Tag: Mercury News Weird

By Anna Griffin, New York Times

It’s the stuff of bad romance novels, not a modern political ad. But the new digital spot from the California Republican gubernatorial candidate, Steve Hilton, is at least drawing attention — and condemnation, much of it from fellow Republicans.

Plus a whole lot of “huhs?”

RELATED: Xavier Becerra, Steve Hilton debate on housing, data centers and immigration policy

The ad, titled “Just Try It, California,” shows two Generation Z women, both with facial piercings, neon-hued highlights and heavy glam makeup, sitting on a bed in a darkened room. There’s a Pride flag behind them and soft mood music playing in the background.

The woman on the right, decked out in a cropped “Resist” T-shirt, says she can’t believe what she’s about to do. The young woman on the left strokes her hair and tells her not to be nervous.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” the first young woman says. “What if my dad finds out?”

The other woman tells her to close her eyes, takes her hand and says, “I’ll do all the work.”

Cut to their laps, where it turns out they’re casting a vote for Hilton.

A sexually suggestive double-entendre involving the proper way to close a mail-in ballot ends the ad.

The video went online last week, and the negative response — along with the befuddlement — was immediate. Much came from other California Republicans.

“This is a clear example of exactly why good people are walking away from the Republican Party,” the GOP candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, Sonja Shaw, wrote on the social platform X, calling the ad “creepy, weird, disturbing garbage.”

Michael Gates, the party’s candidate for attorney general, also denounced the ad on X, accusing Hilton of using “young women as political tools” and saying “California families deserve better.”

David Townsend, a longtime political consultant in California who has often worked for moderate Democrats, said the video was “too clever by half.”

“Are you equating voting for Hilton with trying to have a lesbian relationship? Are you equating it with grooming?” he said. “It manages to be both offensive and confusing.”

As with most political ads, the attention is the point.

Polls have consistently shown Hilton, a former Fox News host and adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, trailing Xavier Becerra, a former California attorney general and Cabinet secretary under President Joe Biden.

RELATED: Bay Area voter guide: What to know about the 2026 election

“The only question is whether he loses by 20 or 25 points, so there’s a bit of a ‘what the hell, why not’ in it,” said Dan Newman, a longtime Democratic political consultant who has worked closely with California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Townsend said Hilton is in a tough spot, even without an ad destined for the pantheon of political advertising oddities.

The ad, consultants from both parties predicted, will take its place alongside Carly Fiorina’s “Demon Sheep” spot from the 2010 California U.S. Senate race, which culminated with a man in a sheep costume with glowing red eyes crawling across a field. The Delaware U.S. Senate ad from the same year that began with Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell declaring “I’m not a witch” also came to mind.

Hilton needed President Donald Trump’s endorsement to make it through the crowded primary for governor, in which the top two finishers, regardless of party, advanced to the general election. But in the general election, he faces the reality that “Cruella de Vil is more popular than Trump in California,” Townsend said.

“Becerra was 25 points up before the commercial,” he predicted, “and he’ll be 25 points up after the commercial.”

Jon Fleischman, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the California Republican Party, said the ad was unlikely to win Hilton any votes.

“I didn’t like the ad, content-wise. I thought it was kind of creepy,” Fleischman said. “But it got me talking about the ad to a bunch of people, which means I am talking about Steve Hilton.”

Becerra posted his own response to the ad on X on Sunday. He shared a link to an old New York Times article where he touted “Medicare for All” and wrote, “Steve, just try it!”

“Just Try It” has the glossy, slightly uncanny appearance of video generated by artificial intelligence, although it’s not clear if actual human actors were used and the spot does not contain an AI disclaimer, which Hilton’s campaign has used on some other spots. On X, Hilton said the video is not AI and “was produced by a great and talented director.”

Hilton has used computer-generated images for other campaign material, including a video leading his campaign website Sunday that shows him fighting a Transformers-like “political machine” controlled by sneering AI versions of Newsom and Kamala Harris.

Hilton said on social media on Saturday that he knew that the suggestive ad had offended some people. In a video posted online, he asked “for some grace.” The idea that he’s upset anyone “grieves me,” he said.

Still, he said, most of the reaction he’s heard has been positive: “People have told me it’s genius.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

For about 24 hours, it was believed that a highly venomous snake might be slithering about a Santa Ana neighborhood after police announced a sighting on Monday, Sept. 28. But on Tuesday, Sept. 29, the police revealed the sighting was a hoax concocted with an AI-generated image of a snake in a tree.

Santa Ana police had doubts about the image even as officers and reptile experts canvassed the neighborhood Monday looking for the reported Gaboon viper, officials said.

The department attempted to verify whether the image was generated by artificial intelligence, while reptile experts also pointed out apparent problems with the image, police spokesperson Natalie Garcia said. Among them were the snake’s positioning in the tree and what appeared to be an ear on the animal, even though snakes do not have external ears.

But police still could not definitively establish Monday that the report was false, according to Garcia.

With residents continuing to express concern Tuesday including many suspecting the photo was fake, detectives went to the workplace of the man who reported the snake to ask him for additional information, Garcia said. During that interview, the man admitted he had fabricated the report and image.

Garcia declined to detail the explanation the man gave detectives for the hoax. She said he attempted to justify what he had done and appeared remorseful, but investigators were no longer certain which of his statements they could trust.

The man’s initial account included details that appeared to lend credibility to the sighting, she said. He told police that his dogs’ barking prompted him to go outside and investigate, and his son claimed to have seen the snake as well, Garcia said. Neighbors also told police the man came to their homes after the purported sighting and appeared pale as he described what had happened.

Police initially did not plan to seek charges, Garcia said. After the man admitted the report had been fabricated, however, detectives decided to seek a charge of making a false report of an emergency.

On Wednesday, Garcia declined to say what tool the department used to try and verify if the snake image was real or generated by AI. Prior to confirming the image was a hoax, Santa Ana police said they had run the image through AI generators and had not been able to confirm that it was produced by AI.

OpenAI’s photo verification tool did show that the photo was either generated or enhanced by AI when submitted for verification by this publication.

So how reliable are generative AI verification tools?

The tools currently available are not entirely accurate, said Dr. Karen North, professor of digital social media at USC’s Annenberg School.

In the past few years, some major AI players, including Google and OpenAI, have released photo verification tools based on SynthID watermarks. SynthID embeds “digital watermarks” into content produced by generative AI. These watermarks are designed to be imperceptible to humans but detectable by SynthID technology, according to Google.

But North said these watermarks are not always reliable and are not detecting AI, but rather the likelihood of AI, using algorithmic mechanisms.

“The way that AI works is that it generates sort of the most obvious, the most mundane, the most likely content,” North said. “And the AI detectors do that in reverse. They look to see whether or not what was created, whether it’s a picture or words, was created in a way that sort of looks like a buildout of the most likely version.”

Verification tools can produce both false negatives and false positives when flagging AI content. North herself has tested AI detection in essays and found that some content is detected at 100% AI, even when written fully by a human. These inaccurate readings can happen when AI detects an algorithmic pattern that is similar to that of AI in text or photos, even if AI was not used.

But OpenAI claimed that false positives in their AI photo detection software are rare, though the company acknowledged that there are limitations to its SynthID watermark. Stripping metadata or degrading the watermark could lead to a false negative read in an AI verification tool, and OpenAI claimed that its verification tool only works with content created with OpenAI products.

North described an AI detector as a tool that “will give us a pretty good heads up that something looks like the kind of content that was generated by AI.”

But people should also rely on the uncanny valley theory, she says — the idea that people will get an eerie feeling when something they see simply feels off. Often, there are small elements in the background or context of AI-generated photos that feel unnatural or make viewers uncomfortable.

“On some level, we should trust that eerie feeling that there’s something wrong, that there’s something that doesn’t look quite right,” North said. “That’s also a heads up that you should take a breath before trusting what you’re seeing.”

In the case of the snake in Santa Ana, OpenAI’s photo verification tool did show that the photo was either generated or enhanced by AI when submitted for verification by this publication.

 

A snake that a Santa Ana resident reported was a highly venomous viper not native to North America apparently was actually a prank generated by AI, police said Tuesday.

In an Instagram post on the Santa Ana Police Department’s account, officials said after a second visit by detectives with the resident, he admitted the original report was false.

“During the follow-up investigation, he admitted the photo was AI-generated and that the report was false,” officials said in the Instagram post.

The original alert posted by the department warned of a sighting of a highly venomous Gaboon viper seen in a neighborhood yard. Santa Ana PD’s alert included both a real image of the snake and a stock image, which stirred debate that the real image may have been generated by artificial intelligence. Users online were quick to argue the department was potentially being pranked. But officials said police ran it through AI generators and had not determined that it was AI.

When this publication received the original image of the snake provided to police, OpenAI’s photo verification tool showed the photo was either generated or enhanced by AI.

“AI-generated images can look very real, and when false information is shared as fact, it can quickly create unnecessary fear, confusion, and concern in our community,” Santa Ana officials said in their Instagram post. “We appreciate the community’s patience while our officers and reptile experts worked to investigate the report, search the area, and determine what actually happened.”

The homeowner who reported seeing the snake was not facing a fine or charges as of Tuesday afternoon, Santa Ana police spokeswoman Officer Natalie Garcia said.

 

An English tourist has gone viral for complaining about the concessions… at a Holocaust concentration camp.

TikTok user Lyn Pearman, 70, of Kent, U.K., posted a TikTok video in which she angrily complains about paying 9 British pounds, or nearly $12, for two small beverages outside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

“Just a little bottle,” Pearman says holding up an empty bottle. “Very expensive.”

She also groused that her strawberry smoothie was watered down and her daughter’s lemonade smelled like a cleaning agent. The video was seen at least 4 million times before the TikTok account was made private.

The retired woman told Kent Online that prices are simply too high around the death camp where more than a million people lost their lives to Nazi genocide.

“If you pay for food or drinks anywhere you expect what you pay for,” Pearman explained. “Just because its a concentration camp doesn’t make any difference.”

She also recommended that tourists bring their own beverages when visiting the camp.

Many social media users suggested Pearman may have missed the point of the somber experience of visiting a living memorial where one of history’s greatest atrocities occurred.

The Auschwitz Museum has on occasion had to remind visitors where they are and what happened on that hallowed ground.

in 2019, visitors were asked not to treat the tracks leading into the concentration camp as balance beams while taking selfies. Other complained in 2023 that an ice cream stand set up outside the camp’s perimeter sent the wrong message.

A Minnesota judge has tossed the civil suit former football player Matt Kalil filed against his ex-wife Haley Kalil after she said his penis was painfully large.

Haley said during an interview last year that her seven-year marriage to the former Minnesota Viking ended in 2022 partly because he was so well-endowed that sex between the pair was unbearably painful. She alleged that his sex organ was the size of “two (stacked) Coke cans, maybe even a third.”

The 37-year-old offensive tackle, who has remarried and has a child, sued the model and influencer, claiming her remarks were an invasion of privacy, even though she insists she didn’t identify him by name. Matt said Haley gained financially at his expense.

A U.S. district court judge dismissed Matt Kalil’s suit Thursday, finding that his ex’s remarks were tied to subjects of public interest, including the public figures’ divorce, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Matt had argued that he tried staying out of the public eye after retiring from football in 2019. He said in his $75,000 lawsuit that Haley’s comments made that difficult.

Haley told TMZ she’s glad to put the case behind her.

“I never wanted to be in a courtroom discussing matters of my own life,” she said. “I think this ruling is important and I hope it encourages women everywhere to speak openly about what they’ve been through. Your story belongs to you and you shouldn’t fear sharing it.”

Matt retired a Pro Bowl blocker, who also suited up for the Houston Texans and Carolina Panthers after being a college football star with the University of Southern California Trojans.

A Minnesota woman accused of stealing batteries is getting a lot of attention because of her resemblance to pop star Jennifer Lopez.

Police in Wright County said Cyrena Anne Quast was busted Aug. 30 on a theft charge in the small, 14,500-person town of Monticello. But her mugshot, in which she sports large hoop earrings, has been picked up by numerous gossip sites because many people believe the suspect looks a lot like the American Music Award-winning singer and actor from the Bronx

The 35-year-old suspect was taken into custody after she allegedly stole a pair of power tool batteries from a store, according to TMZ. The batteries are valued at less than $600. A worker reportedly told cops Quast is also suspected of stealing from the shop days before her arrest.

The Wright County Sheriff’s Office in central Minnesota hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Arrest records from neighboring Stearns County, Minn., indicate Quast’s previous brush with the law included a 2025 theft charge.

Lopez was arrested in 1999 when New York City police found a gun in a car she was riding in with Sean “Diddy” Combs. The pair, who were dating at the time, had just left a Midtown club where gunshots were fired. She was released without charges.

Lopez’s latest film, “Office Romance,” was released in June and is streaming on Netflix. People magazine voted J.Lo its “World’s Most Beautiful” person in 2011.

“I don’t want anybody thinking it’s easy,” she said about looking good on television. “It does take time and it’s hard work.”

Forbes lists her net worth at $150 million.

Combs is serving a 50-month sentence on unrelated charges in New Jersey’s low-security FCI Fort Dix. He’s been incarcerated since September 2024 when he was arrested by federal agents on racketeering and sex trafficking charges.

Dante Rowley had all the elements of a viral video.

Surveillance cameras captured a man breaking into his Sherman Heights home, then making himself right at home. Rowley’s golden retriever sweetly wagged his tail, trying repeatedly to get the burglar to throw a toy. A police drone chased the man inside the home. Officers came in the front door with guns drawn.

The drama had unfolded a few weeks earlier, but Rowley’s friends encouraged him to post the video online.

By the time Rowley and his fiancée, Stephanie Calderon, got home from a short walk on Monday afternoon, the Instagram reel showed 10,000 likes. By the next day, millions had viewed it. The news show “Inside Edition” showed up at the house to film a spot, and soon the video appeared on local and national news, as well as outside the U.S.

“I tried to make it as funny as possible,” said Rowley, who is head of business and product development at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla. “I got a good response.”

The incident began Sept. 5 when Rowley and Calderon were boarding a flight home from Chicago, and Calderon got an alert on her Ring app indicating someone was in their backyard. They looked at the video and saw that a man had pulled up a ladder next to the house.

After checking with his brother to make sure he hadn’t hired someone to work at the home while they were out of town, the couple realized someone was breaking in.

Calderon called 911 from her cellphone but reached Chicago authorities, so they had relatives in San Diego contact San Diego police about the intruder. From the plane, Rowley texted with a police officer and gave them live access to footage from his six Ring cameras. His brother, who lives down the street, gave police the code for the door.

Videos showed the intruder taking off his shirt and shoes, helping himself to food in the refrigerator and trying to take a nap on a dog blanket left on the floor by the front door.

The couple’s other two dogs had run out a doggy door and into the yard after the man entered, but Nash, a 4-year-old golden retriever, kept trying to get the stranger to play.

On the plane, Rowley and Calderon were “freaking out” mainly over Nash’s safety.

“(The intruder) seemed like he was not interested in, like, stealing anything, but we were just worried about the dog, honestly,” he said.

For his part, Nash seemed unperturbed. At one point, he brought the man a toy, sat and wagged his tail as he waited in vain for him to throw it. Rowley included the clip with the caption: “Nash is the worst guard dog.”

“He actually brought multiple toys to him,” Rowley told the Union-Tribune. “He brought one, there was like a reindeer, and the guy didn’t pay attention to him and then when the guy went upstairs, he actually put the reindeer on the bed where the guy was lying, and then he went and got another toy.”

Rowley said Nash is usually “the friendliest dog ever” and very high energy, and will jump at people to get their attention. He seemed much better behaved on the security footage.

“So we think he was actually, like, scared. He was thinking, ‘Hey, are you a friend?’” Rowley said.

Police arrived within minutes, and officers flew a drone inside the open upstairs window. The man ran from it and eventually climbed out a bathroom window.

“The guy runs past the camera, basically high-stepping it,” Rowley said. “It looked very (much) like a comedy sketch, really. This drone is flying behind him.”

Rowley scored his video montage to “Bad Boys,” the song associated with the early reality TV show “Cops.”

A 57-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of first-degree burglary, battery on a peace officer, vandalism and possession of a controlled narcotic substance, according to San Diego police.

After the suspect was in custody, officers entered the home with guns drawn — Rowley thinks they were checking to make sure no one else was inside — and Nash ran to the door with a toy in his mouth, his tail wagging. After they opened the door, one of the officers patted Nash on his head as he bounded outside.

Rowley said officers put Nash on a leash and gave him to his brother, who was outside and assisting the officers.

The couple has lived in the home for more than 15 years and plans to make some security upgrades as a result of the intrusion, including replacing their front fence with a taller one and installing window locks.

Rowley said Ring camera company officials have reached out to him about possibly using the video.

CONCORD — Police here raided a 19-year-old man’s home and made a startling discovery — he’d apparently decapitated a squirrel and kept the head in a jar as a memento, according to authorities.

The April police response, which hasn’t been previously reported, came after a tipster told Concord police that he’d seen the 19-year-old man brandishing a pistol. Police investigated the teen, including by reviewing a social media page where he displayed the squirrel’s head and videotaped himself killing and swallowing a tadpole, authorities said.

When another user inquired how he’d captured the squirrel, the man said he’d simply found it in the roadway, authorities said. The 19-year-old Concord resident was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty, but thus far no charges have been filed, court records show.