Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Artificial intelligence. It’s pretty cool, I guess? Look at those neat videos. And the thousands of product design iterations just to get those creative balls rolling. Sure. Awesome. Or is it? Maybe. Who knows. All that seems to be the summary of Figma’s 2025 AI Report, based on a survey of 2,500 designers and developers. While tools like ChatGPT and Figma’s AI features are embedded in daily workflows, the report reveals a stark disconnect. Enthusiasm for AI’s potential is high, but its practical impact remains uneven, the numbers show, constrained by vague goals, quality concerns, and cooling expectations. The report underscores a paradox: professionals see AI as es…

When Chinese automaker BYD announced plans to build a massive factory in the hardscrabble city of Camacari, in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state, locals saw a new beginning. After years of economic stagnation following Ford’s exit from the region in 2021, there was hope that the global leader in electric vehicles would bring back well-paying jobs and a brighter future. The timing seemed right. Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest auto market, is seeing a surge in EV sales—and BYD is leading the charge. For Camacari, the deal promised to fill the economic vacuum left by the American company, which had once been the city’s largest employer. Then plans went off track. A D…

People and institutions are grappling with the consequences of AI-written text. Teachers want to know whether students’ work reflects their own understanding; consumers want to know whether an advertisement was written by a human or a machine. Writing rules to govern the use of AI-generated content is relatively easy. Enforcing them depends on something much harder: reliably detecting whether a piece of text was generated by artificial intelligence. Some studies have investigated whether humans can detect AI-generated text. For example, people who themselves use AI writing tools heavily have been shown to accurately detect AI-written text. A panel of human evaluat…

For the first time in nearly half a century, the city of Detroit has a major new addition to its skyline. Hudson’s is a $1.4 billion ground-up downtown development of two buildings covering more than 1.5 million square feet, including residential, office, hotel, retail and event space. It’s a large-scale argument that for all of the city’s troubles—from its precipitous population decline to its high poverty levels to its rock bottom 2013 municipal bankruptcy—the city has brighter days ahead. This assertion comes from Bedrock, the real estate arm of billionaire Dan Gilbert, who has almost single handedly breathed life into the city’s downtown core through a decade…

In a parking lot in Detroit next to the Henry Ford Museum, three streetlights now double as EV chargers. The site is one of the first installations of the Voltpost Air, a device that taps into existing infrastructure to quickly add charging capability at the side of the road or in parking lots. The approach is simpler than adding stand-alone EV chargers: Installation takes just a few hours. “We don’t have to do costly utility upgrades to the grid in order to this,” says Jeff Prosserman, cofounder and CEO of Voltpost. “We’re just finding pockets where power already exists and then making it work.” That’s possible partly because the chargers are Level 2, mea…

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 via email here. Is ‘AI slop’ code here to stay? A few months ago I wrote about the dark side of vibe coding tools: they often generate code that introduces bugs or security vulnerabilities that surface later. They can solve an immediate problem while making a codebase harder to maintain over time. It’s true that more developers are using AI coding assistants, and using them more frequently and for more tasks. But many seem to be weighing the time saved today against the cleanup they may face tomor…

Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at age 84. Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement. “For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said. “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fi…

Humans are a unique species, because of our collective knowledge of our own mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average life expectancy for males in the United States is 75.8 years. That means entertainer extraordinaire Dick Van Dyke is defying statistics by turning 100 years old this Saturday, December 13. As he reaches this milestone birthday, let’s take a look back at his impressive career, what he credits his longevity to, and how he plans to celebrate. We’ll also cover how you can get in on the action and celebrate the Mary Poppins actor. A brief Dick Van Dyke biography Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born in West P…

Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) announced it will close select Foot Locker stores and raised its full-year year outlook, in its third quarter earnings report on Tuesday. While Dick’s has not disclosed how many locations it will shutter (Fast Company has reached out for confirmation), it is part of a larger restructuring effort, according to executive chairman Ed Stack who spoke with CNBC. Dick’s acquired leading footwear and apparel retailer Foot Locker for $2.5 billion back in September, according to its latest earnings release. As of November 1, the company was operating 3,230 store locations across the combined Dick’s and Foot Locker businesses globally. …

On Thursday morning, Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods announced its plans to acquire footwear and apparel retailer Foot Locker. The two companies have entered into a merger agreement, where Dick’s Sporting Goods will buy Foot Locker for $2.4 billion. Here’s what to know about the deal. How will the deal work? Dick’s will finance the merger using a combination of cash-on-hand and new debt. As part of the agreement, Dick’s will acquire Foot Locker’s vast portfolio of brands, including Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, Champs Sports, and WSS. Foot Locker currently operates over 2,000 retail stores across the globe. Dick’s will operate Foot Locker as a standalo…

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against an individual it says is a moderator on Reddit, accusing him of piracy and facilitating a network of websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games. The video game publisher is seeking $4.5 million in damages from James C. Williams, who went by the username “Archbox” on the social media site. (That account has since been suspended.) “Williams not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Ni…

A new drama has taken the book publishing world by storm: The upcoming U.S. release of the horror book Shy Girl was canceled by publisher Hachette Book Group just weeks ahead of its release due to suspicion of AI use in its making. Authored by U.S. poet and fiction writer Mia Ballard, Shy Girl is a novel described as focusing on the life of a girl with severe obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) who agrees to be held captive as an affluent man’s pet in order to rid herself from financial woes. The book was first self-published early last year, with another version released in November by Hachette’s U.K. imprint Wildfire. Hachette confirmed the cancellation to the N…

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 via email here. Did Anthropic just soft-launch the scariest AI model yet? On Tuesday Anthropic announced that it would deploy its newest and most powerful AI model, Claude Mythos Preview, to a new industry initiative (Project Glasswing) meant to safeguard critical software infrastructure against cyberattacks. That sounded good, but it obscured the real news somewhat—that one of the big three AI labs has now developed a model that could, in the wrong hands, be a super-dangerous cyberweapon. I…

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, climate change is projected to cause the extinction of over a third of the species of plants and animals in the world in 25 years. But scientists at genetics laboratory Colossal Biosciences are claiming that they may have a solution—one that has now resulted in the birth of the first dire wolves in over 10,000 years. Colossal’s website proclaims the lab to be the world’s only company working on “de-extinction,” which it defines as “the process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species by resurrecting its lost lineage of core genes; engineering natural resistances; an…

After more than eight decades in operation, craft retailer Joann is going out of business, closing all 800 of its stores and laying off 19,000 employees. The news comes after the retailer’s restructuring plans failed and a liquidator opted to purchase its assets. Joann is far from the only retailer in its death throes these days. Recent data shows that the number of retail-store closures is expected to double during 2025, to roughly 15,000 from the 7,300 or so in 2024. Accordingly, Joann is in a similar boat to companies such as Red Lobster, Big Lots, and Party City, which have each announced plans to either completely close up shop or enact big restructuring in …

Gold-medal moments for American athletes abounded at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Among a slew of highlights, Alysa Liu brought the U.S. Olympic gold in singles figure skating for the first time since 2002, Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin topped the podium in Alpine skiing. The Paralympics, which start March 6, will likely see more medals for women athletes, and many of them will be celebrating in Las Vegas this summer. But data from ticket exchange and resale site StubHub shows that the U.S. women’s hockey team’s triumph over Canada for gold in Milan will have a lasting effect on attendance at Professional Women’s Hockey League games. The company’s internal dat…

Recently, New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat moderated a debate on the Interesting Times podcast between Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, two conservative critics of modern feminism. The podcast received major blowback, starting with (but not ending with) the fact that the original headline of the conversation was “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” Quickly, after the predictable backlash hit, the headline was changed to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” But the diversion didn’t help the conversation’s case all that much. While the headline was softened to perhaps dress up the discussion as an urgent political issue, mostly, it felt like intelle…

Back in the summer of 2024, Boar’s Head recalled seven million pounds of deli meat that had been linked to a deadly listeria outbreak that spanned numerous U.S. states. That outbreak led to the deaths of multiple people and caused the company to shutter one of its processing facilities, which was located in Virginia. The recall led to a brand crisis for Boar’s Head, and by November 2024, when the outbreak was declared over, a total of 10 people had died, and 61 became sick. The event led to class action lawsuits against the company, one of which has now been settled. Here’s what to know about the settlement and whether you can claim any compensation. Class action…