Tung Tung Tung Sahur is one of the best-known Italian brainrot characters, and he was made with seven prompts in an AI image tool. There’s now a legal fight in the US over who, if anyone, owns him. Fiona explains what’s going on and why the outcome could shape who owns anything made with AI, including the characters your kids create.

Also this week, OpenAI’s boss Sam Altman says the world should accept some bad things happening with AI in exchange for its benefits. Holly asks whether parents should accept that. Fiona explains what tech companies can do to reduce the risks, and why she thinks the people carrying the risk should be the ones who get a say.

Plus a parent question. Character.AI has filed for bankruptcy and is being sold through the courts. What happens to everything your child typed into it, and what should you do now?

We’re off next week for half term. Back after Halloween.

Useful Links:

Sam Altman to Decoded: ‘The world should accept some bad things happening’ for the benefits of AI - https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/04/sam-altman-decoded-interview-ai-01106217

Who owns ‘brain rot’? Inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/06/brain-rot-tung-tung-tung-sahur-noxa-openai-video

The Rest Is Entertainment podcast episode on Italian Brainrot - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-entertainment/id1718287198?i=1000795973322

More information on Character.ai including instructions on how to delete data - https://raisinggenerationai.com/20261016-newsletter/

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The music and graphics for this podcast have been created using AI. Credit to kaazoom for the catchy tune!

Parents are using AI to remove the watermarks from school photos rather than paying for them. Fiona and Holly talk about whether that’s fair on the photographers, what actually happens to your child’s photo once it’s uploaded, and why you should never, ever put the class photo into AI. To prove school photos are worth paying for, we’ve also included one of Fiona in primary school that her brother insists makes her look like a grasshopper.

ChatGPT for Teens has been given the lowest possible rating by US charity Common Sense Media, who’ve called it an “unacceptable risk”. OpenAI says the testing doesn’t reflect how it works in practice. We also talk about the UK’s first AI teacher, who is a real human being teaching children about AI, and whether it matters if you’re rude to AI when you talk to it.

Plus this week’s parent question: are your phone and computer listening to you all the time?

Useful Links:

Claude banning accounts - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6j9k1l72wkgo

Claude Aug 2025 launched feature to stop abusive conversations and questions AI moral status - https://www.anthropic.com/research/end-subset-conversations

UK Gov tells staff to stop saying thank you to AI - https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/uk-govt-draft-tells-staff-053100919.html

Scotland's first AI teacher - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6qjk9n7gge7o

Report of teachers calling for more help with AI - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw8r68mpm6p3o

Parents using AI to remove watermarks from school photos - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5ye4p86d21o

Baader–Meinhof phenomenon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

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The music and graphics for this podcast have been created using AI. Credit to kaazoom for the catchy tune!

Both Meta and OpenAI have launched new AI products over the last couple of weeks and they've moved away from their butthole logos to cute little, fluffy creatures.

Meta’s character is called Jolly and is a little beige plushie. And OpenAI has Dots, a series of colourful fluffy animated characters. Fiona and Holly discuss if we think they might make us trust the AI more and whether that's the whole point of what the companies are trying to do.

Plus Fiona tries out ChatGPT for Teens, we've found a new AI offering from Amazon that we both actually think has potential to be fun and a reasonable use of AI - the first time that has happened. And of course we talk about OpenAI's latest blunder and the sharing of images from private ChatGPT conversations.

Useful Links:

Interactive Stories from Audible: Dracula - https://www.audible.com/about/newsroom/the-next-chapter-in-listening-new-ways-to-interact-with-stories-on-audible

ChatGPT for Teens - https://chatgpt.com/parent-resources

Spencer Kelly’s Instagram post about the real-time, interactive, AI generated sitcom - https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dd3HqCAjbg6/?stkn=MTV0MzhveW93NG14YQ==

OpenAI leaks images from private ChatGPT chats - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/25/openai-agents-leaked-53-images-chatgpt

ChatGPT Dots - https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots

Meta Muse - https://ai.meta.com/muse

Bouba-Kiki effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

AI logos look like buttholes blog post - https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-buttholes

Training AI by proving you’re human (reCAPTCHA) - https://thehustle.co/the-genius-whos-tricking-the-world-into-doing-his-work-recaptcha

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The music and graphics for this podcast have been created using AI. Credit to kaazoom for the catchy tune!