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An artificial intelligence watchdog is accusing OpenAI of training its default ChatGPT model on copyrighted book content without permission. In a new paper published this week, the AI Disclosures Project alleges that OpenAI likely trained its GPT-4o model using non-public material from O’Reilly Media. The researchers used a legally obtained dataset of 34 copyrighted O’Reilly books and found that GPT-4o showed “strong recognition” of the company’s paywalled content. By contrast, GPT-3.5 Turbo appeared more familiar with publicly accessible O’Reilly book samples. “These results highlight the urgent need for increased corporate transparency regarding pre-training dat…

Three decades before TikTok’s obsession with tinned fish brought us sea-cuterie boards, tinned fish cookbooks, and trendy brands like Fishwife and Scout, there was Bela Brand Seafood. This OG tinned fish purveyor hit grocery store shelves back in 1997 with aesthetic, design-centric packaging—and now, it’s refreshing its brand identity to remind modern audiences that it took a bet on tinned fish before it was cool. Bela (formerly known as Bela Brand Seafood) was founded by native New Englander Joshua Scherz and his mom, Florence. The brand has remained family-owned since its inception, quietly growing without any funding from outside investors. But during the pandemic, Sc…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. AI is no longer a side project. It now sits at the heart of how companies grow, compete, and make decisions. Yet many leaders still struggle to separate hype from value and wonder how to invest wisely without wasting time or resources. A key challenge lies at the top: a lack of AI literacy among executive teams. Research covering nearly 7,000 executives across 645 firms shows a clear patter…

Topping this year’s list of MIC honorees in the Asia-Pacific region is a company so innovative that when it emerged from stealth, Fast Company judges and editors were late in the judging process, so we decided to add an unprecedented 11th spot to this category. Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek launched a pair of state-of-the-art, open-source AI models that require far less computing power and capital than those of Western companies, sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and the Wall Street firms that fund them. Several more Chinese tech companies round out the top slots: Baidu, which runs China’s top search engine, started offering driverless taxi servi…

As an introvert, I dread large conferences. I get invited to a number throughout the year, and I usually scramble to find excuses for why I can’t attend. Since I have spent much of my career posing as an extrovert, some people are surprised to discover that I really don’t enjoy networking at large gatherings. I worry about feeling overwhelmed by the crowds, not remembering people’s names, having to sit alone for meals, drawing a blank and not being able to engage in small talk, and, of course, worried I won’t know anyone there. Just thinking through all of this is absolutely exhausting. Last year, I was invited to speak and attend Transform, a conference focused on drivi…

So you flew too close to the sun—downloading app after app, recording hi-res video, binging podcasts—and now you’re faced with the dreaded “Storage Almost Full” pop-up on your iPhone. It’s OK: we can handle this together. Here are three extremely expeditious tricks you can use to clear out the clutter and get back to a carefree life of digital hoarding. Detach from big message attachments Every hilarious GIF. Every video of someone’s kid skiing. Every duck-faced selfie. They’re all taking up space, and you’ll almost never need to revisit them. Free up a metric pant-load of storage in mere moments by heading to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > …

The waters of Cape Cod Bay are coming for the big brown house perched on the edge of a sandy bluff high above the beach. It’s just a matter of when. Erosion has marched right up to the concrete footings of the multimillion-dollar home where it overlooks the bay. Massive sliding doors that used to open onto a wide deck, complete with hot tub, are now barricaded by thin wooden slats that prevent anyone from stepping through and falling 25 feet to the beach below. The owner knew it. He removed the deck and other parts of the house, including a small tower that held the primary bedroom, before stopping work and falling into a standoff with the town. He’s since sold th…

When you think about ChatGPT, what do you see? A box. A prompt. A lot of text. OpenAI’s flagship product is defined by typography—it’s the way users communicate their queries, and the way the model responds in kind. Typography is “the first thing people interact with when meeting AI for the first time,” says OpenAI design director Shannon Jager. [Image: OpenAI]Which is why for its first rebrand ever, OpenAI put typography squarely at the center of its new look. OpenAI’s refreshed brand includes a tweaked “blossom” logo with lines that are thicker and all the same width, a new “point” mark, and a fresh wordmark set in its new typeface OpenAI Sans. [Image: OpenAI]Designed …

The humanoid robotics revolution is just around the corner. Test models are already working in factories alongside human beings across the world, while AI companies develop new foundation models designed to help robots navigate their environments as easily as humans do. But computer “brains” are useless without the skeletons that give humanoid robots their form—and the many components that make up those skeletons need to come from somewhere. Alongside bearings, which reduce friction, motors, and gears, the average humanoid robot relies on dozens of screws—key components that convert the rotational motion produced by a motor into linear motion. Traditionally, ball screws…

Here in Atlanta, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has been part of my daily life for years. Parks and trails surrounding the center connect my neighborhood to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park downtown and everything in between. At the end of December 2024, thousands of people walked to the library to pay their respects to the former president as he lay in repose. The cold, snow and darkness of the evening were a stark contrast to the warmth of the volunteers who welcomed us in. Our visit spiraled through galleries exhibiting records of Carter’s life, achievements and lifelong work promoting democracy around the world. U.S. presid…

The intense red color of classic lipstick traditionally comes from an unlikely source: crushed bugs that live on cactus plants in South America. It takes tens of thousands of the ground-up insects to make just a pound of the vivid red dye. The red coloring, called carmine, also shows up in food—from red velvet cupcakes to sausages, gummy candies, and some versions of strawberry yogurt. In the cosmetics industry, major brands started moving away from carmine in the 2010s because of ethical concerns. A growing number of consumers wanted vegan makeup. (Crushing bugs also creates an allergen because of other bug parts that end up in the dye.) But because synthetic dyes don’t…

Innovation doesn’t happen in environments bogged down by rigid rules, excessive oversight, or unnecessary bureaucracy. The most transformative ideas actually emerge when employees have the freedom to experiment, take risks, and truly own their work. As a former executive at Oracle and the current CEO of the software company Incorta, I’ve seen firsthand that traditional leadership structures often do more to stifle innovation than foster it. Instead of relying on rigid processes, leaders should focus on creating an environment where employees feel empowered to challenge the status quo. Here are four ways to cultivate that kind of workplace. 1. Hire for Capabil…

If real Easter eggs aren’t your thing this weekend, you may find hunting for digital ones more enjoyable. And there are some cool ones to find at your fingertips, provided you have an iPhone or Mac. Apple has packed the iOS and macOS operating systems with several fun little references, many harking back to the legacy of the company or other companies in the tech industry. Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death This one’s been around for a while, and it’s a fan favorite. The Finder on your Mac can show other computers connected to the same network. These computers are represented by icons. If the connected computers are other Macs, you’ll see icons that accurate…

Oil and gas companies would be liable for damages caused by climate change -related disasters in California under legislation introduced Monday by two Democratic lawmakers. The proposal claims that the oil industry intentionally deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels on climate change that now have intensified storms and wildfires and caused billions of dollars in damage in California. Such disasters have also driven the state insurance market to a crisis where companies are raising rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters, supporters of the bill said. Under state law, utility…

In just a couple of years, generative AI (GenAI) has made a big impact on the way people, companies, and entire industries think about work. It’s helping doctors and nurses, who spend more than a third of their work week on paperwork, free up more time to focus on patients. Scientists are using GenAI ideation to achieve research breakthroughs. In the field of law, where time is so valuable it’s often measured in six-minute increments, GenAI’s ability to understand and analyze documents faster than any person can is quickly becoming indispensable. Many legal teams doing text-heavy work are using innovative GenAI tools to speed their race against the ever-present clock.…

“Competency checking” is a practice that imposes extra scrutiny on Black professionals and people of color, challenging their qualifications, intellect, and ability to advance. There are three primary ways competency checking is deployed in the modern workplace. The first is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. This can manifest in low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. (More simply: If someone assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that all Black people are intellectually inferior, they may question the person and their qualifications more closely during an interview and, once hired, pay much more …

When a couple decided to take their relationship further on the most recent season of “Love Is Blind,” the moment was soundtracked with a familiar song: Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather.” It wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan musical surprise. The season was stacked with familiar needle drops — Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” Justin Bieber’s “Holy,” Ariana Grande’s “Into You,” Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me” — a gesture away from the little-known, sometimes generic pop songs that used to meet the show’s most emotional moments. Show creator and Kinetic Content CEO Chris Coelen attributed the pivot to the show’s anniversary. “We decided, in this Season 8, to coinci…

Nike is making a major play for female consumers and the athleisure market with its Skims partnership for a new women’s brand called NikeSkims. Set to debut this spring, the line will include apparel, footwear, and accessories. The two companies are marketing it as a blend of what each brand is best known for—Nike for its innovation, sports science, and athlete insights, and Skims for its style and body-inclusive design. “Over the past five years, Skims has redefined the intimates and casual apparel landscape, championing inclusivity and confidence,” Skims CEO and cofounder Jens Grede said in a statement. “Now, by partnering with Nike, the undisputed leader in ath…

This morning, news broke that the fast-credit fintech company Klarna has deposed its competitor Affirm as Walmart’s exclusive provider of “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) loans. Affirm stock (AFRM) dove over 10% Monday morning following the news, before regaining some of those losses. Shares are currently down around 5% as of this writing. According to a press release published this morning, Klarna will be partnering with Walmart’s majority-owned fintech startup, OnePay, “to exclusively offer installment loans for purchases at Walmart in the United States.” The partnership will be available both online and in stores, and will roll out at Walmart checkout this year. Kla…

Middle managers have had a hard go of it over the past five years. There was the upheaval of the pandemic, followed by ongoing changes in the workplace as companies adjusted to remote work and then, in many cases, eventually brought employees back into the office. Amid all these fluctuations, managers have been tasked with mitigating low morale, parrying employee discontent, and juggling their mounting responsibilities, especially as recurring layoffs thin their ranks. It doesn’t seem like the challenges middle managers are facing will disappear anytime soon, which could lead to high rates of turnover in the very near future. And it’s also not clear whether a new gene…

One more reminder about our upcoming online event: On Thursday, March 27, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host “The AI Tools We Love Right Now—and What’s Next,” exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. We’ll discuss the AI-assisted productivity tools that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where we’d like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you aren’t yet a subscriber, here’s where you can become one. Hope to see you there! It’s the World’s Most Innovative Companies week at Fast Company. Our annual ranking of organizations across 58 industries is live on our site, and bursting with br…

The Army helicopter and regional American Airlines jet that collided over Washington are both workhorse aircraft that operate around the world on a daily basis. There were 60 passengers and four crew members on the jet, a Bombardier CRJ700, officials said. Three service members were on a training flight on the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. None are believed to have survived the Wednesday night collision, which caused both aircraft to plunge into the frigid Potomac River. What to know about the aircraft: Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk There are about 5,000 Black Hawks in use around the world, according to the aviation site FlightGlobal.com. The twin-engine, four-b…

Hotel art has changed. In the last few years, generic photography and reproductions of works by Old Masters have given way to remarkable pieces of artwork befitting top-notch museums and the world’s best private galleries. Though it may feel like a 180-degree shift from the boring artwork that preceded these new and imaginative displays, hotels becoming cultural destinations unto themselves, by hanging up artwork ideal for the world’s top museums and private galleries, makes sense. “The standard used to be that you’d put a picture in a frame and call it a day—but hotels don’t cut it anymore with this,” says Spencer Bailey, editor-in-chief of a multivolume book series …

Tj Power is the lead neuroscientist at the DOSE Lab and cofounder of Neurify, a trailblazing organization in the mental health sector. He is also a renowned international speaker, having captivated audiences worldwide and worked with major corporations and health services. What’s the big idea? Human brain chemistry is at odds with modern lifestyles. The activities and habits that naturally boost dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins have been largely replaced by routines that leave us feeling depleted. Uplift mood, tune focus, boost energy, and deepen relationships by fostering optimum conditions for your body’s favorite neurotransmitters. Below, Tj shares five …