in the United States and beyond.
The prank involves using AI image generators to create realistic photos depicting fake homeless people appearing to be at someone’s door or inside their home. Learning to distinguish between truth and falsehood is not the only challenge society faces in the AI era. We must also reflect on the human consequences of what we create.
As professors of educational technology at Laval University and education and innovation at Concordia University, we study how to strengthen human agency — the ability to consciously understand, question and transform environments shaped by artificial intelligence and synthetic media — to counter disinformation. Read the whole article here.
In the past few months, at least three of Joey Skaggs’ classic performance works have mysteriously resurfaced—-minus the credit, the context, and, of course, the artist himself. From Elon Musk promising to replace judges and juries with his Grok AI, to a TikTok “influencer” teaching New Yorkers how to walk politely, to a national law firm resurrecting The Fat Squad to sell legal services—Skaggs’ art seems to have been reborn through the copy machine of culture.
If plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, Joey must be the most loved man in America.
But underneath the irony lies a serious question: as artificial intelligence devours the world’s creative work—scraping, remixing, and regurgitating ideas at scale—what content ownership will artists be left with? Who gets to claim the joke when everyone’s telling it?
Skaggs has spent his life exposing how easily truth can be twisted, and how the media loves a good story—whether it’s real or not. Now, his work is living proof that in the age of AI and viral mimicry, even satire can’t escape being swallowed whole.
So, here’s to keeping art human, authorship honest, and mischief original.
IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
JOEY SKAGGS,
Plaintiff,
v. MORGAN & MORGAN,
Defendant.
COMPLAINT FOR MISAPPROPRIATION OF UNAUTHORIZED SATIRE AND CULTURAL DILUTION
New York, NY — Artist, satirist, and cultural saboteur Joey Skaggs today filed a lawsuit in the Court of Public Opinion against America’s largest personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan for shamelessly swiping his legendary Fat Squad media hoax and stuffing it into their latest commercial.
For the record, The Fat Squad (est. 1986) was a groundbreaking internationally successful performance art hoax in which comandos were contracted to guard dieters around the clock — tackling them away from Twinkies, escorting them past buffets, and yelling “Drop that donut!” before it hit their lips. It is memorialized in both Andrea Marini’s “Art of the Prank” documentary and Joey Skaggs’ Oral History film series.
Joey Skaggs: The Fat Squad tease:
Morgan & Morgan’s new ad? Blatantly similar — but with all the calories of satire burned off.
THE FACTS
Plaintiff conceived, developed, and performed The Fat Squad decades before TikTok, meme culture, or commercial law firms decided satire was good for business.
On or about August 1, 2025, Defendant released a commercial campaign which bears obvious similarity to Plaintiff’s original work.
Said commercial paraded themes, images, and absurdities long perfected by Plaintiff, without acknowledgment, credit, or the faintest wink of irony.
Defendant thereby committed cultural plagiarism in the first degree, profiting from the very social critique Plaintiff pioneered.
THE CHARGES
Count I:Cultural Grand Theft Satire
Defendant unlawfully adopted Plaintiff’s absurdist concept without permission, thereby reducing art to advertising.
Count II:Unwarranted Enrichment by Unjust Laughter
Defendant profited from a concept that wasn’t theirs, without even a courtesy “tip of the wig.”
Count III:Infliction of Mental Distress
Defendant forced Mr. Skaggs to endure the trauma of watching his biting social critique watered down into a punchline for legal fees. Symptoms include ironic groaning, eye-rolling, and muttering “I did it first” into the void.
DAMAGES DEMANDED
Plaintiff demands compensation in the form of:
A public confession from Morgan & Morgan, aired during the Super Bowl halftime, admitting Joey Skaggs is funnier than their entire marketing department.
Mandatory enrollment of at least one Morgan & Morgan attorney into the actual Fat Squad program, including midnight refrigerator raids and fast-food stakeouts.
Punitive damages: Morgan & Morgan agrees to provide lifetime pro bono representation for Joey Skaggs—and any other artists who suffer theft of creative concepts, whether analog or AI, in perpetuity.
PLAINTIFF’S STATEMENT
“When I created The Fat Squad, it was to satirize America’s obsession with weight control, and consumer excess. To see a law firm steal it and call it comedy? That’s not just plagiarism. That’s malpractice. Artistic malpractice.” —Joey Skaggs, Satirist-Still-At-Large
CONCLUSION
The Fat Squad doesn’t forgive. The Fat Squad doesn’t forget. And if Morgan & Morgan thinks they can out-satire Joey Skaggs… well, let’s just say the Court of Public Opinion is always in session, and the jury is already laughing.
