Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Anthropic announced Thursday that it has added web search capability to its Claude chatbot. It’s not a new feature to the AI world—but the company’s approach stands as one the most thoughtful to date. Much like its rival Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude works relevant information from the web into a conversational answer, and includes clickable source citations. Web search is available as a “feature preview” for U.S. users of the Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, with plans to expand to the free tier and to more countries What sets Anthropic’s web search feature apart is that it is automatic. Rather than requiring users to manually select a web search on a given query …

When we think of summer bags, we tend to think of big totes we can carry to the beach or a farmers market. But this year, bag designers are reimagining the summer staple as a piece of art you can carry around with you. They’re taking the seasonal materials we’re used to seeing—raffia, straw, wicker—and transforming them into beautiful, interesting shapes. They’re meant to do more than hold your phone; they’re designed to give you pleasure and start conversations. Here are our favorite sculptural bags of the season. Camilla Clutch Cult Gaia, $298 Cult Gaia first made a name for itself with a half-moon-shaped bamboo Ark bag, which went viral. Since then, even as the la…

In the world of interior design gaming, where perfection is often the goal, Redecor, a 3D design-simulation game, has taken an unexpected turn—celebrating flaws. The limited-time Real World Beauty collection, available free until April 15, highlights the authentic, lived-in charm of real homes. Instead of perfection, this update introduces design elements that reflect everyday life, such as coffee stains on wooden tables, sofas worn by pets, and walls decorated with kids’ doodles. The “flawed” collection features elements that players never explicitly asked for but quickly embraced. Natalie Gal, senior director of content for Redecor, explains the inspiration behind i…

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. There’s no question that artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. However, as the initial excitement over the technology fades, we find ourselves in a new phase of thoughtful exploration. There are many innovative AI startups that have captured the world’s attention; however, many organizations still struggle to develop a clear roadmap to take full advantage of this transformative t…

Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher whose groundbreaking 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is credited with bringing the term paradigm shift to pop culture. Kuhn described how scientific communities stick to established paradigms, even as evidence of their limitations mounted. Widely accepted paradigms for understanding and interpreting knowledge don’t crumble under the weight of mere data. Instead, they tend to persist until a crisis emerges—when anomalies become so disruptive that a shift to a new paradigm is unavoidable. Zoning was established in the early 20th century as a way to protect homeowners from unwanted industrial developments nearby. It was p…

I’ve always been somewhat ritualistic, shaped by my Midwestern upbringing in a modest immigrant family. I remember my parents calculating the mileage of our ‘82 Honda Civic in a notepad after every fill-up, the same car I eventually inherited in high school. Or saving every receipt on vacation to audit our daily spending down to the dollar. In every sense, they were amazing parents, and their rituals instilled in me a desire to be intentional about how I lived my life. As human beings in a world of constant distraction, time is the most precious resource we have. As a CEO, managing that resource is one of the most important skills you can master. And it’s no picnic. I…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While homebuyers and home sellers still see headlines about the housing market being a seller’s market and national home prices reaching all-time highs, a deeper look reveals that several regional housing markets have shifted, giving homebuyers some power. During the pandemic housing boom, from summer 2020 to spring 2022, the number of active homes for sale in most housing markets plummeted as homebuyer demand quickly absorbed almost everything that came up for sale. Fast-forward to the current housing market, and the places where active inventory has reb…

Age really is just a number when it comes to social media, as new research from Ampere Analysis shows that more than half of users ages 55 to 64 now watch influencer content every week. This number is up by 10 percentage points since 2020. In the U.K., the figure has also risen over the past five years, from 30% to 38%. TikTok and YouTube, in particular, are behind the growth—proof that Boomers’ social media presence is no longer limited to Facebook. “The biggest surprise in our latest data wasn’t how popular influencer videos have become, it is how rapidly this trend has extended to older audiences,” Annabel Yeomans, senior research manager at Ampere Analysi…

OpenAI appeared to be closer to pulling the trigger on advertising in ChatGPT in recent days, but a growing threat from Google has forced the company to pause those plans as it gears up for a quickly escalating chatbot fight. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sent a memo to staff on December 1 declaring a “code red” and ordering the company’s primary focus to be on improving ChatGPT. As part of that directive, Altman reportedly said the company would be pushing back work on other projects, including the introduction of advertising to its chatbot. The about-face came just days after Tibor Blaho, an engineer working on a Chrome extension that offers pre-written prompts for Chat…

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. I’ve always considered immersive multimedia experiences as a medium that chips away at solitude. But never did I expect we’d slide so far down the path of loneliness that it would be considered “a global public health concern,” “an epidemic of loneliness,” or a threat as harmful as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. It’s official: We’re living in an age of social isolation. And, yet, we’ve never been…

Have you ever wanted to sign up for an online service but you didn’t want to provide your real email address as part of the process? There’s a good chance your email address has your actual name in it. Or perhaps you want to avoid the risk of getting spammed. What if you’d rather just sign up privately and have a quick “no more emails please” button? That’s precisely where a reliable email forwarding service can save the day. It empowers you to create a special disguised email address and then use it when signing up with a new app, services, or website. You’ll still get any emails sent to the anonymous email address in your normal email inbox—but the service y…

Around the U.S., about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste is stored at more than 100 sites in 39 states, in a range of different structures and containers. For decades, the nation has been trying to send it all to one secure location. A 1987 federal law named Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, as a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste—but political and legal challenges led to construction delays. Work on the site had barely started before Congress ended the project’s funding altogether in 2011. The 94 nuclear reactors currently operating at 54 power plants continue to generate more radioactive waste. Public and commercial interest in nuclear power is rising because of …

Three months ago, I fired up ChatGPT and asked it to design a highly aggressive, short-term investment portfolio, selecting five stocks that were most likely to make me fabulously wealthy in six month’s time. Then, I threw good sense to the wind, transferred $500 of my actual money into a Robinhood account, and bought the stocks that ChatGPT had pitched. Since then, it’s been a wild ride. My portfolio has flown to new heights, giving me serious FOMO about the fact that I didn’t put all my money into ChatGPT’s picks. Then, it singed its wings, falling Icarus-style to lows that had me almost ready to bail on the whole thing and redirect the charred rema…

If you have any vegetable products in your kitchen, you’ll want to be aware of the latest recall posted on the website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recall involves numerous vegetable products and fears that they could be a breeding ground for Clostridium botulinum bacterium, which can produce the deadly botulinum toxin. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On March 3, the FDA posted the notice of a voluntary recall from AKT Trading Inc. of Torrance, California. The recall was initiated after the company discovered that some of the prepared vegetable products manufactured by Choshiya Honten Co., Ltd had the potential to harbor the Cl…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. AI pioneer Illia Polosukhin offers a blockchain-flavored open-source enablement platform Illia Polosukhin, who coinvented the Transformer architecture at Google in 2017, is now launching a new company called Near AI. The company will offer services through a blockchain-powered platform that functions as a secure marketplace for open-source AI models and agents. Polosukhin is a strong advocate for transparent, open-source AI models, which he believes are the best way to promote responsible adopti…

Six years ago, when Michael Buckley returned to True Religion‘s offices as CEO, the denim brand looked nothing like the one he had built a decade earlier. Buckley was the brand’s president between 2006 and 2010, when True Religion was a luxury brand that sold jeans priced between $300 and $500 at Neiman Marcus and Barneys. Buckley helped grow revenues to more than $300 million a year, but after he left, the brand hit hard times, as it struggled to adapt to e-commerce. It filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and again in 2020. In 2019, after serving as CEO of Differential Brands Group (which owns Hudson Jeans), Buckley came back to True Religion to clean up the mess. He’s …

The pending merger between Capital One and Discover Financial services received approval from several regulators Friday, bringing the $35 billion tie-up closer to completion. The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency signed off on the deal, which was first announced in February 2024. The Federal Reserve Board said it entered into a consent order with Discover and assessed a fine of $100 million for overcharging certain interchange fees from 2007 through 2023. Discover has since terminated these practices and is repaying those fees to affected customers, according to the Federal Reserve. The board’s action is being taken in coordination …

It really is mind-blowing how much incredible stuff we can do with images these days. ’Twasn’t long ago, after all, that advanced image adjustments required pricey desktop-computer software and super-specific knowledge. These days, we’ve got an endless array of awesome options at our fingertips for making practically any image look amazing—without investing a single dime or ounce of energy. And what’s especially cool is when you encounter a new image-enhancing power tool that transforms old photos in a way you never dreamed possible. Unearth all sorts of transformative tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. A new useful discovery in your …

For totally logical reasons, this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy is bucking the trend of a single host city and splitting its sporting events between two main locations, Milan and Cortina. Milan, the second most populous city in Italy, is the urban setting for indoor events like ice hockey and ice skating. Cortina, a ski resort town 250 miles away, provides most of the snow—and hill-based venues for quintessential Winter Olympic sports like alpine skiing and the bobsled. But the two separate locations posed a problem for one of the key parts of the Olympics: the opening ceremony. How could there be one grand show when the sporting action was split in half and separated …

Superman was born Kryptonian, raised Methodist, and sketched into existence by two Jewish teens in 1930s Cleveland. Faith and morality are his DNA. There are no overt religious references in Superman comics. But over eight decades, he’s been viewed as a divine entity, a savior figure—his sacrifice Christlike, his will to lead as strong as Moses parting the Red Sea, and his compassion akin to a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who guides Buddhists on the spiritual path. While scholars, comic book writers, and fans alike are struck by the religious undertones in Superman comics, they say what separates Superman from the ever-growing pack of superheroes is his singu…

This week, the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) announced that it’s putting the revenue from selling U.S. Open tickets and $23 signature Honey Deuce cocktails toward a new cause: Completing an $800 million renovation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (NTC), the sports complex that hosts the annual tennis championship. The renovation represents the single largest investment in U.S. Open history, according to a press release published by the USTA. It will encompass a full transformation of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, where championship games are played, as well as a luxe new player performance center on the NTC’s campus. The work will be spearheaded by the ar…

Air France on Tuesday unveiled a new first-class suite as it expands efforts to lure wealthy travelers from business jets and lend a ‘French touch’ to the tussle for premium revenue. The CEO of parent Air France-KLM, Ben Smith, told Reuters the unspecified investment aimed to place Air France at the top of the European league in airline luxury, signalling a battle with British Airways and Lufthansa. “A large percentage of the customers are flying for business reasons … Many of them have the choice of a private jet or flying in first class,” Smith said in an interview. “What is new for us over the last few years is a marked increase in the number of luxury cust…

If you watch any economic news, you’ve probably seen economists biting their nails while raising the alarm about the dreaded “R-word”: recession. These financial experts are so terrified of a potential recession that they refer to it obliquely, in the same superstitious way your Great-Aunt Esther used to whisper the word “cancer.” But refusing to call a recession by its name does not reduce financial panic, improve the stock market, or even make julienne fries: It just makes a recession seem like an unstoppable force coming to ruin our lives, which is simply not true. While there isn’t much that an individual can do to avert a recession, there’s plenty you can do …