Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dozens of X posts containing images of Mario — including an AI-generated picture of the plumber holding a beer and a cigarette, created by The Verge using xAI’s Grok — were removed after a company called Tracer apparently used AI to identify the images and serve takedown notices on behalf of Nintendo.

According to an email received by The Verge’s Tom Warren, a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice was issued to X by “customer success manager” Ben Arzen of Tracer, which offers AI-powered services to companies purported to identify trademark and copyright violations online. Here’s the image that got Tom’s post removed.

Image: X Potential copyright issues aside, why is there cigarette smoke coming out of… Continue reading…