AI-generated avatars are flooding social media feeds, promoting products and building loyal audiences, often without disclosing that they are not real people. Charlie Warzel reports for The Atlantic, drawing on an interview with New York Times technology reporter Tiffany Hsu, who has investigated the rise of synthetic influencers selling supplements and other consumer products. One …
The open web faces an existential threat from Big Tech and artificial intelligence companies. Anil Dash warns on his personal website that 2026 could be the year the open internet as we know it ceases to exist. The open web allows anyone to create and publish content using publicly documented standards, share it freely worldwide, …
Two recent studies paint a concerning picture of how artificial intelligence tools are changing the way people think, reason, and express themselves. Taken together, the research suggests that widespread AI use is not only reducing users’ critical engagement with information, but may also be narrowing the diversity of human thought on a broader scale. Researchers …
Microsoft markets its Copilot AI assistant as a productivity tool for consumers and businesses alike. However, the product’s terms of use tell a different story. According to these terms, which were last updated in October 2025, “Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely …
Google’s AI Overviews are accurate about 91 percent of the time. This sounds good at first, but Tripp Mickle and colleagues report for The New York Times that this still means the search engine delivers tens of millions of incorrect answers every hour. The New York Times commissioned AI startup Oumi to test Google’s system …
A new study finds that artificial intelligence systems are excessively agreeable when users seek advice on personal and interpersonal matters. Myra Cheng reports for Stanford University that large language models (LLMs) consistently side with users, even when their behavior is harmful or illegal. The researchers tested 11 major LLMs, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek. …
Wikipedia has updated its guidelines to prohibit editors from using artificial intelligence to write or rewrite article content. The English-language version of the site introduced the change after months of editors struggling with a rise in AI-generated articles. The new policy stems from a finding that text produced by large language models (LLMs) frequently breaks …
The AI image marketplace Tess.Design paid artists a 50% royalty each time their style was used to generate an image. Julia Enthoven writes how the platform ran for 20 months before closing in January 2026. Tess.Design allowed artists to submit their work to fine-tune an AI model. That model was then listed on a public …
About 10,000 authors have published a book with no content to protest against AI companies using their work without permission. Dan Milmo reports for The Guardian that contributors include Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman. The only content in “Don’t Steal This Book” is a list of the contributors’ names. Copies are …
Grammarly, a subscription-based writing assistant owned by the company Superhuman, has disabled an AI feature called “expert review” after widespread criticism from writers, academics, and journalists whose names and likenesses were used without their consent. The feature, which launched in August, presented users with AI-generated writing suggestions attributed to real people, including living authors like …