The Verge / Adi Robertson
X’s new AI image generator is exactly as chaotic as you might expect →“Subscribers to X Premium, which grants access to Grok, have been posting everything from Barack Obama doing cocaine to Donald Trump with a pregnant woman who (vaguely) resembles Kamala Harris to Trump and Harris pointing guns…OpenAI, by contrast, will refuse prompts for real people, Nazi symbols, ‘harmful stereotypes or misinformation,’ and other potentially controversial subjects on top of predictable no-go zones like porn. Unlike Grok, it also adds an identifying watermark to images it does make.”
MIT Technology Review / Melissa Heikkilä
Here’s how people are actually using AI →“Two years on, most…productivity gains haven’t materialized. And we’ve seen something peculiar and slightly unexpected happen: People have started forming relationships with AI systems. We talk to them, say please and thank you, and have started to invite AIs into our lives as friends, lovers, mentors, therapists, and teachers.”
New York Magazine / Errol Louis
The New York Times’ endorsements decision is a huge mistake →“When the time of choosing arrives, it is a paper’s editorial watchdogs that let readers know who has played it straight, who’s been lying, who has potential, and who has conflicts of interest. Local endorsements are as much a form of public service as is warning readers about a coming snowstorm, a road closure, or the outbreak of a disease. They also serve as a carrot-and-stick incentive to candidates to tackle and discuss problems and solutions.”
Washington Post / Ben Brasch, Sofia Andrade and Anumita Kaur
Ex-police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper faces felony charge →“’It’s disappointing that the prosecutors clearly established we committed no crime, and the search and raid were wrong and shouldn’t have happened,’ [Eric Meyer, the Marion County Record’s publisher] told The Post. ‘To date, no one in local government in any of these positions has ever admitted: We have messed up. And it would be nice to for them to admit that.'”
Bloomberg / Leah Nylen and Anna Edgerton
The DOJ is considering trying to break up Google →“The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products.”
CapRadio / Sarit Laschinsky, Megan Myscofski, Vicki Gonzalez, and Claire Morgan