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OpenAI has announced that starting in December, ChatGPT will allow the generation of erotic content for verified adult users. At the same time, Elon Musk’s xAI has launched Grok Imagine, an image-generation system that already includes an NSFW mode for producing explicit imagery. None of this should surprise anyone. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have always been powerful engines of technological adoption. Photography, video, the internet, and even online payments all grew, in part, because of it. The interesting question is not about sex: it’s about what these decisions reveal about the kind of humanity Big Tech companies are shaping. Desire as a managed serv…

Layoffs might make headlines, but the real measure is how leaders support the remaining employees. Layoffs are undeniably challenging for good reason. However, it’s what leaders do in the aftermath that determines whether a culture fractures or recovers. I’ve led workforce complex reductions at Amazon, Microsoft, startups, and PE-backed firms. While every situation was unique, the same pattern appeared each time. It wasn’t necessarily the layoff that broke the culture. It was the leadership response. Layoffs disrupt the culture and impact more than just headcount. I’ve watched talented, engaged employees turn quiet and withdrawn after layoffs. Not because they sto…

The difference between OpenAI and Anthropic has never been clearer. OpenAI is constantly in the news with a new consumer app or feature, and is being billed as the next great consumer tech platform. Most recently it made news by offering a social network around its Sora image generator, and even says it plans to allow NSFW content on ChatGPT. Anthropic, meanwhile, has chosen a different path. The company stresses that because it gets most of its revenues from businesses and developers, it’s not trying to capture the mass market, and it’s not terribly concerned about how long users spend on its platform every day. “We are interested in our consumer users to the degree…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday. Gregg Renfrew is back. Four years after the entrepreneur sold her clean skincare and cosmetics brand Beautycounter to The Carlyle Group in a deal valued at $1 billion—and more than a year after she and the private equity firm shut down the company amid falling sales—Renfrew today is officially laun…

Over the past few years, business leaders have lived through a masterclass in volatility. A global pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, surging cyberattacks, economic whiplash, and now the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence have reshaped markets in unpredictable ways. For many executives, resilience once meant little more than business continuity planning: extra servers, backup systems, and insurance policies. But the world we lead in today demands more. Resilience is no longer just about defense—it’s about growth. The organizations that thrive amid disruption are not those with the strongest walls, but those with the most flexible foundations. They are a…

The week is not off to a great start for much of the internet. In the early hours of the morning Pacific time, internet users around the world began experiencing issues with accessing various apps, websites, and platforms. Shortly after, a culprit emerged: Amazon Web Services (AWS)—or, more specifically, an outage at Amazon’s cloud computing platform. Here’s what you need to know about the AWS outage and what websites are affected. What’s happened? At around midnight Pacific time, internet users around the globe began experiencing issues accessing high-trafficked parts of the internet. Websites like Reddit, services like Lyft, and even apps from resta…

One of the stocks with the highest surges in premarket trading this morning is Beyond Meat, Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND). As of the time of this writing, shares in BYND are up a staggering 67% before the opening bell. But what’s driving this surge? Here’s what you need to know. Beyond Meat’s recent struggles Today’s premarket stock price jump follows a significant rally on Friday for Beyond Meat, the California-based producer of plant-based meat alternatives, whose shares closed up more than 24% to end the trading week at 64 cents per share, according to data from Yahoo Finance. The stock price surge, which is now in its second trading day, may come as a surprise t…

Americans are growing increasingly concerned about their ability to find a good job under President Donald The President, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds, in what is a potential warning sign for Republicans as a promised economic boom has given way to hiring freezes and elevated inflation. High prices for groceries, housing and health care persist as a fear for many households, while rising electricity bills and the cost of gas at the pump are also sources of anxiety, according to the survey. Some 47% of U.S. adults are “not very” or “not at all confident” they could find a good job if they wanted to, an increase from 37% when the …

U.K. banks and government tech systems going down. University students in Australia struggling to complete their coursework. Homes across Europe losing access to their Ring doorbells. While you were sleeping, large parts of the Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based internet went offline around the world. According to the AWS outage monitor, the problem stemmed from a misconfiguration of Domain Name System (DNS) resolution within the company’s cloud infrastructure. The problem was remedied within three hours of being encountered—by people unable to log onto Roblox or search the web with Perplexity. But the outage highlights just how much the web’s day-to-day function…

French luxury goods company Kering said Sunday it is selling its beauty division to L’Oreal for 4 billion euros ($4.66 billion). Under the agreement, Clichy, France-based L’Oreal will acquire the House of Creed high-end fragrance company as well as licenses to create beauty and fragrance products for Kering brands like Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga. The companies said they will establish a strategic committee to ensure coordination between Kering brands and L’Oréal. Kering and L’Oréal said they are also exploring joint business opportunities in the wellness and longevity market, combining L’Oreal’s innovation with Kering’s deep understanding of luxury clients. T…

On a recent weekday in Aspen, Colorado, Stu Landesberg stood with a group of firefighters on a mountainside and watched a drone take off and fly toward a simulated fire. The drone detected the “hotspot”—a pile of ice, since wildfire risk was too high that day for real flames—and then aimed and blasted it with fire suppressant. The test flight was one of thousands that Landesberg’s startup, Seneca, has run while operating in stealth mode over the last several months. The company officially launched today, announcing that it has raised $60 million. It aims to reshape wildfire response—and help protect wildfire-prone communities in a way that hasn’t been possible until n…

A popular frozen food producer has recalled nearly 92,000 pounds of breakfast burrito and breakfast wrap products that contain eggs due to a risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The ready-to-eat burritos and wraps were recalled after the producer, M.C.I. Foods, discovered a positive Listeria result while doing routine testing on scrambled eggs from external suppliers, according to a recall notice posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The recall impacts multiple brands supplied by M.C.I. Foods, including some that contain branding from the popular Minions animated franchise. The California-base…

President Donald The President said Sunday that the United States could purchase Argentinian beef in an attempt to bring down prices for American consumers. “We would buy some beef from Argentina,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight from Florida to Washington. “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.” The President promised earlier this week to address the issue as part of his efforts to keep inflation in check. U.S. beef prices have been stubbornly high for a variety of reasons, including drought and reduced imports from Mexico due to a flesh-eating pest in cattle herds there. The President has been working to help Argentina bolster i…

China’s economy expanded at the slowest annual pace in a year in July-September, growing 4.8%, weighed down by trade tensions with the United States and slack domestic demand. The July-September data was the weakest pace of growth since the third quarter of 2024, and compares with a 5.2% pace of growth in the previous quarter, the government said in a report Monday. In January-September, the world’s second largest economy grew at a 5.2% annual pace. Despite U.S. President Donald The President’s higher tariffs on imports from China, its exports have remained relatively strong as companies expanded sales to other world markets. China’s exports to the United States fell 2…

On September 30, OpenAI launched its new Sora social network, powered by its Sora 2 video generation model. To call Sora’s launch successful is a gross understatement. Despite “invite only” access and restrictions outside North America, Sora exploded to over 1 million users in only five days. That’s faster than ChatGPT’s user base grew after its own record-setting launch. Sora is a vertical video app, aping the interface and user experience (short clips, vertical swiping to select a new video, Likes and Shares) of every other app in its category. Except with Sora, there’s a key difference–every video on the app is explicitly and joyfully fake. I resorted …

How do modernist transportation planners recommend handling congestion? By recommending new vehicle lanes. What happens when you build new vehicle lanes to handle traffic congestion? The vehicle lanes fill up with more traffic congestion. As they themselves have said for decades, you cannot build your way out of congestion. But every week you can do a quick internet search to see a bunch of new attempts. ‘Induced demand’ I’ve been hearing planners and engineers say “we can’t build our way out of congestion” since the 1990s, when I began my career. The wonky term that describes why adding more lanes doesn’t eliminate congestion is “induced demand.” Transportation p…

China likes to condemn the United States for extending its arm too far outside of its borders to make demands on non-American companies. But when it sought to hit back at the U.S. interests this month, Beijing did exactly the same. In expanding export rules on rare earths, Beijing for the first time announced it will require foreign firms to obtain approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even tiny amounts of China-originated rare earth materials or produced with Chinese technology. That means a South Korean smartphone maker must ask for Beijing’s permission to sell the devices to Australia if the phones contain China-originated rare earth mater…

In a stunt that’s surely destined for Netflix adaptation, this weekend a group of thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and stole nine pieces of priceless jewelry in less than seven minutes. Prediction markets are already betting on whether the robbers will be caught. Prediction markets, including popular sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, are platforms dedicated to betting on current events including elections, sports events, and even cultural moments. In the past, they’ve been used to gamble on the next pope, the incoming editor of Vogue, and even whether the “Coldplaygate” couple would each get a divorce. Now, as French police desperately search for th…

Apple stock just soared to an all-time high, and it might be thanks to the new iPhone 17. On October 20, Apple shares (NASDAQ: AAPL) surged to more than $264 apiece, topping out their last peak at $258.10 in December 2024. As of this writing, the company is trading up 8% since the start of the year and more than 11% year-over-year. The spike appears to be a reaction to a study published today by the technology market research firm Counterpoint. According to the report, the iPhone 17 series has outsold the iPhone 16 series by 14% in its first 10 days of availability in the U.S. and China. While the numbers are not yet official (Apple is expected to share more d…

Get ready to hurry up and wait. As delays and cancellations continue to pile up at the nation’s busiest airports during the weeks-long government shutdown, some travelers who have been anticipating extra headaches are hedging their bets with extra insurance protections. According to data shared with Fast Company from the price comparison service InsureMyTrip, 10% of travel insurance policies purchased in September and into October have included “cancel for any reason” (CFAR) coverage. That’s the highest percentage of the year so far and above the average of 8% seen from January through August, InsureMyTrip says. The additional protection, which can incr…

President Donald The President responded to this weekend’s massive ‘No Kings’ protests with an AI-generated video of him in a fighter jet, dropping what appears to be sewage (or poop) on American protesters, and told reporters on Sunday that the nearly 7 million people who attended the nationwide rallies “are not representative of the people of our country.” “The regime can’t decide if this was a violent insurrection or if it was such a bust that it never happened, but regardless, The President is clearly pissed,” Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the protest’s organizing group, Indivisible, said in a statement emailed to Fast Company. In that 19-second video, …

Shares in GSI Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: GSIT) are soaring for the second day in a row. The company, which specializes in semiconductor memory solutions, saw its stock price skyrocket 155% yesterday. Today, GSIT shares are up another 39% in premarket trading as of the time of this writing. But why? Here’s what you need to know. What is GSI? GSI Technology is a provider of semiconductor memory solutions. That means it specializes in developing memory chips and products that help process data. Though the company isn’t as well-known as the bigger semiconductor memory solutions giants like Micron or Intel, it has been a staple of the semiconductor industr…

Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, still admires Facebook. Not the Facebook of today, but the Facebook circa 2005. When it pretty much just told you someone’s birthday and let you poke ’em. “It would still be a great product!” exclaims Chesky. “We’re not going to be that company [making it], but there’s still a need for it.” But while Chesky doesn’t want to build Facebook 2.0, he is laying the groundwork for Airbnb to become something much closer to a social network. Airbnb’s fall updates launching today are but the first steps in a significant reframe of the experience of using Airbnb—one that is moving it closer to social networking, and another that embeds i…

Yelp users looking to learn more about restaurants, businesses, and other locations on the platform can now get information from an AI-powered Yelp Assistant. When logged-in users on Yelp’s iOS and Android apps visit particular business pages, they can now ask specific questions ranging from where to park to whether a restaurant offers vegan options. The answers are generated based on facts from reviews posted on Yelp, information provided to the platform by businesses, and businesses’ own websites, with relevant sections and even photos from Yelp reviews highlighted in the AI response. The assistant also provides a list of suggested questions to ask about a particul…

The White House on Monday started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Donald The President’s $250 million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects. Dramatic photos of the demolition work showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing. The President announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college basebal…