ResidentialBusiness

Alibaba’s net income fell 66% year-over-year (YOY) for 2025’s fourth quarter while it invested heavily in AI. In total, net income dropped from 46.4 billion Chinese yuan ($6.8 billion) to 15.6 billion Chinese yuan ($2.27 billion). The downturn is one of multiple disappointments in the Chinese technology giant’s latest financial results, announced Thursday, March 19. Alibaba also reported a 71% decrease in diluted earnings per share YOY. Higher cloud revenue, but not high enough Even Alibaba’s revenue, which rose 2% YOY, failed to meet expectations. The company reached 284.8 billion Chinese yuan ($41.4 billion) in revenue for quarter four, falling short of Wall Street’s predicted 290.7 billion Chinese yuan ($42.3 billion), according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. As of publication, U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE: BABA) were down more than 4% in premarket trading on Thursday. The stock is down more than 13% in 2026 so far. The small revenue increase was led by the company’s Cloud Intelligence Group, which rose 36% YOY. “Alibaba Cloud continues to lead the market, attracting more customers to onboard our comprehensive AI + cloud products and services, including high-performance networking, distributed storage, cloud operating system, and services for model training and inference,” the company stated in its release. Competing for global AI dominance Alibaba has worked to position itself as a competitor to U.S.-based AI companies. In October, Alibaba Cloud launched its second data center in Dubai as part of a pledge to invest 380 billion yuan ($55.3 billion) in AI and cloud infrastructure over three years. It has also developed its own chips in response to uncertainty around Nvidia’s chip sales to China. Despite today’s earnings miss, the company says it remains committed to funding AI growth. “This quarter, Alibaba maintained strong investments across our core pillars of AI and consumption. AI is and will continue to be one of our primary growth engines,” Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu stated in the company’s financial report. “Looking ahead, we are well-positioned to drive growth on both enterprise AI and consumer AI fronts, powered by our full-stack AI capabilities spanning foundation models, cloud infrastructure, and proprietary chips, alongside deep integration with our broader ecosystem.” View the full article

Retail loyalty cards are programs designed to encourage customer loyalty by rewarding repeat purchases. When you sign up, you provide personal information and receive a unique identifier that tracks your purchases. With each transaction, you earn points that can be redeemed for discounts or exclusive offers customized to your shopping habits. This system not only improves your shopping experience but additionally provides retailers with insights into your buying behavior, raising questions about the broader impact of these programs. Key Takeaways Retail loyalty cards are programs that reward customers with points for repeat purchases, enhancing customer loyalty and encouraging sales. Customers enroll by providing personal information and receive a unique identifier to track their points and rewards. Points earned can be redeemed for discounts, free items, or exclusive offers tailored to individual shopping habits. Effective loyalty programs utilize multi-channel promotion and simplified enrollment to increase participation and engagement among consumers. Success is measured through key performance indicators (KPIs), such as enrollment and redemption rates, to optimize program effectiveness. What Are Retail Loyalty Cards? Retail loyalty cards are strategic tools used by businesses to cultivate customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. These cards, which include store rewards cards and store membership cards, are issued by retailers to provide customers with incentives and rewards based on their purchasing behavior. By using retail loyalty cards, you can accumulate points with each purchase, which can later be redeemed for various rewards once you reach a specific threshold. Popular examples include Starbucks Rewards, Sephora Beauty Insider, and Walgreens Balance Rewards, each customized to meet the unique preferences of their customers. Retail loyalty cards not only benefit you by offering rewards but in addition help retailers track customer habits, allowing them to refine their offerings. Ultimately, these programs play an essential role in enhancing brand loyalty, contributing to increased customer retention and overall sales revenue for businesses. How Do Retail Loyalty Cards Work? When you participate in a retail loyalty program, you typically start by enrolling and providing some personal information. After that, you receive a unique identifier, like a card or app ID, which tracks your purchases and points. Here’s how it works: Points Accumulation: You earn points for every purchase, which can be redeemed for rewards or discounts once a threshold is met. Customized Promotions: Retailers analyze your shopping behavior to offer personalized recommendations, enhancing your shopping experience. Multi-Channel Earning: You can earn and redeem points in-store, online, or via mobile apps, providing greater flexibility. Data Insights: Retailers utilize loyalty card data to understand purchasing habits, enabling targeted marketing strategies. Through these mechanisms, retail loyalty cards encourage deeper engagement and aim to increase your overall shopping satisfaction as well as benefiting the retailer’s sales strategies. Benefits of Retail Loyalty Cards for Customers Retail loyalty cards provide you with exclusive rewards and discounts that improve your shopping experience. By accumulating points with each purchase, you can redeem them for valuable offers customized to your preferences. Moreover, these programs often personalize promotions based on your shopping habits, making your experience more relevant and enjoyable. Exclusive Rewards and Discounts As you shop, loyalty cards can greatly improve your experience by offering exclusive rewards and discounts personalized to your preferences. These programs provide various benefits that enrich your shopping experience, including: Points for every purchase that can be redeemed for discounts or free items. Personalized discounts customized to your shopping habits, making you feel valued. Early access to sales and exclusive products, ensuring you don’t miss out on deals. Additional perks like birthday gifts and tiered rewards, encouraging repeat purchases. Participating in loyalty programs not only boosts your savings but furthermore deepens your relationship with your favorite brands, leading to a more engaging shopping experience. Enjoy the advantages that come with your loyalty! Personalized Shopping Experience Enhancing your shopping experience goes beyond just discounts and rewards; it lies in the personalized service that loyalty cards provide. When you join a loyalty program, you receive customized offers and discounts based on your purchasing behavior. Research shows that 91% of consumers prefer brands that offer personalized recommendations, which makes shopping more enjoyable. Loyalty card members often gain exclusive promotions, early access to sales, and rewards that align with their preferences, encouraging repeat purchases. Retailers analyze your shopping habits to create targeted marketing strategies, enhancing relevance. Many programs feature tiered rewards systems, offering increasingly valuable perks as your spending grows. Examples of Popular Retail Loyalty Card Programs Loyalty card programs have become a staple in the retail environment, offering consumers a way to earn rewards during shopping. Here are some popular programs that illustrate how they work: Starbucks Rewards: Earn stars for every purchase, redeemable for free items and personalized offers through their app, boosting engagement. Sephora’s Beauty Insider: A tiered points system allows members to earn rewards, including birthday gifts and exclusive access to products based on spending levels. Walgreens’ myWalgreens: This program offers cash rewards, personalized coupons, and health activity tracking, aiming to promote repeat business. Kroger Plus Card: Enjoy discounts on groceries, fuel points, and customized offers based on shopping history, making it valuable for grocery shoppers. These programs not only reward purchases but additionally encourage customer loyalty by providing customized benefits that improve the overall shopping experience. When Should Retailers Implement Loyalty Card Programs? Retailers should consider launching loyalty card programs during peak sales periods to capitalize on increased foot traffic and customer interest. Implementing these programs can likewise serve as a strategic response to market competition, helping you stand out in a crowded marketplace. Peak Sales Periods Implementing a loyalty card program during peak sales periods can greatly improve customer engagement and drive repeat purchases. Timing is essential, so consider these key moments: Holidays: Launch your program during festive seasons when shopping spikes. Major Shopping Events: Align your program with events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday to capture high traffic. New Product Releases: Use heightened interest in new offerings to encourage sign-ups and participation. Sales Promotions: Encourage customers to spend more by linking loyalty rewards to special promotions. Market Competition Response In today’s competitive environment, launching a loyalty card program can be a strategic move to set your business apart and retain customers. Retailers should consider implementing these programs when facing increasing competition or market saturation. Doing so helps differentiate your brand and keeps customers engaged. Timing is vital; launching during peak sales periods or major product launches can maximize customer interaction. Furthermore, loyalty programs allow you to build customer databases, important for effective customer relationship management (CRM). How Can Customers Sign up for a Retail Loyalty Card? Signing up for a retail loyalty card can be a straightforward process, whether you prefer to do it in-store, online, or through a mobile app. Here’s how you can typically get started: Choose Your Method: Decide if you want to sign up at the store, on the retailer’s website, or via their mobile app. Provide Basic Information: You’ll usually need to enter your name, email address, and phone number to create your account. Enroll at Checkout: Many retailers allow you to sign up during making a purchase, making it convenient to join on the spot. Enjoy Immediate Rewards: Some loyalty programs offer instant discounts, bonus points, or rewards for signing up, which can improve your shopping experience. Strategies for Retailers to Enhance Loyalty Card Effectiveness To improve the effectiveness of retail loyalty cards, retailers should focus on streamlining the enrollment process and promoting the program across various channels. Simplifying registration can boost participation, as 57% of consumers abandon loyalty programs because of complex sign-up procedures. Leveraging multiple platforms—like in-store displays, online ads, and social media—helps increase visibility and taps into the 92% of people who trust recommendations from friends. Additionally, personalizing offers using customer data can greatly improve satisfaction since 91% of consumers prefer customized experiences. Providing rewards that can be earned and redeemed across shopping channels, similar to Starbucks Rewards, encourages a seamless experience. Finally, measuring success through defined KPIs, like enrollment and redemption rates, can lead to a 25% revenue increase with data-driven strategies. Strategy Benefits Simplify enrollment process Increases participation Multi-channel promotion Improves visibility and trust Personalize offers Boosts customer satisfaction Track KPIs Enhances revenue and strategy Frequently Asked Questions How Does a Loyalty Card Work? A loyalty card works by allowing you to earn points for every purchase you make at participating retailers. When you shop, you present your card or app login, which tracks your purchases. As you accumulate points, you can redeem them for discounts or rewards once you reach a specific threshold. These programs often provide personalized offers and promotions based on your shopping habits, enhancing your overall shopping experience and encouraging repeat business. What Is the Main Purpose of a Store’s Loyalty Card? The main purpose of a store’s loyalty card is to encourage you to shop more frequently by offering rewards, discounts, or exclusive promotions. By using these cards, retailers can gather data on your buying habits, allowing them to tailor marketing efforts to your preferences. This strategy not only improves your shopping experience but likewise builds brand loyalty, making you more likely to return, thereby reducing customer churn and boosting sales for the business. What Are the Disadvantages of a Loyalty Card? Loyalty cards can have several disadvantages. You might find yourself overspending to reach rewards, which could negate any savings. Furthermore, many consumers abandon these programs because of their complexity. There are likewise concerns about data privacy, as sharing personal information can lead to distrust. Finally, if you don’t shop frequently, you may feel excluded from benefits, creating a perception of unfairness among occasional shoppers. Comprehending these downsides can influence your participation. What Is the Purpose of a Loyalty Program in Retail? A loyalty program in retail serves to improve customer retention by rewarding repeat purchases with incentives like discounts and special offers. You benefit by receiving rewards that encourage you to shop more frequently. These programs additionally help businesses gather valuable data on your preferences and spending habits, which they use to tailor marketing efforts. In the end, loyalty programs aim to increase your lifetime value as a customer as well as differentiating the brand from competitors. Conclusion In conclusion, retail loyalty cards are crucial tools for both customers and retailers. They encourage repeat business by allowing customers to earn points on purchases, which can be redeemed for rewards. Retailers gain valuable insights into shopping behaviors, enabling targeted marketing. By implementing effective loyalty programs, businesses can improve customer satisfaction at the same time driving sales. As a customer, signing up for a loyalty card can lead to significant savings and personalized offers customized to your shopping preferences. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are Retail Loyalty Cards and How Do They Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

President Donald The President is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put U.S. troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons? The President has offered shifting reasons for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon.” The president has been more circumspect about how far he’s willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran’s weapons program once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses. Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummeled in U.S. bombings The President ordered last June that he had claimed “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program. It’s a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of U.S. troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the U.S. in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America’s psyche. At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they’ll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the U.S. and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran’s enriched uranium even more critical. That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program. Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called The President’s confused and chaotic objectives. “Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there — securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Meanwhile, Republican allies of The President stress that there are plans in place to deal with the enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, on Wednesday cited “a number of plans that have been put on the table.” He declined to elaborate. Others acknowledged the complications of deploying troops into Iran. “No one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It doesn’t mean you can’t. But no one’s ever briefed me about it.” Scott added it’s not tenable to allow the stockpile to remain: “I think it would be helpful to get rid of it.” The President and his advisers are rigidly obtuse Nearly three weeks into a conflict that’s left hundreds of people dead, tested longtime alliances and brought pain to the global economy, The President and his top advisers have been rigidly obtuse about their deliberations over Iran’s uranium stockpile. “I’m not going to talk about that,” The President said last week when asked about the enriched uranium. “But we have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we’re not finished yet.” Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, The President appeared to claim the strikes had already neutralized the threat. “They don’t have nuclear potential,” he said. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week that the administration sees no point in telegraphing “what we’re willing to do or how far we’re willing to go” while asserting “we have options, for sure.” Experts say it’s doable but won’t be easy Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during The President’s first term, said that seizing or destroying the enriched uranium is certainly doable, if the president decides to go that route. The U.S. and Israeli forces have been making strides toward creating the conditions — namely, establishing total air superiority — that would allow for special operations forces operators, who are trained in blowing up centrifuges and dealing with nuclear material, to conduct such an operation if the president decides to go that route. To be certain, a troops-on-the-ground effort is expected to be far more complicated than other recent high-profile, lightning-strike insertion operations, such as the January capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro or the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, Goldberg said. And the likely need to remove rubble to get to the canisters of enriched uranium adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment. “But if you actually own the airspace and you can have close air support and drones and everything else up in the sky for pretty wide perimeter, presumably you could do a lot,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week that the assumption is much of the enriched uranium remains in the trio of Iranian nuclear sites bombarded last year by the U.S. “The impression we have … is that it hasn’t been moved,” said Grossi, adding that a bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Iran’s Isfahan facility while lesser amounts are at the Natanz and Fordow facilities that were destroyed in last year’s American strikes. Testifying before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her prepared remarks said that the U.S. attacks on Iran had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and buried underground facilities. Gabbard said the U.S. has been monitoring whether Iran’s leaders will try to restart its nuclear program but said that they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability. She added that the clerical authority overseeing Iranian government has been degraded in Israel’s strikes on its leadership but remains intact. Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute, said that an effort to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely take more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site and would take time to complete. On the other hand, not acting to secure the enriched uranium also comes with risk. Should Iran’s hard-liners remain in power, and with enriched material, they will now have greater motivation to build a nuclear weapon. “The President has put himself between a rock and a hard place,” Buck said. “Throughout this, he has had maximalist aims, but he’s wanted to maintain minimal effort in order to keep the costs low.” Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Matthew Lee and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report. —Aamer Madhani and Seung Min Kim, Associated Press View the full article

Two top housing platforms disagree on the best week to list in 2026, but both agree a rare window for sellers is opening this spring. View the full article

Small businesses that need a steady stream of marketing images, product visuals, and short-form video may be getting a more practical set of AI tools to work with. Adobe said it is expanding Firefly with new custom models, broader access to third-party AI models, stronger editing tools, and a new conversational interface designed to help users move from idea to finished asset faster. The update matters for small business owners because it targets one of the biggest day-to-day bottlenecks in marketing: producing consistent creative content without hiring a full in-house team. Adobe framed the announcement as part of a broader shift in how generative AI fits into creative work. In the company’s words, “The creative process is now evolving into more fluid AI-powered workflows where creators generate, refine and shape ideas into work that is uniquely theirs.” Adobe added, “Increasingly, they want to guide that process more naturally: using conversational AI controls to explore, iterate and develop ideas in real time.” For small businesses, that pitch lands at a time when owners and lean marketing teams are under pressure to publish more content across more channels. A restaurant may need seasonal social graphics, menu photos, and local video ads. An online retailer may need product shots in multiple formats. A service company may need branded illustrations, campaign visuals, and updated web images. Adobe is betting that Firefly can help those businesses create more assets with less manual rework. The biggest practical change is the public beta launch of Firefly custom models. Adobe said the feature lets users train a model on their own images so it can generate content in a specific house style. The company said the models are optimized for three areas: illustration styles, recurring characters, and photographic looks. That could make the feature especially useful for small brands that already have a recognizable visual identity but struggle to maintain it as they scale content production. Adobe described the appeal this way: “Custom Models are especially powerful for three types of creative work: • Illustration styles, where stroke weight, fills and color consistency matter • Characters, where the same character needs to appear consistently across scenes • Photographic styles, where a specific visual look needs to repeat across many images.” The company also said the tools “help preserve details like stroke weight, color palettes, lighting and character features across generations, so you can explore new creative directions without losing visual consistency.” That consistency could solve a common small business problem. Many owners use AI tools to save time, then find the output looks different from post to post, campaign to campaign, or platform to platform. A custom model trained on a company’s own assets could help a local brand keep its product photography style, mascot, or illustration approach more uniform across Facebook ads, email campaigns, web banners, and printed materials. Adobe also said those models are private by default. For small businesses that care about protecting brand assets, unpublished product images, or proprietary campaign concepts, that may be one of the more important details in the announcement. A business owner deciding whether to use generative AI often wants more than speed; they want to know whether the system will keep internal creative materials separate from public-facing outputs. Adobe is also widening the range of models available inside Firefly. The company said the platform now includes more than 30 models, including systems from Adobe, Google, OpenAI, Runway, and Kling. Adobe’s position is that users should be able to generate with one model, refine with another, compare results, and continue editing in one place rather than jumping between separate tools. For a small business audience, that matters less as a technical milestone and more as a workflow issue. Owners rarely have time to test a half-dozen AI platforms independently. A single workspace that offers multiple model options may reduce switching costs, shorten the trial-and-error process, and help teams choose the right output for a specific task, whether that means a photorealistic product image, a stylized ad graphic, or a short promotional video. Adobe said, “Firefly brings these models together in a single creative environment. It’s the only place where you can generate with one model, refine with another, compare outputs and continue editing using Adobe’s professional creative tools.” The company also said it is “currently offering unlimited video and image generations using a vast range of models available in Adobe Firefly,” and pointed users to its Firefly promotions and plans for more details. Adobe’s new editing features may be the most immediately useful part of the release for businesses that care more about finished output than AI experimentation. The company said Quick Cut can turn raw footage into a structured first cut in minutes. It also said Firefly now makes it easier to add or remove objects, extend scenes, and fine-tune generated visuals. That kind of integration could help smaller teams create workable first drafts without outsourcing every revision. A retailer could turn a rough product demo into a cleaner social clip. A contractor could remove distractions from a job-site image before posting it online. A boutique agency serving small business clients could create more variations for pitches and ads without rebuilding every asset from scratch. Adobe said, “Generation and editing are fully integrated, so you can move from idea to draft, and from draft to refinement, without breaking your flow.” That emphasis on reducing friction is likely to resonate with smaller firms that often handle content creation between other tasks rather than as a standalone department. The release also points to a longer-term shift: conversational AI inside creative software. Adobe said it is introducing agentic AI assistants across products including Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat, and expanding access to Project Moonlight, a private beta interface that works across Adobe apps. Adobe described Moonlight as a system that can understand a user’s style and help turn chat-based instructions into creative work. For small business owners, the promise is straightforward. Instead of learning every tool in detail, a user may be able to describe the result they want and then adjust from there. That could lower the skill barrier for founders and staff members who need usable content but are not trained designers or video editors. Still, small businesses may want to weigh a few issues before treating this as a plug-and-play solution. Training a custom model requires a solid set of owned images and a clear visual identity, which some younger businesses may not have yet. More AI-generated output also creates a review burden: someone still needs to check brand accuracy, factual accuracy, and overall quality. And while Adobe is promising more control, businesses may need time to learn which model works best for which job, especially if they want consistent results under tight deadlines. Even with those caveats, Adobe’s update suggests generative AI is moving beyond novelty and closer to the daily realities of running a business. Owners do not just need images from prompts. They need repeatable workflows, brand consistency, faster revisions, and tools that fit into real marketing calendars. Adobe’s latest Firefly push appears aimed squarely at that need, giving small businesses another sign that AI creative tools are maturing from experiments into operational software. This article, "Adobe Expands Firefly AI Tools With Small Businesses in Mind" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Small businesses that need a steady stream of marketing images, product visuals, and short-form video may be getting a more practical set of AI tools to work with. Adobe said it is expanding Firefly with new custom models, broader access to third-party AI models, stronger editing tools, and a new conversational interface designed to help users move from idea to finished asset faster. The update matters for small business owners because it targets one of the biggest day-to-day bottlenecks in marketing: producing consistent creative content without hiring a full in-house team. Adobe framed the announcement as part of a broader shift in how generative AI fits into creative work. In the company’s words, “The creative process is now evolving into more fluid AI-powered workflows where creators generate, refine and shape ideas into work that is uniquely theirs.” Adobe added, “Increasingly, they want to guide that process more naturally: using conversational AI controls to explore, iterate and develop ideas in real time.” For small businesses, that pitch lands at a time when owners and lean marketing teams are under pressure to publish more content across more channels. A restaurant may need seasonal social graphics, menu photos, and local video ads. An online retailer may need product shots in multiple formats. A service company may need branded illustrations, campaign visuals, and updated web images. Adobe is betting that Firefly can help those businesses create more assets with less manual rework. The biggest practical change is the public beta launch of Firefly custom models. Adobe said the feature lets users train a model on their own images so it can generate content in a specific house style. The company said the models are optimized for three areas: illustration styles, recurring characters, and photographic looks. That could make the feature especially useful for small brands that already have a recognizable visual identity but struggle to maintain it as they scale content production. Adobe described the appeal this way: “Custom Models are especially powerful for three types of creative work: • Illustration styles, where stroke weight, fills and color consistency matter • Characters, where the same character needs to appear consistently across scenes • Photographic styles, where a specific visual look needs to repeat across many images.” The company also said the tools “help preserve details like stroke weight, color palettes, lighting and character features across generations, so you can explore new creative directions without losing visual consistency.” That consistency could solve a common small business problem. Many owners use AI tools to save time, then find the output looks different from post to post, campaign to campaign, or platform to platform. A custom model trained on a company’s own assets could help a local brand keep its product photography style, mascot, or illustration approach more uniform across Facebook ads, email campaigns, web banners, and printed materials. Adobe also said those models are private by default. For small businesses that care about protecting brand assets, unpublished product images, or proprietary campaign concepts, that may be one of the more important details in the announcement. A business owner deciding whether to use generative AI often wants more than speed; they want to know whether the system will keep internal creative materials separate from public-facing outputs. Adobe is also widening the range of models available inside Firefly. The company said the platform now includes more than 30 models, including systems from Adobe, Google, OpenAI, Runway, and Kling. Adobe’s position is that users should be able to generate with one model, refine with another, compare results, and continue editing in one place rather than jumping between separate tools. For a small business audience, that matters less as a technical milestone and more as a workflow issue. Owners rarely have time to test a half-dozen AI platforms independently. A single workspace that offers multiple model options may reduce switching costs, shorten the trial-and-error process, and help teams choose the right output for a specific task, whether that means a photorealistic product image, a stylized ad graphic, or a short promotional video. Adobe said, “Firefly brings these models together in a single creative environment. It’s the only place where you can generate with one model, refine with another, compare outputs and continue editing using Adobe’s professional creative tools.” The company also said it is “currently offering unlimited video and image generations using a vast range of models available in Adobe Firefly,” and pointed users to its Firefly promotions and plans for more details. Adobe’s new editing features may be the most immediately useful part of the release for businesses that care more about finished output than AI experimentation. The company said Quick Cut can turn raw footage into a structured first cut in minutes. It also said Firefly now makes it easier to add or remove objects, extend scenes, and fine-tune generated visuals. That kind of integration could help smaller teams create workable first drafts without outsourcing every revision. A retailer could turn a rough product demo into a cleaner social clip. A contractor could remove distractions from a job-site image before posting it online. A boutique agency serving small business clients could create more variations for pitches and ads without rebuilding every asset from scratch. Adobe said, “Generation and editing are fully integrated, so you can move from idea to draft, and from draft to refinement, without breaking your flow.” That emphasis on reducing friction is likely to resonate with smaller firms that often handle content creation between other tasks rather than as a standalone department. The release also points to a longer-term shift: conversational AI inside creative software. Adobe said it is introducing agentic AI assistants across products including Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat, and expanding access to Project Moonlight, a private beta interface that works across Adobe apps. Adobe described Moonlight as a system that can understand a user’s style and help turn chat-based instructions into creative work. For small business owners, the promise is straightforward. Instead of learning every tool in detail, a user may be able to describe the result they want and then adjust from there. That could lower the skill barrier for founders and staff members who need usable content but are not trained designers or video editors. Still, small businesses may want to weigh a few issues before treating this as a plug-and-play solution. Training a custom model requires a solid set of owned images and a clear visual identity, which some younger businesses may not have yet. More AI-generated output also creates a review burden: someone still needs to check brand accuracy, factual accuracy, and overall quality. And while Adobe is promising more control, businesses may need time to learn which model works best for which job, especially if they want consistent results under tight deadlines. Even with those caveats, Adobe’s update suggests generative AI is moving beyond novelty and closer to the daily realities of running a business. Owners do not just need images from prompts. They need repeatable workflows, brand consistency, faster revisions, and tools that fit into real marketing calendars. Adobe’s latest Firefly push appears aimed squarely at that need, giving small businesses another sign that AI creative tools are maturing from experiments into operational software. This article, "Adobe Expands Firefly AI Tools With Small Businesses in Mind" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Economists fear the Iran war will drive up inflationView the full article

Trailers of two of Hollywood’s most anticipated upcoming movies came out this week. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Dune: Part Three and Marvel Studios’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiered a day apart. But what’s most interesting is the marketing strategy behind the trailers—in which promos and short clips of the trailers were released ahead of the full trailers. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery hosted a livestreamed event on the official Dune account on TikTok. It featured director Dennis Villeneuve and some of the cast talking about the upcoming movie to a live audience before airing the trailer, which was simultaneously revealed at the end of the stream before being rolled out on other platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Videos with the star-studded cast—including Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Javier Bardem—urging fans to watch the trailer circulated online, and were later shared from the Warner Bros. Discovery and IMAX social accounts. Meanwhile, Marvel Studios released the official trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day on Wednesday. But the day before, Tom Holland announced on Instagram that he and the studio were “doing something that has never been done before” and that “some of our greatest fans are going to help us release pieces of” the trailer. Holland tagged an Instagram account of a fan in Peru, who shared a two-second clip from the trailer featuring Spider-Man swinging through the air holding someone. That fan then tagged another fan in Ohio, who shared a separate bite-sized clip from the trailer. Throughout the day, fans from different parts of the world tagged each other, showing different seconds-long clips before the full trailer debuted the next day. This isn’t the first time that Marvel Studios has released its trailers in a non-traditional way. In December, the studio premiered four different trailers for Avengers: Doomsday during theatrical showings of Avatar: Fire and Ash. It was the only way that fans could access the trailers immediately, since they weren’t officially released online until a few days later. Short cuts Trailers have historically served as a marketing tool for films, but sharing microclips from trailers to get fans excited about trailers themselves seems to be a new marketing trend all on its own. It’s certainly a sign of the times, especially as short-form content and microdramas become even more popular while the attention spans of a generation weaned on TikTok get shorter. But it’s also indicative of the fluctuating nature of the theatrical business. While box office numbers have gone up since the pandemic, they have not reached pre-pandemic levels. The North American box office grossed $9 billion last year, which is above the numbers of 2020, but still low compared to the years prior. Marvel movies also continue to see a downturn at the box office, while AMC Theatres recently announced its plans to shut down several “underperforming” locations across the United States after a decline in attendance. Networks and streaming services have already played around with releasing bite-sized clips of its shows on social media to get users to watch full seasons of its shows. The movie industry, meanwhile, has long accepted that it needs social media to promote its new movies, whether that means hiring TikTok creators to make fan trailers or creating viral moments to grab attention. But as studios and theater chains desperately try to reach young fans on social media, generating more hype around movie trailers might be the next thing they’re experimenting with to actually get audiences into theaters. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Razer Wolverine V3 Tournament Edition wired gaming controller is down to $54.99 on Woot right now, which is the lowest price it has ever hit. It usually goes for around $99.99 on Amazon, and even previous deals didn’t dip below about $59, according to price trackers. If you’re a Prime member, you get free shipping, while others pay an extra $6. This deal is live for 12 days or until stock runs out, and Woot only ships within the contiguous U.S. Razer Wolverine V3 Tournament Edition Wired gaming controller $54.99 at Woot $99.99 Save $45.00 Get Deal Get Deal $54.99 at Woot $99.99 Save $45.00 This is essentially the same controller as the Wolverine V3 Pro, minus the wireless battery. That means it’s wired only, using a long 10-foot cable. For PC setups, that’s rarely a problem—in fact, it’s part of the appeal. The controller supports a 1000Hz polling rate, which only works over a wired connection, and it’s built for players who care about responsiveness. Inputs feel sharp and clicky, more like a high-end gaming mouse than a standard controller. You also get six extra programmable buttons, which can make a real difference in games where reaction time matters. In something like a fast-paced shooter, mapping reload or weapon swap to a rear button can shave off just enough time to feel noticeable. The Hall Effect sticks are designed to avoid drift over time, and the textured grips help during longer sessions. All said, it feels solid in hand, though slightly heavier than you might expect. Where it falls short depends on how you plan to use it. This is not a living-room controller. There’s no wireless option, no Bluetooth, and no flexibility if you like to game from the couch. The customization also leans on Razer’s software, which you’ll need to download to remap buttons or enable that 1000Hz mode. It works well and lets you create profiles for different games, but it does add an extra step. You also can’t tweak everything, like the main button layout or D-pad. Still, if you mostly play on PC and want something that feels closer to a competitive tool than a casual controller, this deal makes a strong case. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $148.99 (List Price $179.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $299.00 (List Price $349.00) Sony WH1000XM6- Best Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones — $398.00 (List Price $459.99) Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm, S/M Black Sport Band) — $299.00 (List Price $399.00) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $35.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Indoor Cam Plus (2025) — $39.99 (List Price $59.99) Fire TV Stick 4K Max Streaming Player With Remote — $34.99 (List Price $59.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Markets in Europe and the US reel after Iranian strikes on Qatari natural gas complexView the full article

Traders and analysts warn of lasting disruption after damage to facility that supplies a fifth of the world’s LNGView the full article

Pray for Asian naphtha consumersView the full article

The used-car e-commerce platform Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) is planning to do something it has never done before: split its stock. If completed, the move will significantly reduce the per-share price of CVNA stock, without affecting the company’s total value. But first, it needs to be approved by shareholders. Here’s what you need to know about Carvana’s proposed stock split. What is a stock split? A stock split is a mechanism by which a company can increase or decrease the number of its shares by dividing those shares or combining them. There are two types of stock splits: a forward split and a reverse split. A forward split is the most common, and the type that Carvana is proposing. In a forward split, an individual share is divided into additional shares, reducing the value of each share. A forward split is usually just referred to as a “stock split.” On the other side of the coin, you have a reverse split. These are less common than forward splits. In a reverse split, multiple existing shares of a stock are combined into a single share, making each new share more valuable because there are fewer of them. While both types of splits change the value of a single share, they do not inherently affect the company’s overall market cap. This is because the total number of new shares and their new stock price still equals the same sum as the former number of shares and their price. For example, take an imaginary company, XYZ, with 1,000 outstanding shares each worth $100. The total value of the company, its market cap, is thus $100,000. But then XYZ decides to split its shares by a factor of 10-to-1. This increases the company’s 1,000 outstanding shares to 10,000, yet because there are now 10 times more shares, each share is worth 10 times less, so the company’s market cap remains $100,000. How much is Carvana splitting the stock by? Carvana has announced that it intends to split its stock 5-to-1. Last week, the company said that its board had approved the split at that ratio. That means that once the split takes place, there will be five times as many CVNA shares outstanding as there were before the split. However, since there will be five times as many shares, the post-split share price of CVNA stock will be five times lower than its pre-split price. When do Carvana’s shares split? It’s important to note that Carvana’s share split isn’t guaranteed. While the company’s board has approved the split, shareholders still need to vote on the move. If shareholders also approve the split, the company’s stock split will proceed. In a release announcing the proposed split, Carvana said that shareholders will be able to vote on the stock split at the Annual Meeting of Stockholders on May 5, 2026. If they approve the split, investors who own Class A and Class B common stock will receive an additional four CVNA shares for every share they currently own after the closing bell on Wednesday, May 6. When markets reopen on Thursday, May 7, CVNA shares will begin trading at their new split-adjusted price. What will Carvana’s new split-adjusted stock price be? That’s unknowable for now because no one knows what Carvana’s stock price will be seven weeks from now when the adjusted price would kick in. For now, all we can say for certain is that, if shareholders approve the split, the split-adjusted price will be one-fifth of the pre-split price. Currently, CVNA stock is trading at around $290 per share. Assuming CVNA trades at that price at the close of markets on May 6, Carvana’s post-split stock price would open at around $58 per share on May 7. Why is Carvana splitting its stock? Given that stock splits don’t change the fundamental value of the company—or inherently make existing investors any richer—many wonder what the benefit of a stock split is. The greatest benefit to a forward stock split is that it lowers the cost of buying into the company for new investors. This is especially true for retail investors who may not have hundreds each month to sink into a new stock. If a person only has about $150 a month to invest in the market, Carvana, at its current share price of around $290, is unaffordable for them. But if CVNA shares are suddenly at $58 each, that same investor could scoop up at least a few shares. And if enough retail investors do this, it could actually help boost the overall stock price—triggering a wave of fresh investment in the company’s shares. Another reason companies typically split their shares is to make them more affordable for the company’s own employees, who often participate in employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). If a company’s share price is lower, employees can get more shares via their ESPP contributions. This often increases employee loyalty within the company and can be a motivating factor in their work. After all, if you own shares in the company you work for, you want that company to do as well as possible so those shares continue to rise. Indeed, when announcing the proposed stock split, Carvana chief financial officer Mark Jenkins said, “This is the first split in Carvana’s history, and we believe it achieves the important goal of keeping our stock accessible to all of our team members.” How have Carvana’s shares performed in 2026? CVNA shares have had a rough start to 2026. While the company’s share price climbed to over $480 in January, it has since seen a massive decline. The stock took its greatest hit this year in February after Carvana reported its Q4 2025 earnings. While the company did achieve net revenue growth of 58% to $5.6 billion, it missed hard on adjusted EBITDA, which came in at $511 million. As a result, the company’s stock price fell nearly 16% in one day. Since then, CVNA shares have continued to be hit, largely due to a relatively bearish market for growth stocks, especially after America’s attack on Iran and the ongoing economic uncertainty. Yesterday, CVNA shares fell nearly 7.5% to $291.17. Year-to-date, CVNA shares are now down 31% as of yesterday’s close. Yet, over the past 12 months, Carvana has performed remarkably well. Since this time last year, CVNA shares have risen nearly 75%. View the full article

Global energy prices soared Thursday after Iran attacked two oil refineries in Kuwait and a key natural gas facility in Qatar that can supply one-fifth of the world’s liquified natural gas. The attacks added to fears the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic may be longer and more extensive than feared, with lasting damage to oil and gas production. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose nearly 6% to $113.77 per barrel, up from less than $73 per barrel on the eve of the war. U.S. benchmark crude was less affected by the latest attacks in the Middle East, rising less than 1% to $96.26 per barrel. The European TTF benchmark for natural gas prices traded 17% higher on Thursday and has doubled in the past month. The Iranian attack hit the Ras Laffan terminal for shipping out liquefied natural gas in Qatar. Qatar normally supplies some 20% of the world’s consumption of LNG, which can be carried by ship. The facility shut down after a drone attack. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most tanker traffic also left the gas with nowhere to go. If the disruptions from Iran’s attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors’ energy infrastructure keep oil and gas prices high for long, they could create a debilitating wave of inflation for the global economy. Markets on Wall Street slipped before the opening bell. Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each fell a 0.1%, while Nasdaq futures dipped 0.3%. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve opted to leave its benchmark interest rate alone and projected just one more quarter-point cut this year due to ongoing elevated inflation and uncertainty about the ramifications the Iran war will have on the global economy. Prices for gold and silver also tumbled, dragging down major mining stocks with them. Gold fell 4% to $4,697 an ounce, while silver slipped 8.7% to $70.80. Most industrial metals also saw their prices fall. Shares in miners Hecla and Newmont slid 7.8%, while Freeport-McMoRan fell 4.6%. Markets in Europe and Asia were getting hit much harder than U.S. markets. Germany’s DAX lost 2.4% by midday, the CAC 40 in Paris fell 1.7% and Britain’s FTSE 100 shed 2.1%. In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 3.4% to 53,372.53 as the Bank of Japan also opted to keep its benchmark interest rate on hold at 0.75%, citing the war with Iran as one factor. In its monetary policy statement the BOJ said that “in the wake of increased tension in the Middle East, global financial and capital markets have been volatile and crude oil prices have risen significantly; future developments warrant attention.” Higher oil prices are a heavy burden for Japan, which like South Korea and Taiwan depends on imports of most raw materials for industries that rely heavily on oil and its derivatives. The Kospi in Seoul lost 2.7% to 5,763.22. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng slipped 2% to 25,500.58, while the Shanghai Composite index shed 1.4% to 4,006.55. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.7% to 8,497.80 and Taiwan’s Taiex fell 1.9%. In India, which has also suffered from shocks to supplies of oil and gas, the Sensex lost 2.7%. “The combination of higher oil, rising U.S. yields, and a stronger dollar is acting as a macro wrecking ball across Asian assets and currencies,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary. Business Writer Matt Ott reported from Washington. —Elaine Kurtenbach and David McHugh, AP Business Writers View the full article

“I have no idea if this is what they want me to do. I barely get any feedback.” This is a statement I often hear from leaders in my coaching calls, even those at a senior level. When these leaders were early in their careers, there was more frequent guidance and coaching on what success looked like for them and if their work met expectations. However, research by Amy Edmondson shows that the higher you rise in an organization, the less feedback you tend to receive, which can make it feel like you’re losing reassurance. In coaching calls with my clients, we often discover how reliant they were on their leader’s affirmation, and that this recognition served as motivation. In addition to getting less feedback from leaders, as your level of influence increases, transparency can decrease. Authority bias can take over as direct reports put their leaders on a pedestal and withhold critical feedback, assuming that their leader knows best or fearing the repercussions of sharing a divergent opinion. As you rise, there are simply fewer people in the organization who can guide you on your next steps. Here are some strategies you can leverage to get better feedback at work. ASK FOR ADVICE INSTEAD OF FEEDBACK People sometimes hesitate to give feedback, but most people love giving advice. A phrase I often use is this: “I’d love some advice on what I can try next time to make this meeting agenda clearer and more actionable for our group.” Recent research finds that framing the ask as advice rather than “feedback” helps reviewers focus on future-oriented, tangible suggestions instead of only dwelling on past performance. NURTURE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY To create an environment where your team feels comfortable sharing advice or feedback, you can model vulnerability (this signals that it’s safe for others to take interpersonal risks). You can also explicitly invite input and questions from everyone (for instance, “What could we improve here?”) and respond in ways that reinforce openness (like thanking people for their honesty). In addition, you can also call out where you saw yourself needing improvement. This might sound like, “I noticed I started rambling at the end of that meeting. Where could I have shortened my message for better clarity?” AVOID VAGUE QUESTIONS Vague requests, like asking, “How can I improve this?” can lead to insubstantial or equally vague responses. Instead, focus on clearly defining your goal and ask for advice on how to do a better job reaching that goal. For example, instead of saying, “I want to improve my presentation skills,” you can instead lead with, “I want to improve my presentation flow for clarity and brevity.” It can also be helpful to set the purpose before you make the request. This means sharing why you want the feedback (for example, to be more influential in asking for resources for our team) and how you’ll use it. This can help people frame their thoughts in a way that moves you closer to your goal. If they have a shared interest in your outcome, this also incentivizes them to give you helpful input. BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT YOUR CIRCLE Leaders often end up surrounded by similar perspectives (people who think like them or report to them), which reduces the likelihood of honest challenge. If your current circle is limited, try exploring your industry or professionally affiliated groups. Because of the shared common interest in the type of work you do, this is a great place to foster connection. You can do this by participating in conferences, meet-ups, or even online forums. Ask them to challenge your viewpoints or provide evidence from their experience that contradicts your viewpoints. As you rise in the organization, your relationships with your colleagues to get work done can also be just as important as the relationship with your leader. This is especially true at executive levels when you often need resources from your peers’ teams to accomplish your own projects. To nurture these relationships, you can schedule recurring 1:1s with peers that allow them to also raise topics of importance. Another great way to build these relationships is to set up collaborative coworking sessions where advice naturally flows as you work alongside them. As you gain more visibility, seniority, and decision-making ownership in your organization, feedback will flow differently to you. You have to cultivate it intentionally, with clarity and from a new circle of sources. View the full article

Assessment from MPC adds to sell-off in gilts and prompts traders to increase bets on higher borrowing costsView the full article

Ride-hailing app to buy as many as 50,000 autonomous vehicles and invest an initial $300mn in California EV companyView the full article

Darren Graves will become Big Four firm’s new chief if approved by colleaguesView the full article

It’s one of the trickiest questions for any leader, especially in times of transformative change: when to follow the herd and when to go it alone. Since taking the reins as CEO of Tubi in September 2023, Anjali Sud has been finding a unique path for the Fox-owned streamer. The biggest streaming services in the world—Disney+, Netflix, Prime—battle for premium content and subscription dollars. Tubi, meanwhile, has gone all in on free, with its on-demand streaming app and library of more than 300,000 movies and shows. Tubi was the first streamer to add a TikTok FYP-style video scroll to its mobile interface to help users discover new shows by replicating the UX of the social media app that competes for their attention. (Netflix has since launched its own version.) All of this aligns with the streamer’s strategy to target young people who have never had a cable subscription and prefer rabbit holes to broad buckets of content (an approach Sud has called “niche as core”). Tubi’s genre-spanning library includes everything from blockbusters like Jurassic World and originals like the young adult sports romance Sidelined: The QB and Me to content from a growing roster of social media creators including Jubilee, Kinigra Deon, and FunnyMike. It’s working. While user growth seems to have slowed after exploding from 64 million in February 2023 to 97 million by the end of 2024 (Tubi now has more than 100 million users), profitability has arrived earlier than expected. Tubi generated $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2025 revenue and closed its second consecutive EBITDA-profitable quarter at the end of last year, powered by 19% year-over-year revenue growth and a 27% surge in user engagement. I spoke to Sud about how she got here—and how she plans to maintain Tubi’s momentum in the face of ferocious competition. When you left Vimeo for Tubi in 2023, you wanted to redefine the streaming experience, especially for younger users. Take us back to that moment. What was your vision for Tubi? I had spent almost a decade at Vimeo, helping to provide tools for creators to tell their stories. What I learned from that experience was that creators need audience, and it helps if the experience is free. Gen Z, Gen Alpha—they expect that streaming should feel as easy and personalized as when they open up Instagram or TikTok. Where Tubi has approached it a little bit differently is that most of the [free advertising-supported television] platforms out there [e.g., Pluto TV and Roku] were taking live linear television and putting that [up] for free. You open up an episode guide, you scroll through channels, and you watch. We made a different bet: free on-demand streaming. Think of it like a free Netflix. We have Hollywood movies and TV series all on demand. We make original movies, we now have creator content on the platform—all on demand. Audiences want what they want when they want it. Tubi’s fans seem to both love it and gently mock it. I’m curious how you see that. Does Tubi have to be cool? Or does Tubi just have to be thought of with affection, as long as people are using it. I love it [the mocking]! I really do. For years, Tubi, we’ve had a little shade, particularly, I’d say, Hollywood, this questioning of, well— The B movies, yeah. Wait, are you premium? But actually, I’ll tell you, I think the root [question] for consumers is more like: What’s the catch? In a world where streaming prices are dramatically increasing while the amount of original content is going down, you’ve got Tubi improving its value proposition, growing its content library. There is no catch. Andrew Boyle Well, the catch for any ad-supported medium is that the user is the product. You get something for free, advertisers sell to you. Fair enough— we’ve been willing to make that deal for a long time. But let’s go a little bit deeper on the modern economics of free. What does it take to make free TV profitable right now? Scale. It’s a typical flywheel business. The more people we have watching Tubi, the better we are at understanding what they want. That allows us to monetize through ads that engage, which then allows us to reinvest in the content and the experience. If you look at Tubi’s growth in engagement, it’s not coming from a single hit [show or movie], it’s coming from that flywheel. As we get better at that—as that flywheel spins faster and faster—our margins will improve. That profitability and that improvement doesn’t come through cost cutting. It comes through growth. Is there a particular ad tech or feature that you feel has especially high potential? With the latest foundation models and machine learning, there’s still plenty of room to improve personalization. The average person today, when they turn on their television, it takes them over 10 minutes to figure out what to watch. It’s got to go down to seconds, and I do think it’s possible. Something like 20% of us just give up and start scrolling [social media] on our phone. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t get to a point where you’re immediately like: Oh, there’s something here I want to watch. And then with advertisers, it’s the same thing. It’s our job to make ads feel seamless, helpful, and useful to our audiences. We will use AI to analyze every single millisecond of content on our platform and contextually target an ad based on the scene, based on the sentiment and the feeling that the scene is evoking. What’s an example of that? Imagine you’re watching Fast & Furious, and you pause during a car-racing scene. First of all, we should be able to pop up stats and things that are relevant to that scene that you might find interesting. We should also be able to pop up a car ad that has the same sentiment and feeling—and maybe even makes a contextual reference—to the scene you were just watching. Let’s talk about “niche as core,” your strategy of embracing these culturally specific fandoms. First, we’re very committed to continuing to grow our library. Having a large library, it’s a listening tool. It’s a way for us to make sure we aren’t being prescriptive about what audiences want but letting them tell us what they want. We’ve recently added quite a lot of stories from creators. For each individual viewer, we know there’s a paradox of choice. When every viewer opens Tubi, we want to surprise them with something that our data tells us they might like, even though they wouldn’t know it. How do you define success for emerging storytellers on Tubi versus YouTube or TikTok? What is the pitch to them? It’s about expanding the pie for creators. We definitely don’t want to create a scenario where we’re saying: Don’t put your content on YouTube, or only put your content on Tubi. We’re not creating a walled garden. We’re not trying to own their IP or limit their creative freedom. And I think that approach is somewhat unique in the industry. When we talk to creators, what we hear from them—especially the ones that have already built thriving businesses—is that they just want to elevate their storytelling. They want to take more creative risks, they want to graduate into Hollywood in some instances, maybe they want to do more with longer-form formats. And if you look at the direction a lot of the other social platforms are going, they’re moving into even more short form. What is the default business model for creators on Tubi? Do you just calculate engagement and you give them a share of advertising, or is it more complicated than that? It’s actually the same pyramid we use for Hollywood content. We have nonexclusive content. Anyone can just work with us, and we will put their content on Tubi for a revenue share, very similar to what YouTube does. And then we listen. And when we see that our audience is really interested or fans are really interested in more from this creator, we will pay a licensing fee for an exclusive window on Tubi, all the way up to creating and producing and funding an original. You led Vimeo, which evolved into a SaaS company that made tools for creators. What did you leave behind as you transitioned to Tubi, and what did you bring with you? Both are businesses where technology is meeting creativity and storytelling, and you need to find a way to bring those two cultures together. And I actually think it’s very hard. We have to be at the intersection now of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue. You have engineers who are deep into ML [machine learning] research, having to work hand in hand with creatives on the Hollywood lot who are producing content, and then you’re having to translate all that to brands. And I think what I’ve learned is that those different cultures tend to be very siloed and there’s a lot of internal friction. How do you solve for that? First, the incentives have to be aligned. At Tubi, we have a single metric that we use to define success, which is viewer engagement. And increasingly, it’ll be viewer passion. It’s not just: Did somebody watch something? It’s: Did they love it? Did they comment on it? And every single [employee] has to feel like they will only succeed and fail if we are all together in that one thing. We just gathered our top 50 leaders in Orlando, Florida, last week, and we spent a lot of time together kind of working through the tensions and the trade-offs. What were some of the main tensions that you worked through? We have a core model and a business that’s working and growing, and yet there are so many other things we can expand into. There are so many different things that seem great, but which of these are just “shiny object syndrome” and which are actually leading indicators that this is the future? There’s no playbook for what Tubi is trying to do. The things we debate the most are: What are we going to stop doing? What are we going to say no to? Yeah, it’s such a hard question. There’s so much that you can do. Technology enables almost anything. But there’s only so much that you should do. We try hard to avoid the “let’s do this because other people are doing it” or because there are a lot of articles right now about how this is the new thing. That’s always a warning sign to me. And in our industry, there’s a lot of that. We try to think only about our audience. Instead of spending hours reading what everyone’s saying on podcasts and who’s buying who or all of that, it’s: How much time are we spending on Reddit or Wattpad understanding what fans are excited about? How much are we educating ourselves and taking the pulse on our culture and what our audience in particular cares about? How does your audience inform your leadership team? A diversity of perspectives leads to better decisions and better businesses. I’ve always been a big believer in that. The leadership team at Tubi is diverse. We are diverse from a gender, ethnicity, and industry perspective. We have the Silicon Valley technologists, we have the social-first brand builders, we have the Hollywood born-and-bred studio people. We just launched what we call the Tubi Builders Program for AI and machine learning. We have engineers right out of college, and we are letting them immediately build stuff on Tubi. We need the people who are AI-native, who are naturally embracing these new tools. And we have to hire people who represent the generation that we serve. If you look at our marketing team, there are a lot of Gen Z, socially native people on that team, as there should be. One of the best ways to have empathy for your customers is to have your customers on your team. Explore the full 2026 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 720 honorees that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 59 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more. View the full article

Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have hit the headlines—not least because of their role in making some people filthy rich off the back of the Middle Eastern war. But they’ve also drawn the attention of legislators concerned about their growing prominence. Many officials have privately raised concerns about platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. Arizona’s attorney general has gone further, charging Kalshi with offering what the state alleges are illegal bets on election outcomes. “Kalshi may brand itself as a ‘prediction market,’ but what it’s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law,” said Kris Mayes, the state’s attorney general, in a statement. At the same time, Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Greg Casar, both Democrats, have introduced the BETS OFF Act, which would ban wagering on government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome. The recent developments are “wild,” says John Holden, associate professor of business law and ethics at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. “This is the most aggressive we have seen a state be with going after any of the prediction market sites.” Gaming law specialist lawyer Daniel Wallach adds that “this represents a true inflection point.” For Holden, what stands out is that Arizona is pursuing Kalshi under both general betting laws and specific prohibitions on election wagering. “Election wagering is something that many states prohibit via specific statutes,” he says. That approach could criminalize betting on elections, rather than relying solely on civil enforcement. “This is clearly an escalation,” says Karl Lockhart, assistant professor of law at DePaul University. The strategy itself marks a shift. “Arizona, and actually a lot of states, have these laws that forbid people from gambling on elections,” says Lockhart. Using those statutes to argue that Kalshi cannot serve customers in the state is a novel attempt to rein in the platform. “Arizona is going to be the first to test this, to see if this election betting law approach works,” he says. The companies’ expansion into a wider range of markets has helped regulators begin building a potential case against them—while also underpinning their rapid growth. In December, Kalshi was valued at $11 billion. But that diversification is also part of the companies’ defense. Lockhart says prediction market firms have broadened their offerings by arguing they are tied to real economic outcomes that users may want to hedge, from weather events to government decisions. The goal, he suggests, is to avoid resembling traditional sportsbooks. “They don’t want to just be purely offering sports contracts, because then it seems very, very clear that this is just what they’re doing,” he says. By offering contracts on elections, policy outcomes, and other real-world events, the companies can argue they are something more expansive—and more financially legitimate—than gambling sites. That argument has come under increased scrutiny alongside the BETS OFF Act. “Too often, prediction markets are becoming yet another place for rich and powerful people to cash in on insider information,” said Rep. Casar in a statement. “This bill will put a stop to that.” However, Wallach doesn’t believe this is going to be a perceived problem solved through legislation alone. “This battle over the legality of event contracts is going to be waged in the courts,” he says. More broadly, Arizona’s approach marks a significant escalation in enforcement. “The criminal charges are a different approach from the civil litigation that has been going on in a seemingly ever-growing list of states,” says Holden. “Ultimately, however, it looks like the ends that the state is looking for would be roughly the same, stopping prediction market sites from serving customers in the state, if they are not licensed and registered through the same channels as other gaming companies.” A Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement: “Sadly, a state can file criminal charges on paper-thin arguments. States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it.” (Polymarket did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.) If Arizona succeeds in applying criminal election-wagering statutes to a federally regulated prediction market, other states may follow. “There are a number of states that have these election wagering specific statutes,” says DePaul’s Lockhart. “So it will be interesting to see if there are other states that are willing to sort of take this escalating the stakes for Kalshi.” For now, he says, it is a “very, very interesting, quickly evolving situation.” View the full article

When electricity demand is set to surge—say, from a new power-hungry data center—the default response from a utility is often to build a new (and expensive) power plant and other infrastructure. A new report released by a cross-industry coalition called Utilize argues that we can make better use of existing power on the grid instead. Roughly half of the total capacity goes unused most of the time because the grid was built to meet spikes in demand. But as technology has shifted, it’s become easier to unlock that extra power. Smart thermostats, for example, can pre-cool your house when demand is lower. EVs can charge at optimal hours (and, in some cases, send power back to the grid when it’s needed.) Networks of home batteries, being rolled out by startups like Base Power, can also store power when demand is low and then provide it later. Data centers and other large power users can use load flexibility, moving their power use to certain times of the day. Sensors, software, and other new tech can help transmission lines carry more power. A mix of these solutions added together, along with others, can free up more power for new uses, from data centers and factories to millions of drivers charging new EVs. If new electric demand can be added without a major new investment in infrastructure—and more customers are actually sharing the same fixed costs—the cost of electricity can go down for everyone. The same solutions can also make the grid more resilient in extreme weather. “We’ve heard a lot about affordability of electricity in the last year,” said Utilize executive director Ian Magruder at a press conference yesterday. (The group includes members like Google, Carrier, and Tesla.) “We think that there are a lot of solutions being proposed, but our view is that this solution of grid utilization is one of the only near-term solutions that can meaningfully reduce the cost of electricity at scale in short order.” The report modeled what could happen at a typical midsized utility, and then calculated what the approach could mean nationally. By increasing grid utilization by 10% as electricity demand increases, the report says that consumers could save between $110 billion and $170 billion on electric bills over the next decade. That’s on top of savings that people could get from participating in specific utility programs that pay consumers to use appliances or charge EVs at certain times. Virtual power plant programs already exist throughout the country, and there are a variety of ways that they can scale up. Base Power, for example, owns the batteries that it deploys at homes (consumers save on electric bills and have backup power if the grid goes down, while Base Power makes money by selling the power it stores back to utilities). Utilities lead other programs. Hyperscalers could also help. “One interesting emerging model is referred to as the ‘bring your own distributed capacity’ model, where a hyperscaler like Google could come into a utility service territory where the hyperscaler is hoping to develop a new data center, and actually pay for these resources themselves,” says Ryan Hledik, a principal at the Brattle Group, a consultancy that partnered on the report. “For example, pay to expand the utility’s energy efficiency and demand response portfolio beyond what the utility was already planning to do. And then take credit for the new capacity that creates on the system.” Utilize is advocating for new policies that can help grid utilization grow, such as a newly passed bill in Virginia that will require utilities to provide grid utilization metrics to regulators for the first time, and incorporate those metrics into planning. “We see this as an exciting first step, and we think that other states are already interested in following,” Magruder told Fast Company. “We’ve received a lot of inbound [interest] from red, blue, and purple states. This is not a partisan issue.” The U.S. has been slower than some other countries to adopt grid utilization, but there’s more interest now. “I think the urgency hasn’t been there in the past,” says Magruder. “For 25 years, we had very stable load growth in this country. Electricity demand wasn’t meaningfully changing. The price of electricity that Americans pay was relatively stable. We’re in a very different environment now in the last couple of years, and that’s creating new political and economic pressures that are forcing us to think differently.” View the full article

When FBI Director Kash Patel arrived at a joint training session with the mixed martial arts league UFC over the weekend at the FBI Academy in Virginia, he was wearing a custom pair of Nike sneakers that past directors wouldn’t have dared to step out in. Patel’s bespoke shoes were black, white, and yellow, and featured a number 9 on the side to signify that he is the bureau’s ninth director. A “K$H” logo on the tongue is Patel’s personal logo (FBI directors have personal logos now), and a skull from the Marvel character Punisher appeared across the back of the shoe, along with the FBI’s slogan “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” according to images that a source sent to William Turton, a reporter for ProPublica who covers federal law enforcement. However, Nike didn’t design or produce the customized embellishments, Fast Company can confirm. A photo from a LinkedIn post that’s no longer public showed Patel color-coordinating his Nike shoes with a matching black-and-yellow hoodie and hat. The casual outfit was typical for Patel, who sold branded merch like hats and socks before taking his current job, and who showed up to the Winter Olympics in a team jersey, like one of the guys. It’s a stark departure from how his predecessors dressed, though. The FBI’s dress code, as set at the top of the organization, once symbolized strict professionalism. Now it screams podcaster-occupied government. A source sent me this photo of Kash Patel’s customized Nike’s. The shoes feature a number 9 (Patel is the 9th FBI director), a Punisher skull (a vigilante killer from Marvel Comics), and his personal logo (K$H). The backs of the shoes show the FBI motto: "Fidelity, Bravery,… pic.twitter.com/WWLXrLrP70 — William Turton (@WilliamTurton) March 16, 2026 When former FBI Director Robert Mueller served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, not only did he not stray from his uniform of dark suits, white shirts, and red or blue ties, but he would chide aides who ever wore shirts that were pink or blue, according to Garrett M. Graff, author of The Threat Matrix, about the FBI under Mueller. For Mueller, this conservative, professional dress was a matter of integrity, and it communicated continuity and tradition without drawing attention to itself. The only way you saw him was dressed for the job. Though Patel wore a white shirt, suit, and tie on Wednesday, when lawmakers questioned him and other national security officials, his accumulating fashion faux pas in other situations communicate another message entirely. It’s more MrBeast than Mueller—which is to say it’s flashy and done with an eye toward self-promotion and juvenile tastes. Everyone is 12. The tacky look of Nikes customized after-market with a personal logo and comic book character isn’t exactly what you’d expect from a 46-year-old in an important job overseeing a law enforcement agency that’s over a century old. (At least they’re not oversized Florsheims.) From an administration led by a president who has normalized casual, promotional branded dress in office, though, it’s really not that surprising. View the full article

Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today. What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools, including a keyboard shortcut creator, an image-to-text extractor, and a better search bar than the one that’s built into Windows proper. PowerToys has become wildly popular among Windows power users, with more than 70 million downloads to date, but it’s also completely free, with no ads, Office upsells, or ham-fisted Copilot integrations. Instead of directly monetizing PowerToys, Microsoft sees it as a way to build goodwill among software developers and Windows enthusiasts while also incubating ideas for the future of Windows. It’s like a hippie commune within the Microsoft empire, building cool software mostly for its own sake. When I ask Principal Product Manager Clint Rutkas if a business model might ever emerge from all this, he seems almost taken aback by the question. “Nope,” he says. “Our goal is to empower power users to do more.” PowerToys 1.0 The history of PowerToys goes back a lot further than 2019, launching first as a free collection of utilities for Windows 95. Raymond Chen, an early Microsoft employee who is now a principal software engineer at the company, says those tools started out as a way for Microsoft’s engineers to experiment with new features. Windows 95 applications, for instance, could display their own options in File Explorer’s right-click menu, so Microsoft’s developers tested an option for viewing .CAB files. They also built a circular desktop clock to play with Windows 95’s non-rectangular window support and a way to switch display resolutions directly from the system tray. “They were ways of verifying the features that we were adding (to Windows 95) by actually using them,” Chen says. While PowerToys started off as just an internal experiment, Microsoft soon decided to throw the utilities on its website for download. The software came with no documentation and no tech support, but it quickly gained word of mouth through online user groups and became a hit with the PC press. “The important thing about the PowerToys is that they set you free to use Windows 95 the way you want to,” Paul Bonner wrote in the September 1996 issue of PC Magazine. After the initial release, PowerToys became less about releasing internal experiments and more about showcasing neat side projects, Chen says. Even if Microsoft didn’t deem a feature appropriate for Windows proper, a developer could still build it on their own and potentially get it into PowerToys. The bar for acceptance was low; Chen doesn’t remember ever rejecting anything that a developer submitted. Raymond Chen “Somebody would email me and say, ‘Hey, I got a cool PowerToy. Can you add it?’ And I’d be like, ‘Sure,’” he says. Over time, the PowerToys concept expanded within Microsoft. Chen himself spearheaded a set of PowerToys for the Windows Kernel, and Microsoft included a new set of PowerToys for Windows XP in 2001. Microsoft’s OneNote and Windows Media Player teams came up with their own PowerToys, and there was even a batch of PowerToys for Windows XP’s Tablet PC Edition. But in the early 2000s, a series of Windows security vulnerabilities brought the PowerToys party to an end. In response to computer worms such as SQL Slammer and Blaster, Microsoft decreed that it would no longer put unsupported software on its website. Chen recalls that any downloadable program needed a dedicated support person, an escalation path, and all sorts of burdensome onboarding. He couldn’t just round up a collection of .EXE files and slap them on Microsoft’s website as-is. PowerToys was effectively dead, and would stay that way for the next 15 years. “At that point, it’s just not fun anymore,” Chen says. “It didn’t discourage people from writing random side projects—everybody loves writing random side projects—it’s just that you lost a publishing model for them.” The comeback PowerToys went dormant until 2019, when Microsoft was looking to improve Windows’ credibility with software developers through things like Windows Subsystem for Linux and a modern command line terminal. Mike Harsh, Microsoft’s director of Windows developer experiences, had the idea to bring PowerToys back as part of that effort. “The mission statement was creating a bunch of really cool, super-powerful utilities and experiences for developers,” Rutkas says, the idea being that developers and power users would have overlapping needs. But this time around, Microsoft didn’t just solicit side projects from within. After announcing some potential ideas at its Build conference, it launched an open-source project on GitHub and began asking its community for feedback. Rutkas recalls an overwhelming response, both at Build and online. “We had no source code, and in under 24 hours, it had, I think 5,000 stars, which at the time was unheard of for a [GitHub] repository,” he says. Clint Rutkas Rutkas briefly left Microsoft in early 2019 for a job at Meta, but returned in the fall to spearhead PowerToys, just after its initial release for Windows 10. The first version included just a couple of utilities: One for arranging windows into preset layouts, and another for looking up keyboard shortcuts. Then it started piling on more, including a bulk file renaming tool, a batch image resizer, a keystroke remapper (for instance, to make caps lock do something else), and a way to search for open windows. Microsoft also began leaning on open-source developers for help. When the PowerToys team wanted to add a utility for extracting text from images, for instance, it turned to Joseph Finney, an independent developer who’d already built an open-source app for that purpose called TextGrab. Finney had a day job as a mechanical engineer and made apps in his spare time. When TextGrab came up in a discussion among PowerToys users on GitHub, Microsoft asked if he’d be willing to build a text extractor into PowerToys. Finney figured that if he didn’t do it, someone else would, and he saw it as a way to be part of a fun open-source project. “Ultimately, I’m like, ‘You know what? I’m getting my little goofy idea into the hands of more people. That seems like a big win,’” he says. Of the 28 utilities in PowerToys today, 12 of them credit the work of one or more open-source developers. Microsoft doesn’t pay for these contributions, but Finney says he’s benefitted in other ways, like earning a Microsoft MVP award and joining weekly calls with the PowerToys team. PowerToys is also one of the top referrers to his standalone TextGrab app, which has additional features and is available for free on GitHub or for $10 through the Microsoft Store. “Being an indie software developer who’s doing this nights and weekends, the big motivating thing is energy,” he says. “Being part of any community is where that energy comes from.” Future Windows ideas today Even if Microsoft doesn’t gain direct financial benefit from PowerToys, it’s at least succeeded in generating developer goodwill. On Microsoft’s GitHub page, it’s the second most-starred project behind only Visual Studio Code. But over the past few years, PowerToys has also become a proving ground for new Windows features. Joseph Finney’s Text Extractor utility, for instance, is still available within PowerToys, but its settings page now recommends using Windows 11’s built-in “Snipping Tool,” which includes its own text extractor inspired by the PowerToys version. PowerToys’ FancyZones tool, which lets users drag and drop windows into preset layouts, also helped inform the window tiling features in Windows 11. Rutkas says the Microsoft developer who originally built FancyTools worked on Windows 11’s tiling features as well. Why not just test these features through Microsoft’s preview versions of Windows? Rutkas says PowerToys lets the company try out new ideas faster, with rough prototypes that it refines through community feedback. And even if a feature does graduate to Windows proper, the PowerToys may still serve a narrower audience. “We’re helping out an extremely advanced user, so that lets us be a lot more free on the UI for certain things. But we can take those experiences and learnings and then bring them back into Windows,” Rutkas says. Some recent PowerToys developments seem more overtly aimed at becoming future Windows features. A tool called Advanced Paste, for instance, can use AI to rewrite or translate text in users’ clipboards, while the Command Palette tool is equivalent to the Spotlight search bar built into MacOS. Users can bring up Command Palette with a keyboard shortcut and use it to launch apps, locate files, search the web, and perform calculations. Users can even create and share extensions that add more features to the search bar. It’s by far the most ambitious tool that PowerToys offers. Rutkas won’t comment on whether tools like Command Palette will become core Windows features in the future, but it may not matter either way. What makes PowerToys great is that it exists on its own little island without overt pressure to become something bigger. Meanwhile, Windows proper has stretched out in so many directions that it’s lost sight of the basics, prompting Microsoft to acknowledge that it needs to rebuild trust again. Leaving PowerToys alone to do its own thing would be a start. “We’re testing, incubating, pushing the bleeding edge of a lot of these things,” Rutkas says. “We love developers on Windows, and this is one of the ways we help get very powerful experiences, very quickly, to our end users.” View the full article

Figure comes ahead of Bank of England decision on interest ratesView the full article

Is it even worth having a kid in the AI era? It’s the question at the heart of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a new documentary about the promise, peril, and uncertainty surrounding artificial intelligence. Codirected by Charlie Tyrell and Academy Award winner Daniel Roher, the film follows Roher, a soon-to-be father, as he tries to understand how AI works, what risks it may carry, and what kind of world he and his wife are bringing their son into. Along the way, he encounters both AI’s loudest skeptics and its most ardent utopians. The film features dozens of experts, including CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, longtime researchers concerned about the future, and critics like Tristan Harris, who also appeared in the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma about the harms of social media. Ahead of its theatrical release on March 27, the film screened at SXSW, where AI hype and anxiety have been everywhere. While in Austin, Fast Company sat down with Tyrell and producer Ted Tremper to talk about the film, their process, and why the movie resonates—why, for example, after screenings, when the lights come up, strangers start talking to each other. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What inspired you to create this film? Tremper: The purpose of the film is we wanted to make something that would—regardless of who you are, where you are—meet you where you’re at and create the invitation to ask yourself, What do I value? What are the things I care about? What are the things I value about my work and life? How can I develop intuitions about how the technology is being built so I can look out for what I need to protect and also the ways that it can benefit me? We try to be very clear in the film that if anybody tells you there’s a “good AI” and a “bad AI,” and we can get one without the other, that’s not how it is. You interviewed so many experts, but did you also interview average people? Tyrell: It was a thing that we were really looking at and considering as a narrative backbone of the film in some ways. For one reason or another, we opted not to use them, mostly because that became the main focus and purpose of Daniel’s character and story in the film. It gave a proxy for the audience to have a person who asked a lot of questions that people wanted to ask. Were you intentional with the structure—about starting with the AI realists and later interviewing the AI startup experts at OpenAI? Tyrell: When you’re new to [AI] and you go and you read about it, you’re gonna find the doomer stuff first. And then you’re gonna find that there’s this counter to that—the accelerationists—and then there’s a whole counter to both of those, which is the realists who will look at what’s doing right now. No matter what you look at and in what order, it leaves you in the space of, What are the actual answers and what is the plan? That’s why in the film we go to the CEOs, because they’re the guys building this. So they should have the plan, right? . . . Surely there are adults in the room who have a plan. And then, as you know in the film, you go there and there is no plan. So that puts the onus on the users, the non-technologists, to ask what we do. Were you guys disappointed with the answers they gave? Tyrell: Absolutely. As a filmmaker, you want people to be demonstrative with their emotions. Because that’s just how we’re used to watching films, where things are kind of elevated. Theater takes it way up here. Film takes it here, but in real life if you see someone who just got in a car crash, or watch their house burn down, they’re usually pretty flat. That’s the reality. So filmmaking is a storytelling technique where you have to demonstrate that in a human space so the audience watching knows that person is feeling on the inside. That really comes through in Daniel’s reactions, where you see his disappointment after hearing people with influence over the pace and direction of AI steamrolling ahead [despite being] worried. Tremper: There’s a section of the film where people talk about present-day harms. To me, those are the sense-makers, because they are the ones who are actually talking about the impacts. These are people like [AI journalist] Karen Hao, [Mozilla fellow] Deborah Raji, and others. It was super important to have them as part of the conversation. . . . The challenge is that because by and large the conversations have become siloed and adversarial—because of the nature of social media—a lot of them don’t actually realize that they agree on things. And so the sort of landing point of the film is that so much of it is about coordination. Tyrell: Everyone believes in their own truth that they decided in this space. And it’s really tough for people when you believe in something and you discern it as fact, to understand there could be other truths. And that’s what this technology is: It’s going to be more than one thing at the same time, . . . and everyone needs to kind of regain that understanding. Because right now, especially when everything is broken down in such binaries—good, bad, left, right—we’re so acclimated to this right-or-wrong nature. But people are way more complicated than that, and the issues that we’re facing and the technologies that we’re using are way more complicated. It seems to be a pretty emotional film for such a heady topic. Tyrell: People keep saying they weren’t expecting a film about technology to make them emotional. But you have to be emotional to face this technology, to realize what we have that separates us from something that isn’t technology, that isn’t human, to figure out what it is that we value. We need to decide what is important, what makes us, and how we can make that machine. It’s been interesting to see how there’s a groundswell of AI backlash that’s been bipartisan. Tremper: What you just described is a thing that will really give me hope. Because at a certain point, no matter how good the promises are that people are making, whether they’re politicians or people in the Big Tech companies, when the realities begin to become so asymmetrically shitty, [people] don’t care about promises anymore. If you promise me the future of education is going to be bright, but all I’m seeing is my kid is using ChatGPT for his homework, and my kid’s teacher is using it to grade that homework, there’s no actual human interaction happening. There are going to be tens of thousands of benefits and tens of thousands of trespasses against every part of our lives. If there’s one thing people take away from this film, [we hope] it’s that [AI] is not going to be either good or bad, it’s going to be both. The way you navigate this territory is just by looking at your life right now and asking What do I care about? Who do I care about? And how is this technology affecting me? After the Pentagon and Anthropic thing happened, 1.5 million people unsubscribed to ChatGPT. Five years ago, The Social Dilemma arrived when change felt almost too late. Is this meant to be more proactive? Tremper: That was actually one of the major challenges of starting the film, because we started it before ChatGPT 3.5 came out. I’m from Seattle; the joke I make is that a lot of this felt like we started making a documentary about Nirvana six months before Nevermind came out. Because it was just like nobody knows this is happening, this thing is coming, and now it’s become more ubiquitous. Tyrell: Even with the feeling [of being] too late after The Social Dilemma, you get to things when you get to them, and sometimes that means that you can’t lament how late you are when there’s still work that needs to be done, right? So The Social Dilemma was able to activate quite a lot of people and reorient a lot of people’s thinking towards social media, including my own. And I grew up as a digital native. Instagram was a cool thing once upon time. Now it’s just a mall. I can’t stand it. But that awareness of what was actually going on there [helped]. Was it too late? It would have been nice if it was earlier, but it’s not too late. View the full article