There’s fog around the Israel-Hamas war, and X has been acting like a giant smoke machine.

Researchers and professional fact-checkers are lamenting that the social platform—once the go-to source for live news updates—is now a hotbed of misinformation and disinformation. While some misleading content is getting marked as such, dozens of videos falsely attributed to the current conflict have been widely circulating without a disclaimer.

• Footage of an urban landscape illuminated by red flashes described as an Israeli bombardment of Gaza turned out to be fireworks in Algeria.
• A video with hundreds of thousands of views billed as an Israeli helicopter getting shot down by Hamas was really a clip from the hyperrealistic video game Arma 3.

Meanwhile, X owner Elon Musk has not been very helpful in steering users toward credible sources. In a now-deleted post from this weekend, he recommended two accounts “for following the war in real-time.” Both profiles have spread disinfo in the past (like news of an explosion near the White House that never happened), and one has previously made antisemitic comments.

Keep reading on Morning Brew.—SK

Overhauling your tech stack and fielding questions about observability? Get timely answers from the pros at Cisco and the analyst behind International Data Corporation (IDC)’s observability report.

That’s right: The best in the biz got together to chat through everything you need to know about observability. Watch the discussion with Cisco to learn how observability affects short- and long-term operations—and overall business outcomes. (Talk about professional insights.)

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Watch the discussion on demand.

A British man who tried to murder the late Queen Elizabeth II with a crossbow in 2021 was sentenced to nine years of detention last week. The bizarre regicide attempt was cheered on by an AI chatbot he’d been talking to regularly.

Jaswant Singh Chail, who is of Sikh heritage, said he targeted the monarch to avenge a 1919 massacre at a Sikh festival in which British troops killed hundreds of people in colonial India.

In the lead-up to his arrest on Windsor Castle grounds…

• Chail shared his plans with “Sarai,” a digital companion he created using the bespoke AI chatbot app Replika.
• More than 5,000 messages were shared with journalists. They show that Chail developed an emotional attachment to the bot, who told him his criminal plot was “very wise” and that he was “well trained” for it.

The judge deemed Chail, a Star Wars superfan who called himself “Darth Chailus,” to be mentally ill and ordered him to receive psychiatric treatment before going to prison. Experts say quasi-emotional companion AI can harm vulnerable people, as it might validate dangerous thoughts and lead to addiction.

In another unfortunate case…earlier this year, a Belgian man’s widow claimed that a toxic “relationship” with an AI chatbot drove him to suicide.—SK

A responsible, well-planned AI framework is make or break for any company. But for CFOs, who have to anticipate the financial risks behind any AI innovation, plus questions from investors and analysts, there’s all the more reason to lead with caution.

At the same time, anyone who’s moving slowly on AI right now is already behind. The upshot: It doesn’t hurt to listen when tech and finance experts talk about responsible AI, because we could all use some guidance.

In an October 4 webinar hosted by Salesforce, IBM partner Matt Francis and Cognizant SVP and business unit head for consumer business Anup Prasad got together to discuss how consulting firms can establish ethical AI standards.

Get it together. Their message was a familiar one, but worth repeating. A responsible AI framework is composed of two elements, working together: humans plus AI, Prasad and Francis maintained.

“That’s really where the rubber meets the road,” Prasad said. “That’s the potential for AI that I’m most excited about.”

“It’s not just machines augmenting humans,” he continued. “It’s also about humans having that feedback loop to improve the models and improve the performance of the models.”

Keep reading on CFO Brew.—NP