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Google may be testing replacing local pack at the top of the Google Search results for "near me" related queries with an AI Overview. So instead of showing a map and the three or so local listings, Google is showing an AI Overview with some local information.View the full article

Google is testing a new label or green text on its shopping ads to tell you when the price of that item is low. The label says "Lowest in 30 days," which says the price is the lowest it has been in the past month.View the full article

Google's AI crawler, Google-Extended, the crawler it uses for Gemini and other related AI services, does render itself and can render JavaScript, just like Googlebot, Google's main web search crawler.View the full article

Google Ads search themes for Performance Max campaign has a limit of 25 search themes per asset group. Well, according to Thomas Eccel, Google is testing doubling that limit to 50 search themes per asset group.View the full article

Since ChatGPT sparked the generative AI revolution in November 2022, interacting with AI has felt like using a digital confession booth—private, intimate, and shielded from public view (unless you choose to share). That’s about to change dramatically with Meta’s rollout of social features in its stand-alone AI app, released last week. Those quiet queries—“What’s this embarrassing rash?” or “How can I tell my wife I don’t love her anymore?”—could soon be visible to anyone scrolling through the app’s Discover tab. If society is still grappling with how to navigate artificial intelligence, Meta’s changes risk throwing even more confusion into the mix. For tech-savvy users, the shift from private to public might be manageable—they’ll at least be aware it’s happening. But most people aren’t monitoring every policy tweak from Big Tech, and may have no idea that what once felt like a private conversation with AI could now become public fodder, ripe for ridicule. (Meta did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.) AI has quickly become a hybrid of search engine and digital confidant. Remember the embarrassment of accidentally posting a private message publicly? Now imagine that happening on a massive scale, as millions unknowingly expose deeply personal questions and experiences. This isn’t a hypothetical concern. Posts from Meta AI users are already surfacing in the app’s social feed, including verbal queries asked via voice mode, like one user’s question about folic acid, which also revealed her age and postmenopausal status. The Discover feed is shaping up to be a slow-motion privacy disaster, as users unintentionally share raw, unfiltered pieces of their lives—far from the curated, polished image we’ve grown used to displaying on social media. Meta said in a press release that its AI app aims to “connect you with the people and things you care about,” and calls the Discover feed “a place to share and explore how others are using AI.” While the company insists that “nothing is shared unless you choose to post it,” the app nonetheless nudges people to share—and overshare—whether they fully realize it or not. View the full article

Google announced a number of new tag, analytics and data strategies on Friday including a new Google tag gateway for advertisers. Google tag gateway for advertisers allows you to run your Google tags, be it client-side or server-side through your own website infrastructure, such as a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server.View the full article

Google AdSense will remove the ability to block the video games category of ads. So if you previously told AdSense not to show ads related to video games on your site or in your apps, that block will soon not be respected.View the full article

Get B2B buying groups talking with this new playbook: persona building, buyer-led content, continuous optimization, and empowering sales teams to nurture buyer relationships. The post B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed: Proven Strategies For Sustainable Relationships appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

You're spoiled for choice when it comes to Facebook ads — from images and videos to carousels and collections, there’s a format (and placement) for just about every goal. Advertising on Facebook also gives you the chance to experiment and find just the right approach for your brand. But with so many options, it’s important to keep up with the latest Facebook ad specs. Facebook offers a world of creative opportunities, and getting the specs right is your first step to making the most of them. If you’ve ever found yourself Googling “Facebook ad sizes” or “Meta ad specs” five minutes before launching a campaign, we’ve got you covered. In this fully updated guide, you’ll find all the current Facebook ad dimensions, file types, and technical details you need to create standout ads in 2025. Quick Tip: Add this article as a bookmark so that you never have to go spec-hunting again. 💡New to advertising on Facebook? Here’s everything you need to know about Facebook Ads to get your campaigns up and running. Jump to a section: Technical terms you need to know The anatomy of a Facebook ad Create the perfect Facebook ad: design specs for different ad types Choose the right Facebook ad format Facebook ad specs and sizes at a glance 5 quick tips for creating standout Facebook ads Keep these guidelines handy Facebook ad specs FAQ More Facebook resources Technical terms you need to knowIf all the talk about Facebook ad specs, sizes, and file types feels a little overwhelming, I hear you. But take it from a writer: the good news is that you don’t need to be a designer or a tech whiz to create Facebook ads that work. To help you cut through the jargon, here’s a quick rundown of the most common terms you’ll see when reading this article and creating your ads: Audience network: Allows your Facebook ads to appear in apps and websites outside of Facebook and Instagram that are part of Meta’s ad network.Aspect ratio: The shape of your image or video (for example, 1:1 is a square)Aspect ratio tolerance: How much your ad’s shape can be slightly off from the ideal shape and still be OK.GIF: A short, looping animation made from several images that’s good for quick, fun visuals (Read our Ultimate Guide to GIFS to learn how to create and use them).JPEG: A common type of image file that works well for photos with lots of colours.MOV: A type of video file, mostly used by Apple devices. Facebook accepts it, too.MP4: A popular video file type that Facebook likes because it looks good and loads quickly.Pixels (px): Tiny dots that make up your image or video. More pixels usually means better quality.PNG: Another image file type that’s good for pictures with text, sharp edges, or transparent backgrounds.Resolution: The clarity of your image or video. Higher resolution means it looks sharper and more professional.💡Ads are one part of your Facebook strategy, but don’t forget about optimizing your profile. Click here to find out how to create a perfect cover photo. The anatomy of a Facebook adEvery Facebook ad is built around your objective, your conversion location, and your call to action (CTA). Think of them as your ad’s purpose, destination, and invitation, which all work together to move people toward your goal. Objective: This is what you want your ad to do. Do you want more people to visit your website? Watch your video? Download your app? Facebook offers a wide range of ad objectives so you can choose what fits your goal best. Conversion location: This is where you want the action to happen. Depending on your objective, it could be your website, a mobile app, Instagram profile, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or even a physical store. Note: You need to have a Facebook Page to run ads using the Meta Ads manager. You can then link your Page and Instagram account to run ads on Instagram. You can only link one Instagram account to one Facebook Page. Call to action (CTA): This is the button or prompt that encourages people to take the next step. Options include things like “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” “Send Message,” or “Download.” Picking the right one helps set clear expectations and gives your audience a helpful nudge. Once you’ve chosen an objective, you’ll be able to choose a conversion location and a call to action: Here's a table showing relevant conversion locations and call-to-action (CTA) options based on each Facebook ad objective: Ad Objective Conversion Locations Call-to-Action Options Brand Awareness Facebook Instagram Audience network Learn More Reach Facebook Instagram Messenger Audience network Learn More Send Message Call Now Traffic Website App Messenger WhatsApp Learn More Shop Now Sign Up Contact Us Book Now Get Offer Download Engagement Post Page Event Like Page RSVP Comment Share Learn More App Installs App Store (iOS/Android) Install Now Download Video Views Facebook video player Instagram Watch More Learn More Lead Generation Instant form Website Messenger Instagram direct Sign Up Get Quote Subscribe Apply Now Learn More Messages Messenger WhatsApp Instagram direct Send Message Send WhatsApp Message Conversions Website App Shop Now Sign Up Subscribe Contact Us Learn More Get Offer Catalogue Sales Website (linked to product catalogue) Shop Now View Collection Store Traffic Physical store (with map directions or store finder feature) Get Directions Call Now Learn More Visit Us Create the perfect Facebook ad: design specs for different ad types I once uploaded an ad that looked great on desktop but got weirdly cropped in Facebook Stories; lesson learned. Now I always double-check my dimensions. Using the correct Facebook ad sizes and specs is so important. When your creative meets the recommended guidelines, your ads are more likely to look great, perform better, and help you reach your goals. Quick Tip: I like using Canva to get my visuals sized just right, fast. Just set up a custom image or video using the pixel dimensions below. It makes the whole process so much easier. As an added bonus, when you’re creating organic posts, Buffer’s Canva integration allows you to create scroll-stopping images without leaving the platform. Choose the right Facebook ad formatOnce you select an objective for your ad, you’ll be guided through the process of creating your ad and get to choose one of four ad types to serve your target audience. Meta offers different types of ads for different products, objectives, and goals: Single image ad: Shows one picture with a message to grab attention.Single video ad: Plays one video to tell a story or show a product.Carousel ad: Several images or videos you can swipe through.Collection ad: Shows a big image or video with smaller pictures underneath to explore more.1. Single image ad specsWant to drive traffic to your website or app? Start with eye-catching, high-quality visuals. You can use your own photos or tap into stock images to help tell your brand’s story in a way that grabs attention and encourages clicks. Design recommendations File type: JPG or PNGRatio: 1.91:1 to 4:5Resolution:1:1 ratio: 1440 x 1440 pixels4:5 ratio: 1440 x 1800 pixelsText recommendations Primary text: 50-150 charactersHeadline: 27 charactersTechnical requirements Maximum file size: 30MBMinimum width: 600 pixelsMinimum height:1:1 ratio: 600 pixels.4:5 ratio: 750 pixels.Aspect ratio tolerance: 3%2. Single video ad specsShow off your product’s best features and capture attention with the power of sound and motion. You can upload a video you’ve already created, or use Facebook’s built-in video tools in Ads Manager to put something together. Design recommendations File type: MP4, MOV, or GIF. (Here’s a complete list of supported video formats)Ratio: 1:1 (for desktop or mobile) or 4:5 (for mobile only) Video settings: H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio compression at 128kbps+Resolution: 1:1 ratio: 1440 x 1440 pixels4:5 ratio: 1440 x 1800 pixelsVideo captions: optional, but recommendedVideo sound: optional, but recommendedText recommendations Primary text: 50-150 characters Headline: 27 characters Technical requirements Video duration: 1 second to 241 minutesMaximum file size: 4GBMinimum width: 120 pixelsMinimum height: 120 pixels360 videos With some objectives, you can use a 360 video. When people see this type of ad, they can turn their device or drag their finger to move around within the video and explore every angle. 3. Carousel ad specsCarousel ads let you showcase up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. They're perfect for highlighting different features of the same product, or even creating one long, swipeable image to tell a visual story. Design recommendations Image file type: JPG or PNG Video file type: MP4, MOV or GIF Ratio: 1:1 or 4:5Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels Text recommendations Primary text: 80 characters Headline: 45 characters Description: 18 characters Landing page URL: RequiredTechnical requirements Number of carousel cards: 2 to 10Image maximum file size: 30MBVideo maximum file size: 4GBVideo duration: 1 second to 240 minutesAspect ratio tolerance: 3%💡If you’re interested in using video ads across different placements, I highly recommend checking out this video guide provided by Facebook.4. Collection ad specsMake it easier for people to shop by displaying items from your product catalog, automatically tailored to each person who sees your ad. When people tap on the collection ad, it opens up and they’re taken into an immersive, full-screen experience (known as instant experience) where they can interact with your branded content — with the option to exit out of the ad at any time, of course. Design recommendations Image type: JPG or PNG Video file type: MP4, MOV or GIF Ratio: 1:1 Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 pixels Text recommendations Primary text: 125 characters Headline: 40 characters Landing page URL: RequiredTechnical requirements Instant experience: RequiredImage maximum file size: 30MBVideo maximum file size: 4GB⚡Plan, schedule, and analyze your posts to Facebook Pages and Groups with Buffer's Facebook scheduling and analytics tools.Facebook ad specs and sizes at a glance Ad Type Design Recommendations Text Recommendations Technical Requirements Single Image Ad File type: JPG or PNG Ratio: 1.91:1 to 4:5 Resolution: 1:1 — 1440 × 1440 px 4:5 — 1440 × 1800 px Primary text: 50–150 characters Headline: 27 characters Max file size: 30MB Min width: 600 px Min height: 1:1 — 600 px, 4:5 — 750 px Aspect ratio tolerance: 3% Single Video Ad File type: MP4, MOV, or GIF Ratio: 1:1 (desktop & mobile) or 4:5 (mobile) Resolution: same as image Captions & sound: Optional but recommended Thumbnail: From selected video thumbnail Primary text: 50–150 characters Headline: 27 characters Duration: 1 sec to 241 min Max file size: 4GB Min size: 120 × 120 px Carousel Ad Image type: JPG or PNG Video type: MP4, MOV, or GIF Ratio: 1:1 or 4:5 Resolution: At least 1080 × 1080 px Primary text: 80 characters Headline: 45 characters Description: 18 characters Cards: 2 to 10 Image max file size: 30MB Video max file size: 4GB Video duration: 1 sec to 240 min Aspect ratio tolerance: 3% Collection Ad Image type: JPG or PNG Video type: MP4, MOV, or GIF Ratio: 1:1 Resolution: At least 1080 × 1080 px Cover: First media in instant experience Primary text: 125 characters Headline: 40 characters Instant experience: Required Image max file size: 30MB Video max file size: 4GB 💡So, what about the specs and sizes for other social media platforms? Good news: we have an updated guide to social media image sizes on 9 major networks. 5 quick tips for creating standout Facebook adsStart with a clear goal: Before you even open Ads Manager, ask yourself: What do I want this ad to achieve? This will help you select the right format, objective, conversion location, and CTA.Keep the text to a minimum: Facebook recommends using images with little or no text overlay, as these tend to perform better and reach more people.Use music legally: Facebook is strict about copyright, and using unlicensed music can get your ad taken down. Watch out for restricted content: Facebook has clear rules about what can and can’t be advertised. I once tried to run ads for a weight loss coach using before-and-after photos, and Facebook disallowed them. All that hard work wasted. Learn the rules and save yourself the headache.Make use of the Meta Ad Library: It’s a great tool for researching trends, checking out competitors, or just gathering ideas for your next campaign. Here’s a guide on using this tool effectively.Keep these guidelines handyHaving these image size guidelines on hand will help you create awesome ads that stop the scroll and get you closer to your goals. And when it comes to organic content planning, scheduling, and analytics, Buffer makes getting in front of your audience a breeze. Sign up for Buffer (for free!) to start scheduling posts to Facebook and other platforms, storing content ideas, using AI to make your life easier, and so much more. Facebook ad specs FAQWhat’s the best size for Facebook ads in 2025?The sweet spot for single image ads is 1080 x 1080 pixels — that’s a perfect square and works great in most places. But if you're going for Facebook Stories or Reels, 1080 x 1920 (vertical) is your go-to. Pro tip: No matter the objective or the ad types, always aim for high quality and a clear image. Can I use the same creative across all placements?I get it; repurposing is a time-saver. While you can use the same creative across all placements, it’s not always ideal. A square image might look great in the feed, but not so much in Stories. It’s best to tweak your ad for each placement. What file types work best for Facebook video ads?Stick with MP4 or MOV; they’re the most reliable and Facebook-friendly. Keep the video short, clear, and under 4GB, and you’re good to go. What is the format of a Facebook ad?A Facebook ad usually has a visual (image or video), headline, primary text, description, and a call-to-action button (like “Shop Now” or “Learn More”). You can also choose from different styles like single image, video, carousel, or collection, depending on your goals. More Facebook resources How to Run Facebook Ads: Beginner's Guide to Advertising on FacebookBest Time to Post on Facebook: We Analyzed 1 Million PostsMeta Ad Library 101: 7 Ways to Use the Facebook Ad Library to Improve Your AdsThe Ideal Facebook Cover Photo Size and How To Make Yours Stand Out (+ 11 Ideas and Examples)How to Schedule Facebook Posts in 3 Easy Ways (+ Save Hours Every Week)Inside the Facebook Algorithm in 2025: All the Updates You Need to KnowView the full article

Performance reviews are often arduous, but they don’t have to be. AI tools can enhance the process for both managers and employees, offering new possibilities for efficiency and fairness. From streamlining data analysis to eliminating bias, here’s how AI is transforming performance evaluations and employee development across various industries. AI Connects Dots for Comprehensive Reviews AI has significantly improved our performance review process by providing managers with a clearer, more comprehensive view of their teams. Previously, we had vast amounts of data buried across various productivity tools—including meeting notes, shared documents, messages, and task updates—but none of it was truly actionable. Let’s face it: No manager with a team of 10 can realistically remember everything that happened over the last quarter for each person. Today, the way we work—how we communicate, collaborate, and deliver—leaves behind valuable signals. AI helps connect the dots across that information to highlight key trends, surface individual contributions, and flag potential blind spots. For employees, it means their impact is more accurately recognized, even if they’re not the most vocal. For managers, it creates a more holistic, data-informed foundation for conversations around performance and development. We also believe this approach can save a tremendous amount of time during review season, when so much energy is typically wasted trying to gather feedback and recall details. Equally important, it helps managers make fairer, more balanced assessments by surfacing the full scope of each person’s contribution. Simon De Baene, CEO and Cofounder, Workleap Streamline Reviews with AI-Generated Questions I used AI to take a client’s company values, create performance questions around them, and then tier the reviews so they were applicable to entry-level employees, individual contributors, managers, leaders, and senior executives. It produced those products for me in minutes. HR professionals or managers who aren’t using AI are wasting time and missing out on major enhancements to their leadership. Kerri Roberts, Founder and CEO, Salt & Light Advisors AI Tools Enhance Review Quality and Satisfaction We have found that managers dread the performance review process as much as employees do. Both struggle with effectively articulating KPIs [key performance indicators], achievements, and challenges in the required documents and during the review itself. This contributes to the second major shared complaint regarding the “paperwork” and workload to complete the process. We encourage managers and employees alike to utilize AI tools to analyze KPI trends, provide tables and charts, and even draft the performance review to save time and reduce anxiety. Additionally, AI tools can suggest appropriate SMART [specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound] goals for the next period and/or recommend learning and development opportunities for the employee. As always, useful output from AI requires good input. Furthermore, the employee and manager must carefully review and edit all AI-generated information to accurately and clearly represent reality. However, we have found AI tools have greatly decreased the workload of the performance review process, while at the same time increasing the quality and satisfaction with the results for everyone involved. Joe Palmer, Managing Partner, Prosperity Partners Consulting Balance AI Objectivity with Human Touch One specific example from our organization involved the marketing team, where managers had long struggled with bias and inconsistency in performance reviews. To improve the process, we introduced an AI tool that aggregated peer feedback, performance metrics, and goal progress into clear, objective drafts. It flagged subjective language and suggested more neutral alternatives, reducing bias and saving managers valuable time. However, a new challenge emerged: Employees described the AI-generated feedback as sterile—accurate but impersonal. This concern became especially clear during a departmental feedback session. To address it, we encouraged managers in marketing to use the AI drafts as a foundation, then add personal insights, context, and specific examples to restore a sense of authenticity. This balance between AI-driven objectivity and a human touch made a noticeable difference. Employees received clearer, fairer, and more meaningful feedback, while managers gained a tool that streamlined the process without losing the connection that makes reviews truly valuable. Michael Ferrara, Information Technology Specialist, Conceptual Technology AI Creates Personalized Development Plans Post-Review As part of my current doctoral research in learning and organizational change, I’ve been studying how HR leaders are actively using AI to enhance human-centric leadership practices—and performance reviews have definitely come up. One high-level HR executive I interviewed shared how they used AI to create a personalized learning and development plan immediately after a performance review. The AI helped analyze feedback and skill gaps, then recommended tailored next steps—what the employee could do now, next, and later to grow in a specific area. The employee later thanked their manager for recommendations that were on that plan, suggesting they felt supported. Another HR executive at a global automotive company used AI-enabled project management tools to analyze team metrics that correlated with performance. She felt this helped her make more objective, data-informed decisions rather than relying solely on instinct. In both cases, AI didn’t replace the human side of leadership—it amplified it by making conversations more personalized, fair, and focused on growth. Bailey Parnell, Founder and CEO, SkillsCamp Voice Notes Capture Nuanced Performance Feedback One thing that has surprised us was how well an AI-powered voice note tool worked during performance reviews not as a replacement for feedback, but as a way to capture tone, nuance, and real-time reflection. In our own staffing agency, where many of our clients rely on private staff-like housekeepers, chefs, and estate managers, soft skills matter just as much as task completion. Managers started using short voice notes to highlight specific interactions, such as how a nanny handled an unexpected visitor at the door or how a housekeeper went above routine to solve a problem without being asked. These moments used to get lost between checklists. On top of everything else, rather than treating reviews like a checklist, the voice notes created a space where real appreciation could be felt. A personal chef once told us that hearing the emotion behind the words made all the difference—it felt honest, not formal. These notes turned routine evaluations into conversations that captured what often goes unseen. In our world, where intuition and quiet consistency define excellence, giving those qualities a voice brought something far more meaningful than numbers or written summaries ever could. Brooke Barousse, CEO, Lexington Executive and Household Staffing AI Builds Objective Benchmarks for Fair Reviews We’re starting to use AI to build objective performance benchmarks to make our reviews more fair and impartial. Essentially, the AI analyzes key metrics and skill feedback from our own internal, anonymized data across similar roles, comparing performance among our project managers, engineers, or CNC [computer numerical control] machinists, for example. It helps our managers get a better grasp on ratings and performance discussions, as they can use the data to more easily identify if someone is truly excelling in their specific job or spot an area where the entire group could benefit from improvement. Our employees gain a much clearer understanding of the expectations for their role and can see how they’re performing compared to others in similar positions, which can be motivating or help pinpoint areas for development. The AI might highlight that one of our project managers consistently achieves client satisfaction scores that are 10 points higher on average than other PMs performing similar jobs, for instance. It provides solid evidence supporting positive feedback about their client skills, allowing us to go beyond mere gut feelings. Since implementing this data-driven approach, we’ve noticed that our manager calibration meetings for reviews run more smoothly and efficiently, reducing subjective debate time by 30%, because everyone is working from the same baseline comparisons to initiate the conversation. Leon Huang, CEO, RapidDirect AI Analysis Improves Review Conversations We implemented an AI feedback tool that analyzes communication patterns during performance reviews. Managers upload meeting recordings, and the AI provides insights on speaking time balance, interruption frequency, and sentiment analysis. This improved our reviews in several ways: Managers now receive data showing they dominated 70% of conversations (previously unaware), and they adjusted to achieve better balance. Employees report 40% higher satisfaction with review fairness. The AI also flags emotional responses, revealing when discussions trigger defensiveness. Most importantly, the AI tool summarizes action items and creates trackable goals, increasing follow-through by 65%. What surprised us was how the AI revealed that our female team members were interrupted twice as often as male counterparts—an insight that led to meaningful cultural change. The technology doesn’t replace human judgment, but it makes our performance conversations more balanced, actionable, and fair. Kirti Poonia, Founder, Caimera Creative Performance Profile Tracks Progress We’ve always found it challenging to review the performance of roles that aren’t tied directly to strategic goals, like our graphic designer. They don’t set quarterly targets or lead major initiatives. Their work is reactive, based on tasks assigned to them, which makes it hard to define clear goals or track measurable progress. Feedback often felt generic, and improvement was tough to gauge other than informal “good jobs.” To change that, we set up an AI-enhanced performance tracker using tools we already had access to. We connected Asana to Google Sheets through Zapier, which allowed us to automatically track things like task volume, turnaround time, and revision frequency. We also pulled in feedback from Slack, where a lot of real-time collaboration was happening. Using OpenAI, we ran sentiment analysis on both task comments and relevant Slack messages, which described how work was being received and the tone of the day-to-day communication. Together, this gave us a monthly snapshot we called the Creative Performance Profile. It helped spot progress over time and gave our designer real insights they could reflect on during their review, without needing a complex dashboard. In one case, we saw our designer’s average turnaround time improve by 22% over the quarter, while revision rates dropped by 35%. That led to a great discussion around how they were proactively clarifying briefs earlier in the process, something we wouldn’t have uncovered from the numbers alone. What’s been most valuable is how this gave us a new way to talk about progress in roles where goal-setting has always felt forced. It’s not about ranking team members against each other, but helping them see how their efforts translate into measurable growth. For the first time, our designer walked into their review with stats that reflected their day-to-day work and was able to explain where they could show improvement over the coming year. Not only did this help them grow their individual performance, but oddly, they expressed that it made them feel more part of the team in our planning and goal-setting discussions. It was just an overall win. Kyle Senger, Founder and Lead Strategist, Unalike Marketing AI Triggers Timely Check-ins Between Reviews AI is a powerful tool not only for performance reviews themselves, but also for pre-review and post-review check-ins. Instead of just standard calendar pings, we’ve experimented with systems that trigger automated reminders based on actual work data. For example, a manager could get a nudge to schedule a check-in if an employee’s key goal from the review isn’t progressing on track or if feedback indicates a challenge or bottleneck arising. This way, managers can intervene early and potentially prevent problems rather than waiting months for the formal review. From the employees’ perspective, it means they receive more regular support and feedback throughout the year. When the formal review time does arrive, it feels less like a big reveal because progress and any issues have already been discussed along the way. Traditionally, employees’ biggest complaint about reviews is that they feel like a pointless, arbitrary exercise. However, with AI reminders, it’s easier to take real action and create an ongoing conversation rather than forgetting about reviews a few weeks later until the following year. This approach is more supportive and more productive. Fineas Tatar, Co-CEO, Viva Automated Tools Spot Patterns and Reduce Bias AI has really changed performance reviews for the better. It’s made a huge difference in how managers view the work of their teams. Two tools that I absolutely love are Lattice Analytics and Betterworks. Lattice is useful because it tracks all the performance data automatically and spots patterns that might be overlooked. It has cut down prep time and helps craft feedback without bias. Betterworks, on the other hand, is useful for picking up wins that people usually forget to mention themselves by analyzing project work and communication. These tools can be game changers for efficiency when implemented, since they focus on actual data instead of just opinions. I know there are a lot of tools out there, but I think it’s best to find one or two that align with your organizational goals and leverage them for maximum benefits. Jacqueline Twillie, Leadership Officer, ZeroGap.co AI Promotes Equitable and Actionable Feedback As a former senior HR leader at a global tech company, I have observed how performance reviews can either foster growth or reinforce inequity. The thoughtful use of AI tools has begun to shift that balance when used intentionally. One impactful example: For a recent client in Big Tech, we introduced AI to support managers in writing more objective, bias-aware feedback. Performance reviews often contain vague or personality-driven comments, especially for women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ professionals. Research from Stanford and McKinsey confirms this disparity. We asked managers to run their draft feedback through an AI tool trained to flag vague, nonactionable phrases and suggest more equitable alternatives. For example, “Indira is a pleasure to work with” might prompt: “Consider elaborating on Indira’s specific contributions or business impact.” This helped leaders offer fairer, more actionable reviews and also created powerful learning moments around unconscious bias. Crucially, we do not see AI as a replacement for human leadership, but as a collaborator. Tools like ChatGPT or Gemini cannot grasp context or individual nuance, and they reflect the bias in their training data. However, they can help standardize fairness, sharpen awareness, and prompt better conversations. Used well, conversational AI can encourage leaders to ask, “Am I being fair? Am I being specific? Am I giving everyone the same chance to grow?” In a system where performance reviews shape careers and compensation, those questions matter. And AI, used wisely, can help us answer them better. Manuel Schlothauer, Founder, HeyManuel.com View the full article

The Positionless Marketer is the new marketing professional who is a triple threat with data, creative and optimization power. They blow up the traditional marketing assembly line, where roles are rigidly defined. Instead, they have agility, intelligence and execution speed in defining success. A blueprint for the way Positionless Marketers achieve this level of independence and mastery is Stephen R. Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey’s principles, trusted by millions as an excellent foundation for personal and business growth, align with the principles of Positionless Marketing. Covey’s seven habits are divided into three basic groups. The first three emphasize personal mastery (or private victory); habits 4–6 foster collaboration and synergize with others, public victory; the final habit emphasizes the need for continual improvement. All seven are embodied in the Positionless Marketer. The 7 habits and how they align with Positionless Marketing The whole concept behind Positionless Marketing is that all members do anything and be everything — a triple threat. However, a Positionless Marketer needs to focus first on self-development, including self-discipline, strategic thinking, and time management before being able to master cross-functional execution. Habit No. 1: Be proactive Covey’s first habit is being proactive. There are three types of marketers – those who make things happen, those who watch what happens and those who wonder what happened. Positionless Marketers act, while traditional marketers often watch. The traditionalists can watch what happens and wonder what happens after campaigns fail. Positionless Marketers proactively leverage AI tools to extract insights, create campaigns and execute without waiting. Instead of asking an analyst for this data, they self-start to use AI-driven analytics to find the answers on their own. This proactive approach enables them to react immediately as the insights uncover opportunities. Reactive marketers – those who watch what happens often wait on creative, data or engineering teams before moving forward, meaning they usually react once the opportunity has already passed, and do so with outdated messaging and campaigns. Habit No. 2: Begin with the end in mind Covey points out that you need to determine where you want to go before determining how to get there. You don’t get on a jet, train or in a car before determining where you are going. Marketing is no different. It’s the outcome that matters. The messaging or campaign is how you get there. Start every initiative with a clear objective. That means defining KPIs, customer journey impact, and personalization goals before determining the messaging or marketing campaign to get you there. Remember that while AI can speed execution, strategy is still driven by humans. Positionless Marketers ensure technology serves the vision, rather than the other way around. Habit No. 3: Put first things first Covey discusses four quadrants of time management: Urgent and important (quadrant 1); urgent and not important (quadrant 2); not urgent and important (quadrant 3); and not urgent and not important (quadrant 4). Positionless Marketers understand the importance of spending their time on those efforts that truly move the needle, not on busy work. Today more than ever, AI can handle those urgent but low-level tasks that don’t require human input, such as tweaking email subject lines endlessly. So Positionless Marketers focus on strategy, creativity and decision-making while allowing AI to handle the repetitive tasks. The bottom line is Positionless Marketers spend more time in Quadrant 2 — strategy, experimentation and automation — rather than reacting to constant executional requests. Public victory: Collaboration and cross-disciplinary mastery Covey discusses a win-win philosophy. This is a foundational element of not only personal growth and business, but also of sales and marketing. A Positionless Marketer must move beyond silos and embrace collaboration, adaptability, and customer-first marketing. Habit No. 4: Think win-win Positionless Marketing isn’t about AI replacing humans—it’s about AI empowering marketers. Instead of competing with AI — a lose-lose proposition; Positionless Marketers follow a win-win concept, collaborating with AI tools to execute faster and smarter. AI helps marketers become more agile, creative and strategic, eliminating repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on high-impact work. This also means a win-win for the brand and customers – the brand delivers effective marketing and campaigns and customers receive messaging and campaigns that truly resonate with them. Positionless Marketers leverage AI for personalization at scale, journey orchestration and content generation — then focus on refining strategy. Habit No. 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood Covey discusses understanding the audience first, then determining communications. Positionless Marketers follow this theory by relying on customer intelligence, not gut feelings for campaigns and messaging. Instead of assuming what customers want, Positionless Marketers rely on data to understand customers. They listen to customer behavior through AI-driven insights, then act accordingly. Positionless Marketers don’t do “Ready. Fire. Aim.” marketing. They analyze, then tailor marketing efforts accordingly. Habit No. 6: Synergize Synergize is about working together to find new solutions to challenging problems, according to Covey. The best Positionless Marketers synergize by blending creativity, analytics and execution. Synergy is non-existent for traditional marketing, which has specialists in separate silos, such as email marketers, copywriters, and data analysts. The Positionless Marketer integrates skills, using AI-powered platforms to execute seamlessly across multiple functions. Positionless Marketers have cross-functional mastery as their superpower and optimize without relying on multiple departments. Renewal Covey discusses that you can’t be buried in work all the time, such as sawing down trees – all of the time. Otherwise, you (the saw) become dull and can no longer do the job at hand. Habit No. 7: Sharpen the saw Technology is evolving fast — Positionless Marketers evolve faster. The tools that define marketing automation today will be different in a year. AI is advancing exponentially, and marketers who don’t evolve will be left behind. Even AI has evolved: concepts like generative AI and agentic AI were only discussed by those who were most technically savvy a couple of years ago. Now they are Positionless Marketers. Positionless Marketers invest in upskilling They learn new AI capabilities, experiment with emerging platforms, and continually refine their marketing expertise. For them, continuous learning is non-negotiable. Positionless Marketers have the right habits Stephen Covey’s seven habits provide a logical roadmap for mastering Positionless Marketing that frees marketing teams from the limitations of fixed roles, giving every marketer the power to execute any marketing task instantly and independently. Positionless Marketing provides three transformative powers: data power, creative power and optimization power. For any marketer to realize their full capabilities as a Positionless Marketer — they have to have the right habits. View the full article

The mayhem of Mar-a-Lago is less effective than the boredom of BrusselsView the full article

Since before he took office, President Donald The President made his disdain for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) clear. Now, he’s leaving survivors of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in Arkansas without any federal aid. After large swaths of the South and Midwest were hit by deadly thunderstorms and tornadoes in March and April, Arkansas’ Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders—a frequent supporter of the president—repeatedly wrote to FEMA asking for support in her state. “The sheer magnitude of this event created disastrous amounts of debris, extensive destruction to homes and businesses, and resulted in the death of three citizens, and caused injuries to countless others,” Sanders wrote in her initial request. (Since that letter was sent, 40 people in the path of the storms were killed.) After reviewing Sanders’ pleas, which went on to describe the extent of the hazardous weather and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, the The President administration ultimately wrote back that it had “determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies,” and that it therefore would not provide supplemental federal assistance. In contrast, in 2023, former President Biden granted Arkansas’ disaster declaration request following a deadly tornado within 48 hours. Given that Arkansas is a red state that voted for The President in the 2024 election, many were shocked that the president denied Sanders’ request for aid. But this isn’t the only time that The President has turned down appeals for federal help after severe weather events—and, while disappointing, the administration’s insistence that states should help themselves during times of crisis is in line with its larger efforts to dismantle federal disaster mitigation infrastructure. Several states are denied support from FEMA Since January, The President has denied several other FEMA requests that have surprised state lawmakers. In March, North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Josh Stein wrote to ask for 180 days of extended FEMA support for recovery costs related to Hurricane Helene, which was denied by the The President administration in April. That same month, Washington’s Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson requested FEMA support for repairs after a “bomb cyclone” windstorm last November that caused an estimated $34 million in damages. His appeal was also denied. “There are very clear criteria to qualify for these emergency relief funds. Washington’s application met all of them,” Ferguson said in a statement on April 14. “This is another troubling example of the federal government withholding funding.” Most recently, in early April, The President did approve a FEMA disaster declaration in Virginia to help the state recover after severe flooding. However, he refused Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s request for hazard-mitigation money as part of the disaster-aid package—a step that no president has taken in nearly 30 years. The Hazard Mitigation and Grant Program (HMGP) is overseen by FEMA and allocates funds to help communities protect infrastructure from future damage after severe weather, like by elevating flood-prone homes or strengthening buildings in earthquake zones. According to Politico, the program has allocated nearly $18 billion to states to safeguard 185,000 properties. “It’s an extremely important program for hazard mitigation,” Anna Weber, senior policy analyst for climate adaptation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Politico. “Instead of just rebuilding, we’re building resilience so we’re preventing future damages, deaths and injuries.” Historically, presidents have paired HMGP funds with FEMA’s overall recovery efforts, accounting for about 15% of overall costs for any given disaster response. But, since early April, The President has stopped approving allocations from the program. A larger plan to dismantle federal disaster response infrastructure This scaling back of HMGP runs parallel to a larger effort within the The President administration to potentially shut down FEMA altogether. On the 2024 campaign trail, The President repeatedly spread misinformation about FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene. In office, he’s already cut hundreds of staff from the agency, leaving its remaining staffers concerned about their ability to handle upcoming severe weather, like tornado and hurricane seasons. The administration has also withheld FEMA aid to migrant shelters, suggesting that they may have violated a law used to prosecute smugglers. Funding reductions have further resulted in FEMA canceling programs like federal fire training academy courses. In March, Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, reportedly said that her department planned to “eliminate” FEMA—a notion that The President has also echoed. And last Monday, The President named 13 members to a council tasked with recommending potential overhauls at the agency, though it’s still unclear how significant those overhauls might be. Experts have repeatedly warned that scrapping FEMA would result in a dark future for disaster relief. Now, several states—including some that voted for the president—are getting a first glimpse at that future. View the full article

Johann Pauwen and Michaele Simmering founded their furniture design business, Kalon, in Los Angeles in 2007. At the time, the U.S. was entering a major recession with many industries headed for total implosion. Pauwen and Simmering, committed themselves to finding local manufacturing relationships and logged countless hours looking for factories that could deliver on their solid wood designs within the United States. It wasn’t an easy process, and the founders had to write their own playbook as they went. “We really had to beat the streets and find these places on our own,” says Simmering. “Sometimes literally you’d drive past an open roller door, see certain machines or materials, and say, ‘Oh my God, they’re making X, Y, or Z and that’s how we’d find them.” Now, nearly 20 years in, all of Kalon’s products, except for its baby crib, are made in the U.S. The profitable business supports their family as well as those of their five employees. From the outside, it might appear that Kalon is entirely insulated from the roller-coaster tariff storyline unfolding every day here in the U.S. And to some degree they are: Simmering and Pauwen say their supply chain is strong and reliable and they have few doubts about their ability to deliver their product to customers as expected. Still, the pair is pretty stressed. They’ve noticed that many of their peers in the industry are losing business and, in some cases, carrying out layoffs. Kalon itself marked its worst sales month in history in April, on the heels of The President tariff news. “I canʻt believe we built this healthy business out of nothing in a really inhospitable industry: two collapses, a pandemic, and multiple wars,” says Pauwen. “And, a move to domestic manufacturing freaks out the consumer so much, no one will spend money. Maybe that will kill us, even though we’re U.S.-produced.” Kalon “It’s been an emotional roller coaster” Pauwen and Simmering represent an ecosystem of founders who’ve invested the time and money to make and sell things in the U.S. They’ve cultivated relationships with mom-and-pop manufacturing outfits. They’ve created jobs in the local economy. They’ve made it work in the name of sustainability and community. And now, as the The President administration’s wildly shifting tariff policy has shaken the foundation of how so many small and midsize designers do business both abroad and at home, these founders of American-made brands don’t feel any more at ease than their counterparts who sit at the helm of globally produced supply chains. Kalon What’s coming next is truly anybody’s guess, and many designers in positions similar to Pauwen and Simmering say they’re just bracing for the next jolt, whether that’s due to consumer insecurity, price swings in raw materials, a dearth of manufacturing options, or something else they’ve not yet considered or experienced. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” says Clare Vivier, founder, CEO and creative director at leather handbag brand Clare V. Vivier’s company, which is based in Los Angeles, sits at the nexus of The President’s tariffs. She works with five separate manufacturers in L.A., along with 17 manufacturing partners across India, Europe and Asia. The leather and hardware used to make Clare V. bags, says Vivier, come from Italy and Asia respectively. “We’re a great case study of what’s going on,” she says. “Seventeen years into this company, we have 14 stores and are sold in close to 200 shops around the world. Fifty percent of our product is made in L.A. and the other 50 overseas.” Clare V. Vivier says she’s structured her business this way out of necessity—to tap into different forms of workmanship. “We don’t have the options to make woven leathers and basket bags here in the U.S.” she says. “Those artisans aren’t here.” If they were, says Vivier, she’d already be using them. These types of skills and jobs, she says, went away years ago, as the industry was retooled for less hands-on, more mechanized manufacturing methods. In other countries, though, artisans (and the infrastructure to train new talent) are still a part of local economies. “These are not widget-producing jobs,” says Vivier. “These are artisans who are trained for many years.” Clare V. Vivier has considered bringing more of her manufacturing in-house. One of the manufacturing partners she works with in Burbank, California, is family-owned and run, and the owners are looking for a succession plan as retirement nears. But for Vivier, it’s just not in the cards. “We aren’t in the position to be a manufacturing business,” she says, likening the endeavor to the knowledge jump a writer would have to make in order to suddenly buy and run a printing press. “This is a highly specialized industry you can’t expect companies to just jump into. . . . My husband is French and we have a place in France. Vuitton has opened a huge training facility outside of our town there—to train artisans. I think, wow. We just aren’t doing that in the U.S. It would be amazing.” Clare V. For Simmering and Pauwen, they’ve decided to relocate their crib manufacturing to the United States. And while the decision aligns with their ethos to manufacture in their own communities, it presents a tough balance and some hard decisions around quality and cost. “Producing in Germany is roughly on par with the U.S. in terms of material and labor costs, but the level of craft and know-how is significantly higher there, which means the end product is often of superior quality—a failure of America’s industrial policy,” says Simmering. “The U.S. partner we’re working with [on the crib] was surprised by the quality of our Eastern European production and acknowledged that matching it would be a challenge—and at a much higher cost, at least 150% more.” The long game of factory building Some businesses, like East Fork Pottery in Asheville, North Carolina, have built out a manufacturing arm to their business from the start, which has helped hedge the pile-on effect happening with tariffs. Cofounder and potter Alex Matisse says that East Fork makes more than 650,000 pieces of pottery per year in its two factories. “We are relatively insulated,” says Matisse. “Our material supply chain is domestic. Clay isn’t expensive, but we put value into it. Our greatest fear is that if we do slide into a recession, it will impact us all. Building factories takes a long time. It’s hard to think about when confidence is so unsure.” Tyler Hays, artist and founder at furniture maker BDDW, which owns two of its own manufacturing facilities, says he’s grateful he made the decision to keep all pieces of his business under one umbrella so many years ago. “We have always had the slow business approach,” he says. “And we are patting ourselves on the back a little bit. But the way this is happening is bananas, with no plan. This should have been a five-year-plan. There should have been funding for small businesses; it’s reckless.” One way Hays has been able to thrive during this time is via an auction platform that’s allowed BDDW to circumvent traditional retail altogether, offering up pieces at a discount. Hays says that’s kept consumers engaged and buying: “It’s becoming more popular, but we have seen a 5% reduction in closing price at auction.” Still, even with the confusion and chaos around tariffs, many of these founders remain deeply passionate about being American-made and revel in the spirit of community and localization it can foster. For CEO Bill Banta at Decked, being American-made is just baked into his company’s brand. Decked designs, makes and sells organizational systems that fit on the beds of pickup trucks. “There’s nothing more American than a pickup truck,” says Banta. “It’s core to the customer and there’s a lot of expectation that comes with an American-made product. Plus what we make is big and heavy and hard to ship.” Decked Banta says some of the machines used to make Decked products are as heavy as 737 aircraft, and that as the company has grown, so has its manufacturing capabilities. The business, which is based in Idaho, Utah, and Ohio, now accounts for close to 400,000 square feet of manufacturing space and tens of millions of investment in injection molding. “We are seeing volatility in raw materials—steel, resin,” he says. “They’ve been all over the place for four or five weeks.” Banta’s focus has been working with suppliers to stabilize pricing as best as possible so the price for a Decked system is the same when customers initially consider it, as when they actually buy it a month later. Additionally, as consumer insecurity dips, so do truck sales, which is directly tied to the Decked value prop. “If that binds up and the automotive supply chain gets whacked by tariffs, we’ll feel that, too.” Decked A wholesale shedding of small businesses For now, says Simmering, it’s too soon to guess what any of this means. “It comes down to the mindset of the consumer,” she says. “Will consumers, at the end of the day, feel it’s more valuable to invest in American-made products? Will the tariffs last? There isn’t clarity. Industrial retooling is expensive and a lot of independent businesses won’t be able to hang in there to see how it shakes out.” One pivot the Kalon founders have made is to offer consulting services to other American businesses looking to make things here, too. Their goal is to help other founders navigate “the complexities of local sourcing, supply chain restructuring, and sustainability-first practices with insight grounded in our two decades of experience,” says Simmering. “From the beginning, part of Kalon’s mission has been to model a different way of doing things—to build a values-based business that responds to the realities of our time: the global environmental crisis, mass overconsumption, and wasteful production. “This feels like a natural extension of that original intent—taking this as an opportunity to help others navigate this shift and continue working toward transformation from within the industry.” And while the dust of tariff swings begins to settle, says Pauwen, larger, big box businesses have the resources to relocate their operations to the U.S., pushing smaller companies out of their manufacturing relationships in one swift movement, able to promise bigger manufacturing runs and longer contracts. “At first blush, when the government is saying, ‘We’re in this for the Americans,’ that’s a great impulse,” says Simmering. “I see that we can’t all be titans of industry. We want to have national resources and jobs with integrity and meaning. But the way this seems to be executed, it’s a land grab and happening at the highest levels. There is a wholesale shedding of independent business.” View the full article

​​Recent breakthroughs in generative AI have centered largely on language and imagery—from chatbots that compose sonnets and analyze text to voice models that mimic human speech and tools that transform prompts into vivid artwork. But global chip giant Nvidia is now making a bolder claim: the next chapter of AI is about systems that take action in high-stakes, real-world scenarios. At the recent International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025) in Singapore, Nvidia unveiled more than 70 research papers showcasing advances in AI systems designed to perform complex tasks beyond the digital realm. Driving this shift are agentic and foundational AI models. Nvidia’s latest research highlights how combining these models can influence the physical world—spanning adaptive robotics, protein design, and real-time reconstruction of dynamic environments for autonomous vehicles. As demand for AI grows across industries, Nvidia is positioning itself as a core infrastructure provider powering this new era of intelligent action. Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at Nvidia, described the company’s new direction as a full-stack AI initiative. “We aim to accelerate every level of the computing stack to amplify the impact and utility of AI across industries,” he tells Fast Company. “For AI to be truly useful, it must evolve beyond traditional applications and engage meaningfully with real-world use cases. That means building systems capable of reasoning, decision-making, and interacting with the real-world environment to solve practical problems.” Among the research presented, four models stood out—one of the most promising being Skill Reuse via Skill Adaptation (SRSA). This AI framework enables robots to handle unfamiliar tasks without retraining from scratch—a longstanding hurdle in robotics. While most robotic AI systems have focused on basic tasks like picking up objects, more complex jobs such as precision assembly on factory lines remain difficult. Nvidia’s SRSA model aims to overcome that challenge by leveraging a library of previously learned skills to help robots adapt more quickly. “When faced with a new challenge, the SRSA approach analyzes which existing skill is most similar to the new task, then adapts and extends it as a foundation for learning,” Catanzaro says. “This brings us a significant step closer to achieving generalization across tasks, something that’s crucial for making robots more flexible and useful in the real world.” To make accurate predictions, the system considers object shapes, movements, and expert strategies for similar tasks. According to one research paper, SRSA improved success rates on unseen tasks by 19% and required 2.4 times fewer training samples than existing methods. “Over time, we expect this kind of self-reflective, adaptive learning to be transformative for industries like manufacturing, logistics, and disaster response—fields where environments are dynamic and robots need to quickly adapt without extensive retraining,” Catanzaro says. Biotech breakthroughs The biotech sector has traditionally lagged in adopting cutting-edge AI, hindered by data scarcity and the opaque nature of many algorithms. Protein design, essential to drug development, is often hampered by proprietary data silos that slow progress and stifle innovation. To address this, Nvidia introduced Proteína—a large-scale generative model for designing entirely new protein backbones. Built using a powerful class of generative models, it can produce longer, more diverse, and functional proteins—up to 800 amino acids in length. Nvidia claims it outperforms models like Google DeepMind’s Genie 2 and Generate Biomedicines’ Chroma, especially in generating large-chain proteins. According to a paper on Proteína, the team trained the model using 21 million high-quality synthetic protein structures and improved learning thanks to new guidance strategies that ensure realistic outputs during generation. This breakthrough could transform enzyme engineering (and, by extension, vaccine development) by enabling researchers to design novel molecules beyond what occurs in nature. “What makes it especially powerful is its ability to generate proteins with specific shapes and properties, guided by structural labels,” Catanzaro says. “This gives scientists an unprecedented level of control over the design process—allowing them to create entirely new molecules tailored for specific purposes, like new medicines or advanced materials.” A new AI tool for autonomous vehicles Another standout from ICLR 2025 is Spatio-Temporal Occupancy Reconstruction Machine (STORM), an AI model capable of reconstructing dynamic 3D environments—like city streets or forest trails—in under 200 milliseconds. With minimal video input, it produces detailed, real-time spatial maps that can inform rapid machine decision-making. Nvidia sees STORM as a tool for autonomous vehicles, drones, and augmented reality systems navigating complex, moving environments. “One of the biggest backlogs in current models is that they often rely heavily on optimization—an iterative process that takes time to refine and produce accurate 3D reconstructions,” says Catanzaro. “STORM tackles this by achieving high-accuracy results in a single pass, significantly speeding up the process without sacrificing quality.” STORM’s potential extends beyond vehicles. Catanzaro envisions applications in consumer tech, such as AR glasses capable of mapping a live sports game in real time—allowing viewers to experience the event as if they were on the field. “STORM’s real-time environmental intelligence moves us closer to a future where machines and devices can perceive, understand, and interact with the physical world as fluidly as humans do,” he says. While STORM is built to help machines understand the physical world in real time, Nvidia is also pushing the boundaries of how large language models reason—through a project called Nemotron-MIND. This 138-billion-token synthetic pretraining data set is designed to enhance both mathematical and general reasoning. At its core is MIND, a new framework that turns raw math-heavy web documents into rich, multi-turn conversations that mirror how humans work through problems together. By turning dense math documents into conversations between people with different levels of understanding, MIND helps AI models break down problems step by step and explain them naturally. This method doesn’t just teach models what the right answer is—it helps them learn how to think through problems like a person would. According to its research paper, a seven-billion-parameter model trained on just four billion tokens of MIND-style dialogue outperformed much larger models trained on traditional data sets. It showed significant gains on key reasoning benchmarks like GSM8K (grade school math), MATH, and MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), and achieved a 2.5 percent boost in general reasoning when integrated into an LLM. Can startups and researchers keep up? Training and deploying advanced AI models requires substantial GPU resources, often out of reach for smaller players. To close this gap, Nvidia is rolling out its next-gen AI models through Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIMs), a suite of containerized, cloud-native tools designed to simplify deployment across different infrastructures. NIM includes prebuilt inference engines for a wide array of models, helping organizations integrate and scale AI with fewer computing resources. “Improving efficiency has always been a major focus for us,” Catanzaro says. “Ultimately, our goal is to democratize access to AI capabilities and make deployment practical at every scale, regardless of their computing resources, to harness the power of AI.” As agentic and foundational AI becomes more capable and more embodied, the future of tech may hinge on how effectively it works with humans. “It’s critical to identify and support use cases across diverse fields,” Catanzaro says. View the full article

A little over two years ago, AI avatars took the internet by storm as people flocked to apps like Lensa, which generated idealized, often fantastical portraits of themselves. But in the ever-elusive offline world, another, quieter trend has been bubbling up: real portraits, made by real people. Portrait commissions have been on the rise. In 2024, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, headquartered in London, saw a 40% increase in portrait commissions from American clients now make up roughly 20% of their total. “The U.S. has a fascination with the Royal Family more than we do sometimes,” says Martina Merelli, fine art commissions manager at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. “It’s an acknowledgment of the quality of work.” It’s no wonder Americans are fascinated. Since its founding in 1891, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, also known as RP, has been the society of choice for the British Royal Family’s public and private commissions. Its members have famously painted the late Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Prince Harry. Notable figures like Dame Judy Dench, Sir David Attenborough, and Stephen Hawking have also been captured on canvas. the Royal Society of Portrait Painters But the commission service isn’t limited to the elite. As long as you have disposable income (a head and shoulder begins at around $6,500) anyone can commission a portrait. At a time where AI is squashing many artists, this particular art form is enduring—perhaps as a symbol of our need for tangible human connection. A brief history of portraiture Portraits, like art more broadly, have long been seen as a mirror to society. Before the camera was invented, the only way to record someone’s likeness was to paint, or sculpt, a portrait of them. But portraits were never just a record—they were signifiers of wealth, taste, and power. In ancient Egypt, painted portraits were placed over mummies to guide them into the afterlife. In Ancient Rome, they were used to commemorate the dead and assert lineage. Emperors used them to reinforce authority. Dictators turned them into propaganda tools. One of the first portraits to depict a merchant couple from the middle ranks of society appeared during the Renaissance, when the focus expanded from rulers, nobility, and clergy, to wealthy merchants, bankers, and scholars. Today, portraiture remains intertwined with global politics and economic tides. “It’s no secret that many of our clients are brokers, bankers, hedge fund managers—people whose decisions are deeply affected by how the market is going,” Merelli says. In 2024, the U.K. saw two major elections. These ushered in a transition from a conservative to a Labour government that directly impacted the tax structures around private schooling. Merelli recalls one acquaintance with three daughters in private schools remarking that taxation money used to be their art money. The new faces of portraiture the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Despite its exclusive history, over the past few decades, the art of portraiture has become more accessible. Frances Bell, an RP member who has been painting portraits for over 20 years, says her clientele now includes newlyweds, young professionals, and parents wanting to leave behind a tangible heirloom. “It’s a time stamp,” she says. “Something important they will carry on.” Institutional portraits of CEOs, lawyers, chancellors, and the like still account for a big portion of the market. (Bell has also painted members of the royal family but these are cloaked in NDAs.) She believes the impulse behind a portrait commission often goes deeper than vanity. “I’m not saying it’s not there, I think it’s there for all of us, but I get people who want a little thrum of the life force to be put on into the canvas to last forever,” she says. “It’s that feeling of posterity, and permanence.” Unsurprisingly, that kind of posterity doesn’t come cheap. Merelli—who often acts as “cupid” between prospective clients and painters at the RP—says the average price for a portrait in 2025 has decreased from what it used to be, but it still hovers around $13,000–$20,000. “You can go up to $130,000 depending who the artist is, what brief you have, but a comfortable number is probably $66,000 to $80,000 if you want a full length of yourself with your house in the background and the dogs.” (Frances, who was trained at the prestigious Charles. H. Cecil Studios in Florence, charges $10,000 and upwards for a head and shoulders painting—or about $4,000 for a charcoal drawing.) A proud antithesis to AI That portraiture remains popular is both a rejection of the zeitgeist and, paradoxically, a natural extension of it. It is a slow process that can take countless hours over many sittings, and that is precisely why it is appealing. “It’s quite confessional,” says Bell, who places great importance on the in-person sittings. “I have their secrets coming out of my ears.” Everyone interviewed for this story emphasized the intimacy of the sitting process. Something about two people breathing the same air, in the same room, and looking at each other for hours. For Anthony Connolly, president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, this dynamic even shapes the vocabulary painters use. While photographs shoot, painters find a presence, come to a lightness. “You’re there, with your model and it’s like a triangular conversation, where the third point of the triangle is the thing you’re making,” says Connolly. The connection goes both ways. For the painter, it’s an act of seeing. For the sitter, it’s an act of being seen. It’s a bonding experience—an art form—that no algorithm can ever replicate. An investment piece Claudia Fisher, an American who moved to the UK around the beginning of the pandemic, was not allowed to divulge the cost of her painting—a head and shoulder by painter Paul Brason. Having never owned a piece of art before, the cost was “one giant gulp,” she says. But she has no regrets. the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Fisher, now 69, was reading a book about the social history of tiaras when I called her. After a multifaceted career as an opera singer and a classical architecture designer, she has turned to fashion and today runs a fashion label called Belle Brummell, which makes luxury jackets inspired by 18th and 19th century British couture. Fisher wanted her portrait to act as a marketing tool for her designs. She had just wrapped up the first prototype of her jacket, when it dawned on her: what better way to evoke the historical spirit of her brand than to be portrayed in one of her own designs, in a composition reminiscent of the era? “I’ve always loved the idea of getting a portrait done because I had vision of myself being in a gorgeous dress,” she says with a laugh. “It wasn’t about immortalizing me, I just wanted a pretty dress.” She got a pretty jacket instead. Fisher made four separate trips to Bath, where Brason lives, on four separate occasions. Brason also traveled to her and her husband’s house in Brighton to get a sense of her personality at home, take reference photos, and do a pencil sketch. The two are still in touch. “If we’re in the area I’ll call and see if he’s around,” she says. “These relationships continue.” View the full article

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When the electric car startup Rivian was set to release its first vehicle in late 2021, the company made the unconventional choice. Instead of a more conventional neutral tone, it manufactured a significant amount of its initial production run in a custom color the company called Launch Green. It was a decision that ran counter to almost every color trend and automotive industry sales report, and one that’s come to shape the way the company builds out one of the most unique color palettes in the car business. “Everybody buys black, white, or gray. Pretty much every single brand, they’re going to have that. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the U.S., you’re in China, you’re in Europe, that’s what it is,” says Jeff Hammoud, Rivian’s chief design officer. “Those are the ones that people order. But they’re not the ones that create the most buzz or excitement.” Launch Green, marketed as a limited run for the company’s R1T truck, bucked the trends and rose near the top of color rankings among Rivian fans and buyers. The Rivian forum on Reddit had such a heated debate over Launch Green’s merit that its moderator pinned a note to the top of the comments thread stating that it had been reported by some users for “incorrectly” placing Launch Green in second place. “I understand that many of you feel personally victimized by Launch Green not being #1. I encourage you to take a break from the internet or talk to a loved one for support,” the note read. Though the company doesn’t break down its sales figures publicly, Launch Green was immediately popular. Despite being a limited run, customers still ask for it nearly five years later. Colors that look good dirty Considering the approach validated, the company has since put an uncommon amount of effort into its color palette, not only creating unique custom colors but also making those colors an extension of Rivian’s adventure-centric, California-inspired brand. From L.A. Silver to El Cap Granite to Red Canyon to Storm Blue, Rivian’s paint options purposely lean into an outdoorsy theme. The company just announced another limited edition paint and trim package, California Dune, a pale sand color that evokes off-roading in the desert. “We wanted something that like looked crisp and clean and premium,” Hammoud says. “If it’s dirty you can’t really tell. It’s not this car that you feel like you constantly have to clean, like a black car.” Rivian does offer its vehicles in black—”Midnight” in the company’s parlance—but only reluctantly. Hammoud says Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe doesn’t like black, which he finds to be “not an optimistic color” and one that’s not exactly on brand. “But,” Hammoud says, “customers love it.” For some, Rivian’s colors may just look like slightly different versions of a blue or red that any other car company might use. But according to Hammoud, Rivian’s colors have been carefully developed to reflect a spirit of adventure, while also being bespoke to the brand. “We want it to have that warmth that our brand has, and also something that invites you to get it dirty,” he says. That approach to color has become so ingrained in the brand’s approach that Rivian hired its own in-house paint specialist, enabling it to develop new color options faster. Even so, adding new colors to the palette—there have been 12 so far—requires a significant investment of time and coordination with suppliers. “The fascias, the mirrors, the door handles, parts of the liftgates, none of those are actually painted at our plant,” Hammoud says. “So we have to work with all these different suppliers to essentially take that same color and make sure it matches identical.” Adding a new color can take years, but Hammoud says that limited color runs can happen much faster, since the company’s manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois, can swap a color into the production line for a short time before returning to a more standard color. Bringing a new color like California Dune into the lineup for a limited run is another way for the company to generate some brand buzz. “It’s a fun and I wouldn’t say easy but a light lift for us to be able to go and add freshness to the vehicle by offering a new color,” Hammoud says. Rivian is also careful about when to take a color out of the lineup. One discontinued color, Compass Yellow, had consistently high Net Promoter Scores, a measure of how likely a customer is to recommend a product to others. “People were the most passionate about that color and Red Canyon, which are really low take rates for us,” Hammoud says. Though the yellow was dropped from the lineup, the red is still available. These color choices are partly driven by sales figures and customer demand, but Hammoud says the company’s overall approach to color is more closely tied to the adventurous image it’s trying to create with its off-road-ready truck and SUV models. The company pays attention to color trends in the automotive world, but isn’t concerned with simply keeping pace with competitors. “Everything we do from a color standpoint is influenced by the types of products that we think align with our brand, align with our customers. And a lot of that starts from outdoor adventure gear, footwear, backpacks,” Hammoud says. This extends to other sides of Rivian design, like the brand’s distinctive headlights, which were inspired by a rock climbing carabiner. But Hammoud says color may be one of the most important elements of Rivian’s vehicles. “Color is a big part of purchase consideration for people,” he says. Ultimately the cars are products, and the company is trying to sell them. Color, he argues, helps make the cars more distinctive, which leads to more customer interest, and maybe a foothold in a crowded marketplace. “Finding inspiration from outside of automotive is a big part of it,” Hammoud says. “If you don’t do that, you’re just going to feel like you’re every other car brand.” View the full article

Security cabinet unanimously backs what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is ‘good plan’ to achieve war aimsView the full article

For digital nomads visiting Japan that would love to spend more time working in and exploring the “Land of the Rising Sun” than a normal …View the full article

Google’s “before:” and “after:” operators let you filter by date, but they're still in beta The post Google Shares Insight About Time-Based Search Operators appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

My worst workday habit is that I’m a compulsive web page checker. Throughout the day, I’m constantly refreshing the same handful of sites for updates. I’ll check the metrics on my newsletters, swing through a subreddit or two, and click through some tech news sites—and that’s before even getting to email and social media. Every time I do this, it’s hard to refocus. So I was pretty eager to try Aloha Browser’s new “Snips” feature, which uses AI to periodically monitor web pages and notify you when things change. I figured that by having AI check web pages on my behalf, I could avoid the urge to do so myself and be better at staying on task. It’s helped at least a little, but both Aloha and I still have some work to do. How Snips works Snips is currently available in the desktop version of Aloha for Mac and Windows, appearing as a little box-and-scissors icon next to the address bar. Clicking the icon brings up a selector tool for highlighting the part of the page you want to keep track of. After selecting a snippet, you’ll see a menu for setting up alerts. Choose how often Aloha should check for updates (the default is once per day, but you can go as frequently as every five minutes), then write a sentence describing what changes it should watch for. For instance, if you wanted to monitor the price on a product page, you could write something like “notify me when the price falls below $300.” In my case, I’ve set up a handful of Snips to cut down on compulsive page checking: For the pages where I check on newsletter metrics, I’ve instructed Aloha to only notify me when certain parameters change. I like to check the New York Yankees subreddit, so I’ve asked Aloha to notify me when new posts are created. If I post on social media, I can create a temporary Snip that alerts me if the responses reach a certain threshold. I have alerts set up for when new stories appear on Techmeme, just to make sure I don’t miss anything important. For email, I have Aloha alert me of replies to existing conversation threads. Behind the scenes, Aloha uses on-device AI to analyze page content, then takes routine snapshots of the page to see if things change. For the notification requests, it uses a mix of on-device AI processing and large language models from Grok and OpenAI, but Aloha says no browsing data leaves your device in most cases. (The browser does send some especially complex tasks to a remote server for processing, but requires permission first and deletes the data immediately after.) Once you’ve created some Snips, they’ll appear as screenshots on Aloha’s new tab page. You can tweak the notifications from here, but you can also shuffle and resize the screenshots into a kind of glanceable information dashboard. Why it makes sense There are plenty of other ways to monitor information online. I use CamelCamelCamel for price alerts on Amazon, for instance, and you can always turn on push notifications for email and social media. But Aloha’s Snips feature is a useful alternative because of how granular it can get. You can set up price alerts on any retail site without sharing your contact information, and you can limit social media notifications to specific types of responses or reactions. The alerts come through the Mac or Windows notification tray, so your email inbox and phone notifications stay uncluttered. Room for improvement That’s not to say Aloha’s Snips feature is perfect. It’s subject to the same vagaries as other generative AI tools, which means things may not always work as expected. For instance, I’ve experienced some instances of false positive notifications when nothing changes, or repeat notifications for things I’ve been alerted to already. Aloha’s page refresh capabilities also don’t seem to work 100% of the time. One snippet I set up for the “Newest” section on Techmeme refused to update, and Aloha showed error messages while trying to update standard Reddit pages. (As a work-around, I had to create a snippet on old.reddit.com instead.) If the information you need requires extra clicking or scrolling after reloading the page, it’s not going to work with Snips either. And even when things are working properly, I still have to provide the appropriate degree of willpower. I don’t need Aloha to check Reddit every five minutes, but if I set the interval to be too infrequent, I’ll likely get antsy and start checking it myself. That’s entirely a me problem. Aloha is not my main browser, and it was not really on my radar until the Snips feature arrived. It’s made by a small team based in Cyprus, and touts an emphasis on privacy, but I still prefer the power-user features in the likes of Vivaldi and Floorp. Even so, it’s easy enough to keep running in the background to discourage my compulsive checking habit. I’m going to keep doing that to take a little of the weight off my mind. View the full article

An empty light truck is cruising along a sun-drenched highway of Qionghai, a city in Hainan Island, the southernmost part of China. As the car that’s filming overtakes it, we can see the truck has no driver. In fact, it doesn’t even have a cabin: Its front is just a flat wall crowned by what looks to be sensors and cameras. It’s an eerie and surreal view, a Headless Horseman of trucks just as scary as an actual headless horseman. The futuristic yet cheap-looking vehicle is part of a fleet of driverless light trucks that can carry 1,000 parcels each completely unattended over a range of more than 110 miles. These vehicles, operated by Chinese logistics giant ZTO Express, are the vanguard of a silent, state-sponsored effort to revolutionize the way China ships goods around the country. Their fleet is already vastly outperforming the efforts of startups in the U.S. They navigate Hainan’s suburban and rural routes thanks to an artificial intelligence–powered computer that sees the world in 3D using lasers and high-resolution cameras. The trucks are capable of obeying traffic lights, dodging obstacles, yielding to pedestrians, and “talking” to the road itself and other vehicles. The program began in November 2024 with a single vehicle, followed by three additional trucks as part of a pilot overseen by the Eastern Postal Administration of Hainan Province. Its director Zhang Zhi called it at its launch “the beginning of a new intelligent era” for the region’s courier industry. The initial pilot focused on Qionghai’s campuses, commercial districts, and residential areas, but ZTO quickly expanded it throughout the island and the rest of China. Beijing turbocharge It’s just another step in China’s road to automated logistics. The company already had experience with this autonomous technology for last-mile and long-haul logistics. In July 2024, ZTO launched autonomous delivery vans in Taizhou—south of Shanghai—each capable of carrying 600 to 800 parcels per trip—double the capacity of human couriers. These vans, which started development in 2021, are equipped with 360-degree cameras and AI-trained obstacle detection. They now handle nearly a third of last-mile deliveries in Taizhou’s industrial zones. The vehicles use V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication systems, a technology that allows them to “talk” to traffic lights, road sensors, and other vehicles in real time. Allegedly, V2X reduces collisions and optimizes traffic flow by sharing data like speed, direction, and road conditions. Then, in August, ZTO deployed 400 autonomous heavy-duty trucks across China’s highway network, developed jointly with Shanghai-based autonomous driving startup Inceptio Technology and Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle, a subsidiary of China’s state-owned Dongfeng Motor Group. This marked the largest single delivery of intelligent freight trucks globally at the time, each equipped with light detection and ranging sensors that create 3D maps of surroundings, redundant braking systems, and Inceptio autonomous driving software, a proprietary system designed to optimize long-haul freight efficiency by reducing fuel consumption and human error. The company claims the software has driven 124 million miles, a truly impressive record. The key to this success is Beijing’s aggressive push to fully automate its logistics sector as part of its ambitious 2030 agenda, a national program aimed at ”building a modern, harmonious, and creative society,” according to the World Bank. Hainan was an experiment in which regulatory agility paved the way for this rapid scaling. The province slashed certification requirements to just 1,864 miles of testing, compared to China’s most populous province—Guangdong—which has a 9,320–18,600-mile mandate. Since then, 12 provinces have adopted Hainan’s fast-track certification model, and Beijing has allocated $1.4 billion to retrofit highways with 5G networks and V2X infrastructure. 5G’s ultralow latency provides near-instant data transmission and it ensures autonomous vehicles can process sensor data and communicate with infrastructure without delays, which is a prerequisite for safe operation at high speeds. ZTO’s own proprietary unmanned vehicle management platform, launched a year ago, now monitors a 200 autonomous vehicles fleet across 40 cities, tracking everything from battery levels to pedestrian interactions in real time. An army of ghost trucks and bots And it’s all scaling up this year. As of April 2025, 27 driverless vehicles operate at the company’s Laiwu logistics park in Shandong, south of Beijing. Their routes synced with workers’ handheld scanners. Government officials in this province confirm plans to deploy at least 1,500 such vehicles across Shandong by late 2025, targeting a 50% reduction in labor costs. This shift is driven by necessity: labor costs in China’s logistics sector have risen 8% annually since 2022, while e-commerce parcel volumes exceeded 130 billion in 2024. That’s why Beijing is so adamant to make this happen. ZTO is not alone in this. Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao claims to have deployed “thousands” of autonomous delivery robots and vehicles during its 2024 Cainiao Smart Global Logistics Summit. Chinese retail giant JD’s logistics division has 600 autonomous vehicles in operation, making millions of deliveries. And food delivery titan Meituan has been deploying “hundreds” of fully driverless delivery vehicles in major urban centers like Beijing and Shenzhen, according to its Q3 2024 earnings call. Neolix has been deploying thousands of its homegrown autonomous vehicles for various commercial delivery applications since 2021. It’s a stark contrast with what’s happening in the U.S., where there’s a patchwork of state- and city-led policies. Companies like Kodiak Robotics and Gatik are testing autonomous trucks for middle-mile delivery, with Gatik operating a small fleet of box trucks for Walmart in Arkansas. However, deployments remain constrained by fragmented state regulations and a lack of centralized infrastructure investment. For example, California requires permits from both the DMV and Public Utilities Commission for commercial autonomous operations, while Texas allows driver-out testing in the state: In May 2024, Pittsburgh-based autonomous truck technology company Aurora Innovation announced that its first commercial trucks—developed with Volvo—are now driving between Dallas and Houston. The company said that, to date, its self-driving tech has completed 1,200 miles without a driver. Compare that to Inceptio’s 124 million miles. As for smaller vehicles, Waymo Via’s publicly acknowledged deployment of fully driverless delivery vans is likely in the dozens, primarily within pilot programs. Waymo-powered trucks were in trial runs until 2022, but the company stopped its efforts in 2023. Nuro claims it has expanded its autonomous vehicle operations in a handful of cities: Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Houston. Notably, Amazon has not disclosed large-scale deployment numbers for fully driverless road vehicles in commercial operation, and its nutty air delivery system is just not flying as Jeff Bezos probably expected. By 2030, S&P Global Mobility estimates that China will dominate autonomous freight, with 250,000 Level 4 logistics vehicles in operation, compared to 230,000 in the U.S.—most of which will remain focused on ride-hailing, not freight. Seems optimistic for the U.S. side. “China’s strong push for automated driving, bolstered by significant government support and regulatory frameworks, positions it as a potential leader in the development of autonomous vehicle technology and relative to commercialization of the autonomous vehicle industry,” the report says. A centralized strategy, which has resulted in 28,000 miles of roads that are now open for autonomous vehicles with 16,000 licenses issued nationwide. Only time will tell if the U.S. can overtake Beijing, but for now, I can only see a formidable army of Chinese ghost trucks amassing beyond the Great Wall and shaping the future of roads, while we are still playing with cars in geofenced Disneyland rides. View the full article

UBS, BNP Paribas, SocGen, Barclays and Deutsche Bank reported €13bn in combined first-quarter trading revenuesView the full article