• Only tech companies are seeing growth from the AI boom, Apollo Global Management says.
• Apollo says that though some big companies are spending big on AI, they may soon pull back.
• Corporate America is starting to see AI spending not as a source of growth, but as a cost center.

One of the world's largest investment firms says that only tech companies are getting a share of the AI pie.

In an economic analysis published on Saturday, Apollo Global Management said that while the Magnificent Seven — a group of established tech companies that includes Nvidia and Meta — are seeing revenue growth during the AI boom, this growth isn't being shared by other industries.

"Mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins," Torsten Slok, a partner and chief economist at Apollo, said in the report. "The technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech."

In a series of graphs, Slok measured three main metrics that have boomed for tech companies but not for regular companies: revenue per worker, profit margins, and productivity growth.

Since 2022, revenue per employee figures have skyrocketed for tech companies — rising from $550,000 to nearly $800,000 today. Meanwhile, that figure hasn't changed much for everyone else in the S&P 500, lingering around $550,000 for the last seven years.

Similarly, while profit margins soared among tech companies since 2022, they've stagnated at about 10% for everyone else.

And across the economy, AI hasn't yet dramatically increased productivity growth as some AI optimists have predicted.

Apollo's research portends a dark shadow over a US economy throwing massive amounts of dough toward AI tools and companies, whose leaders have promised that an "age of abundance," where people won't have to work as much, will soon be upon us.

"The question looking ahead is whether, even as models become commoditized, mainstream corporate America can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins," Slok said.

"That may be harder than it sounds," he added.

• Compass Pathways wants to use psilocybin to help people with treatment-resistant depression.
• Its psilocybin pill, COMP360, could finally be coming to market as soon as next year.
• For its CEO, Kabir Nath, it's been a long, strange trip to get to this point.

In 2022, Kabir Nath had a cushy executive job at a pharmaceutical firm that developed anti-psychotic medication.

Then he got a call from a scrappy upstart with a patent on a synthetic version of psilocybin — the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. It hoped to use the compound to help those with treatment-resistant depression.

They wanted him to join as CEO. Nath, whose father died by suicide, bit on their second pitch.

"A number of people have said to me in the last couple of years: 'You do realize what a risk that was,'" Nath told Business Insider about eventually jumping ship for what was, and still is, a drug company without FDA approval for its product.

"I was probably the first really senior executive from traditional pharma to make the move to psychedelics," he added. "But, you know, it was the right thing to do."

Nath's personal risk is now magnified as Compass Pathways finishes filing its final forms ahead of what could be FDA approval as soon as next year, and then a public rollout of its psilocybin pill, called COMP360.

Compass has recently added 150 new hires to its payroll, expanded its marketing division, and moved into new office space in Jersey City in the hope it all works out. "The company is growing rapidly," Nath said.

Though a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson attained FDA approval with a version of ketamine for depression patients in 2019, it is by no means guaranteed that Compass, leveraging a more traditional psychedelic, will get the same approval.

Should the FDA deny Compass' bid, investors would rush to dump their shares, likely sending the company into bankruptcy. The Jersey City office, which just received a new lime green paint job, would be untenable.

If you ask Nath, it would also be bad news for 4 million patients with depression in the US, for whom more traditional antidepressants like SSRIs don't work.

"These are people who have been suffering from depression, and nothing's really working," he said.

Like other drug companies — especially those with a single product — Compass' stock has "been on quite the adventure," Nath said, as the company progressed through various human trials.

When markets closed on Friday, the share price hovered around $11, up $5 from last year. In 2020, when the company went public, shares went for $17.

From Haight Ashbury to Wall Street

Psilocybin's journey to the forefront of medical research didn't begin with Compass, and it hasn't exactly gone in a straight line.

Few did more to publicize the drug than Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor turned acid dropout. In a speech at Harvard's Cambridge campus in 1962, he told students that taking psilocybin allows people to experience an "internal rebirth," according to the Harvard Crimson.

In time, Leary would be fired from Harvard as he, along with a measurable portion of the US population, began to experiment more heavily with psychedelic drugs. Come 1966, the Grateful Dead were spiking their Kool-Aid with acid, and a definitive subculture of long-haired, psychedelic-taking hippies had emerged.

Meanwhile, researchers were experimenting too. Studies involving LSD and psilocybin flourished during the 1960s before hitting a brick wall in 1970, when psilocybin was classified as a Schedule I substance, rendering possession illegal, even for research purposes.

Work on the drug languished for years, until 2000, when the FDA gave scientists at Johns Hopkins University permission to conduct research on psilocybin.

And more recently, psychedelics have become trendy with the tech crowd.

From Burning Man to luxury retreats, experimenting with psychedelics is now common among tech founders and executives like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who credit the drugs with quieting their nerves, boosting productivity, and allowing them to better harness their creativity.

Research, too, has flourished.

"There was actually a biotech boom from 2018 through to about 2022," Nath said. "In that boom, literally hundreds of psychedelic companies went public."

In 2018, Compass' proprietary psilocybin formulation received breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA. A few years later, it started testing the drug on people.

Nath was an executive in 2018 at Japanese pharmaceutical giant Otsuka, where he said he assembled a team to investigate whether psychedelics could become viable medicines after reading Michael Pollan's book "How to Change Your Mind," which explores the history and therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

COMP360

Compass isn't selling an experience analogous to a spiritual awakening at Burning Man, though.

The drug-taking process for a patient enrolled in one of Compass' trials is a bit different. First, a patient has to have treatment-resistant depression, which is clinically defined as depression that two or more standard drugs have failed to treat.

Then, a clinician explains the details of the process that is about to unfold. After that, they're given the psilocybin in pill form.

"It's a quiet room with a couch," Nath said. "They're offered a blindfold, which most patients do actually wear."

As the patient begins to trip, a playlist of music, including classical and new age, plays softly in the background. The clinician, who Nath said could be a nurse, doctor, or therapist, sits silently in the room if the patient wants to talk, and for safety reasons.

Most of the time, though, there isn't any talking.

"This is not psychotherapy," Nath said. "We are not directing the patient's experience."

Six hours later, after some crying, laughing, and everything in between, the patient goes home.

In Compass's most recent trial, results for which were published in September, just under half of participants who took the drug experienced at least a 50% reduction in depressive symptoms within six weeks of treatment.

Next steps

After a decade of slogging through tests, first on animals and then on humans, Compass has completed all the necessary prerequisites and is busily working to get its last papers in order.

In a statement provided to Business Insider, an FDA spokesperson was noncommittal, though.

"The FDA evaluates experimental medications, including psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, through a rigorous, evidence-based process designed to ensure that any approved treatment is safe and effective for the indicated use," the spokesperson said.

Compass isn't the only psychedelic drug company wading through the lengthy process of trialing a drug.

AtaiBeckley, another psychedelic drug company trading on the Nasdaq whose product is not yet approved by the FDA, is developing a version of DMT administered via nasal spray. It received breakthrough status in 2025, years behind Compass.

For Compass, though, it could face the music as soon as the first half of next year, when it expects the FDA to render its decision. The company is already getting ready.

In addition to adding 150 new hires, Nath said the company is preparing its sales force to go online and is in frequent communication with doctors and healthcare providers about operating in clinics where therapists can administer the drug to patients.

"This has the potential to be radically different, and again, the rapidity is something that they're very excited about, and the durability," Nath said, referring to psychiatrists.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

Software engineers in the Bay Area still earn far more than their peers almost anywhere else in the US, even after accounting for the region's eye-watering cost of living.

Recent data from Levels.fyi found total compensation is 77% above an employment-weighted national median. Adjusting for local prices narrows the gap, but Bay Area engineers still come out 53% ahead.

The analysis used federal employment counts to help account for where software engineers work, rather than relying solely on where people submit their pay to Levels.fyi.

Seattle also remains well above average after the adjustment, while cities such as Boston and Washington, DC, lose most of their advantage once living costs are factored in.

The chart below shows the pay differences before adjusting for local prices.

One important caveat: The cost-of-living comparison does not account for differences in state and local taxes.

These numbers are also based on submissions to Levels.fyi, so they could over-index toward areas where people like to brag about their pay, wherever that is!

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• Working at an AI lab is one of the hottest jobs in tech.
• Lila Ibrahim, DeepMind's chief AI readiness officer, explained what skills she looks for in graduates.
• Extracurricular activities on a CV show if someone has a preset for "lifelong learning," she said.

Pay attention, prospective applicants: The graduate candidates Google DeepMind wants to hire are not defined by their degree alone.

At a media lunch in September, Lila Ibrahim, Google DeepMind's chief AI readiness officer, said that the firm is increasingly looking for candidates who can show a record of learning beyond the classroom.

Whether it's researchers, engineers, or other roles, degrees still matter, she said, but there's been a shift toward placing greater weight on the extra credentials and experience on a candidate's résumé.

"One credential will tell me what you've learned, but multiple credentials tell me that you have a learning mindset," said Ibrahim.

Today's graduates often showcase more detail about what they have studied outside a formal learning environment on their résumés, alongside their job and education history, she said.

"I look at some of the new college grad résumés and CVs right now, and I'm like, 'Oh wow, this is so different from what I did in my generation.'"

That additional detail matters to recruiters at Google DeepMind because it can reveal whether a candidate is curious and "preset to a life of lifelong learning," she said.

Ibrahim said she believes another benefit of diverse learning experiences is that people can become better at asking questions — a capability she sees as valuable in an AI-powered workplace, but one she said isn't taught well in schools.

"You realize that a lot of people in school haven't necessarily been taught how to ask questions, how to ask good questions, and how to really question why."

These human skills matter even if someone is technically skilled with AI, she added. "Getting answers is super cheap these days, but actually knowing how to ask really good questions is getting harder and harder."

Ibrahim summed up DeepMind's criteria for applicants as: "Curiosity, courage to take on something completely new that is unpredictable, and the ability to work in a dynamic environment and to be able to collaborate with people."

Humanities or STEM?

Ibrahim was formerly Google DeepMind's chief operating officer, a role she had held since 2018. At the beginning of 2026, she became chief AI readiness officer, a role she said she created to help address a widening gap between the technology being built and society's readiness to receive it.

Google DeepMind's founder, Demis Hassabis, has been among the frontier AI executives warning that society has a narrow window to prepare for the next stage of the technology.

Hassabis has said that STEM and computer science studies remain important, but the AI world also requires the humanities, such as philosophy, economics, and ethics.

"I think we really need them in the world we're about to enter," he said during an interview at a London business conference in July.

What Google DeepMind looks for is interdisciplinary people who can collaborate well with others, said Ibrahim.

Having "the neuroscientist, alongside the ethicist, alongside the biologist," has massively helped with some of DeepMind's technical breakthroughs, she said. The lab has hired numerous philosophers, she said, adding that "you need to pair them with operators to turn those ideas into action."

So far, it hasn't been a challenge to find those skills in the UK, said Ibrahim. "Compared to my time in Silicon Valley over 30 years, what I have seen is more diverse talent because there is a strong appreciation toward philosophy and political science, and some of these other skills."

As AI has seeped into the everyday workplace, fears of AI-related job loss have somewhat abated. Rather than taking jobs, AI is changing them, and the pressure is now on workers and HR departments to develop the right combination of "human" and AI skills.

A recent study of more than 300 million registered learners on Coursera and Udemy found that companies' AI deployment is outpacing the skills people need to use it effectively.

While nearly 75% of organizations have deployed or are piloting the technology, only 18% reported that most of their workforce participated in AI upskilling or reskilling over the last year.

• You don't need to live by a data center to hear the noise they emit.
• There's a plushie that emits the hum of a real-life data center in Virginia when it's hugged.
• The doll is part of a satirical art project called "Adopt a Data Center."

Plushies are getting weirder every day.

Bezzy is a gray handmade plushie with round eyes, a disarming smile, and a server-rack abdomen that plays the grating, mind-numbing hum of a data center when you squeeze it.

The sound is actually a recording made outside a real-life data center in Virginia.

"We actually got quite a few different recordings. It's a weird process to have to go through," Rajeev Basu, the artist behind the toy, told Business Insider. "I had to sit there listening to various screeching sounds on my computer, and we picked the one that would be most well-suited for the toy."

"It's terrifying. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone," he added.

Basu is the founder of New York-based creative studio, Basura. The studio worked alongside Big Data, a musical project by Alan Wilkis, to create a satirical art project called "Adopt a Data Center." The project highlights the realities of living near one.

"We're both inspired by this relationship between humans and machines," Basu said.

After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, major players and new startups in the tech industry entered a global race to develop advanced AI systems. Companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Anthropic need massive new data centers to power their ambitious products.

As they began to sprout all over the country, Americans living near them began to bristle.

Critics say the benefits — like the potential for economic growth and new jobs — don't outweigh the risks. They worry data centers can worsen the environment, strain electrical grids, deplete water resources, and disrupt daily life. It's led to nationwide protests against them and to some towns and cities banning them altogether.

Americans living near data centers have also complained that the facilities can emit a constant hum akin to a loud drone or an airplane engine. Basu said data centers have become a regular topic in the news, but reading reports about the facilities is much different from having one in your backyard.

"You might not have a data center in your backyard right now, but with what some of these maps show with proposed plans, one could be in your backyard sooner than you think," Basu said.

Basura interviewed dozens of people across the US who live near data centers for the project, which took about six months to complete.

"Although our project is satirical, we wanted to make sure that everything was rooted in true research," Basu said.

In addition to the Bezzy dolls, the artists made stickers featuring phrases such as "Open your heart and your power grid" and "Please adopt me, I love GPU." A series of bumper stickers features tongue-in-cheek messages such as "Honk if you love computational infrastructure."

Basu said they wanted "Adopt a Data Center" to have an educational aspect, so the campaign's website has hyperlinks to research and reporting about AI and data centers.

"With a lot of my work over the years, it often uses human irreverence as a hook to invite people who might not necessarily be paying attention or have given it a second look to try and learn a bit more," Basu said.

Launched in September, the 20 limited-edition Bezzy dolls are already sold out.

Although the toy industry has struggled in recent years, millennials and zoomers have been softening the blow by driving up plushie sales. Market research company Circana said that people 18 and older accounted for over $1.5 billion in toy sales during the last three months of 2024.

"It's something that is so timely," Basu said. "It's quite a heavy and serious subject, so we're trying to find a way to help more folks learn about it."

• Bill Gates says AI will bring about an age of abundance in 20 years, but it'll be a rocky road.
• He predicted robots will displace human workers and "build houses, grow food, do surgery."
• Some jobs might be reserved for people, and work limits could preserve employment, Gates said.

Bill Gates says AI will create "true abundance," but the next two decades before it arrives will be "as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history."

"My big concern is this 20-year transition period, where they'll have winners and losers and a lot of disruption," the Microsoft cofounder and billionaire philanthropist said on the latest episode of the "Decoder" podcast.

Gates echoed widespread concerns about white-collar jobs, saying that telesales, telesupport, and accounting will disappear as AI will be able to do those "radically cheaper, radically faster, and even more accurately." As for blue-collar jobs, humanoid robots will take over those, he said.

"If we don't choose to massively slow down or stop, then we will have robots that can build houses, grow food, do surgery," Gates said. "And none of the things that human labor provides to the economy will be necessary for most goods and services."

He also underscored how jarring it will be for someone like him, whose vast resources have allowed him to lead the charge toward eliminating malaria and tackling other humanitarian crises.

"And when the AI says to me, 'No, I'm better than you, you go play pickleball and I'll get back to you, I'm gonna take care of this' — I mean, it's kind of humorous, but it's not humorous," he said.

Gates shared his long-held view that work is vital to giving people a sense of purpose, a way to earn an income, a reason to show up every day, an avenue to build relationships with colleagues, and a path to build things and solve problems.

He suggested that certain activities such as art, sports, cooking, and childcare could one day be reserved for humans, "even though the AI could do those things better."

Gates also highlighted that measures such as early retirement and caps on working hours could help maintain some level of human employment.

He envisioned some people saying, "Let's be like the Amish and let's only use AI for certain things," so they won't have to give up "helping each other or coming up with unique ideas."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have both proposed a shorter workweek as a less painful alternative to AI-driven unemployment.

Gates is one of several tech leaders to warn of job disruption on the road to an age of abundance.

Elon Musk has predicted a "bumpy" transition and proposed government checks for all as the best solution to AI-driven job losses. He's said that technology will drive production costs so low that everyone can have "whatever stuff they want," work will become "optional," and it's not worth saving for retirement in 10 or 20 years as money won't matter.

Similarly, Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said that AI promises to "raise the quality of life for everyone," but the "short-term shock will be unprecedented in size."

However, OpenAI's Sam Altman said in May that AI hasn't eliminated as many white-collar jobs as he expected, and he no longer anticipates a "jobs apocalypse."

Despite widespread worry about AI taking corporate jobs, and high-profile layoffs at major companies such as Amazon and Meta, national unemployment hasn't increased materially during the AI boom.

Chinese aircraft designers have proposed building radar antenna arrays into the wings of next-generation stealth fighters like the J-20, according to the South China Morning Post. The approach could expand detection range without compromising the jet's low-observable shape.

• Peter Thiel said Apple hasn't innovated since the iPhone.
• Thiel said Tim Cook hasn't taken the company in new directions.
• The billionaire venture capitalist said eccentric CEOs like Elon Musk "are way better for society."

Peter Thiel, evidently, isn't a fan of the iPhone Duo.

In fact, the billionaire PayPal cofounder and tech investor said he hasn't been very impressed with much of anything that Apple has done since its eccentric founder, Steve Jobs, died of cancer in 2011.

"In my telling, it did nothing new after Jobs," Thiel said of the iPhone maker in a September interview with author Walter Isaacson for the "Builder's Podcast," which was released on Thursday.

"It turned out, yeah, the mobile phone was this giant invention — there was not that much more to do," he said. "Then it was just scaling and branding and building it out over 15 years or whatever."

Indeed, Apple has faced criticism for failing to innovate beyond the mobile phone and tablet, especially in the age of AI, where its "Siri" product is not as advanced as rivals from ChatGPT or Anthropic.

Jobs unveiled the first iPhone back in 2007 at a conference in San Francisco. Nearly 20 years later, Apple released the 18th iteration this week, with one slight caveat: This one folds.

That said, MacBooks are the de facto laptops for many an AI-nerd and normie alike. iPhones are ubiquitous, and the sleek AirPods design took hold when they were released in 2016.

Though Thiel told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times in 2017 that Apple's era was over, the company's stock price has grown steadily since then.

Thiel didn't pooh-pooh Apple entirely. He called it a "pure, well-run value stock," but lamented what he described as the loss of vision after Jobs' death.

"I would still say somehow Elon or Steve Jobs are way better for society than Tim Cook," he said.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Saturday.

A Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil (ANEPC) confirmou este sábado, 24 de outubro, um ciberataque ao sistema de Recenseamento Nacional de Bombeiros Portugueses (RNBP), que permitiu o acesso não autorizado a dados pessoais. A aplicação foi entretanto suspensa e as autoridades estão a reforçar as medidas de segurança.

De acordo com a agência Lusa, o ataque informático comprometeu uma base de dados que contém cerca de 60 mil registos, incluindo informações pessoais e documentos de identificação dos bombeiros portugueses.

Perante a situação, a Proteção Civil enviou uma comunicação interna aos corpos de bombeiros e às respetivas entidades responsáveis, alertando para possíveis tentativas de fraude através de chamadas telefónicas, mensagens e outras comunicações suspeitas.

Nomes, moradas e números de identificação entre os dados acedidos

Segundo a informação a que a Lusa teve acesso, os piratas informáticos conseguiram aceder a vários tipos de dados pessoais armazenados no sistema.

Entre as informações potencialmente comprometidas encontram-se nomes completos, números do Cartão de Cidadão, identificação fiscal, números da Segurança Social e de utente do Serviço Nacional de Saúde.

A lista inclui ainda dados relativos a subsistemas de saúde, cartas de condução, estado civil, datas de nascimento, contactos telefónicos, moradas, fotografias e grupos sanguíneos.

Apesar da dimensão da informação envolvida, o presidente da Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses, António Nunes, esclareceu que a aplicação não contém dados bancários.

Proteção Civil alerta para mensagens e chamadas fraudulentas

Na sequência do ataque, a ANEPC pediu aos bombeiros que mantenham uma atenção redobrada perante contactos inesperados que solicitem informações pessoais ou o acesso a páginas eletrónicas.

O alerta abrange diferentes modalidades de fraude informática, incluindo o phishing, que utiliza mensagens aparentemente legítimas para levar as vítimas a abrir ligações ou ficheiros maliciosos.

Também são identificados riscos de smishing, através de SMS fraudulentas, e de vishing, quando os criminosos recorrem a chamadas telefónicas para tentar obter informações confidenciais.

Outra das ameaças mencionadas é o quishing, um método que utiliza códigos QR maliciosos para encaminhar os utilizadores para páginas falsas.

Bombeiros devem confirmar contactos junto dos comandos

A Proteção Civil recomenda que qualquer comunicação suspeita seja confirmada diretamente junto da estrutura de comando do respetivo corpo de bombeiros, através dos canais habituais.

A ANEPC esclarece que as comunicações institucionais dirigidas aos bombeiros, nomeadamente para atualização de dados pessoais ou transmissão de informações, são normalmente efetuadas através das estruturas de comando.

Por esse motivo, os profissionais devem desconfiar de mensagens inesperadas que solicitem o preenchimento de formulários, a divulgação de dados pessoais ou o acesso a ligações desconhecidas.

Sistema com cerca de 60 mil registos foi suspenso

O Recenseamento Nacional de Bombeiros Portugueses é utilizado para gerir a informação dos profissionais integrados nos quadros de comando, ativo, de reserva e de honra.

Segundo António Nunes, o sistema conta com aproximadamente 60 mil registos, embora esse número não permita determinar quantas pessoas tiveram efetivamente os seus dados comprometidos.

O presidente da Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses considerou ainda que a informação sobre o ataque deveria ter sido comunicada individualmente a todos os elementos inscritos na plataforma.

Entretanto, a aplicação foi suspensa e estão em curso procedimentos destinados a reforçar a segurança informática e a proteção dos dados pessoais.

A ANEPC garante que continuará a desenvolver as diligências necessárias para proteger os seus sistemas e preservar a confiança dos bombeiros nos canais oficiais de comunicação.

Para já, a principal recomendação passa por manter a vigilância perante contactos suspeitos, uma vez que os dados obtidos no ataque poderão ser utilizados em tentativas de fraude ou de usurpação de identidade.

Leia também: Lei do arrendamento: especialistas alertam para maior desproteção dos inquilinos

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

The AI data center boom looks like it's running into serious trouble. Projects are being delayed, canceled, or abandoned. Electricity shortages are holding everything up.

But there's a twist: A lot of these data centers were probably never going to get built in the first place.

Bernstein Research analyzed thousands of planned US data centers and concluded that only about 35% of the announced capacity is likely to become reality.

The industry has a wonderful name for some of the more dubious projects: "Bragawatts."

These are enormous data centers announced by companies that often have little experience building them. Some haven't secured electricity, construction permits, or even customers.

Then there are the "ghost projects." Developers submit multiple requests for electricity connections, hoping at least one location works out. In Texas, these requests have reached more than five times the state's existing electricity supply.

No wonder the grid looks overwhelmed.

This doesn't mean the AI boom is fake. Far from it.

My colleague Eugene Kim exclusively reported this week that even Amazon, one of the world's most experienced data center builders, is struggling to get enough electricity to power its expensive AI equipment.

But there's a big difference between Amazon's very real problems and an inexperienced developer announcing a gigantic project that may never happen.

The AI data center boom is real, and so are the challenges of building all these facilities. But the sheer number of speculative projects may be making those challenges look bigger than they truly are.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

The Bars jet powered drone has a range of 1,000 kilometers and can reach speeds of up to 700 kilometers per hour.

• All hell broke loose this week after a security flaw in 70% of the world's websites was made public.
• It was supposed to be kept under wraps as a fix was deployed, but one researcher jumped the gun.
• Chainguard CEO Dan Lorenc told POLITICO why he decided to go public.

The exposure was immense, with AI multiplying the risks — and yet time-tested global cybersecurity procedures appeared to be functioning. Then suddenly, it all broke down.

The decision by a cybersecurity company on Wednesday to prematurely release information about a flaw in the popular PHP computer programming language left much of the web exposed to hackers, triggering a panic that brought to life months of warnings of how the AI-powered era could cause widespread damage.

The flaws in PHP, discovered using AI tools through a monthslong process coordinated by OpenAI, caused cyber agencies across Europe, the US, the UK, Australia and Canada to post urgent warnings Wednesday. Numerous governments took websites offline as a precaution.

While no major hacking damage was immediately apparent, the way the incident unfolded over 72 hours showed how easily cybersecurity processes can break down and the outsized consequences of cyber risks in the AI era.

The man who set off the chain reaction with the early release — Chainguard's CEO Dan Lorenc — quickly apologized in a LinkedIn post. But on Thursday, in an interview with POLITICO, Lorenc said he'd shared the information ahead of time because the flaw was already being exploited. Though others disputed that, Lorenc said he believed he'd seen enough evidence to invalidate an embargo set up to allow time to find a fix for the flaws.

While he disputed that his actions would have caused problems for other defenders, Lorenc said that the evidential threshold in these coordinated cyber defense systems is a "grey area."

The revelation of the PHP flaw brings out into the open what cyber officials have been bracing for since the arrival of the most powerful tools of artificial intelligence, which not only can be used to discover vulnerabilities but also to exploit them at scale.

The cybersecurity world's long-established protocols helped prevent disaster scenarios in which hackers would have successfully exploited the vulnerabilities to take control of numerous websites and access their data. But the scale and end-of-days potential of AI-driven cyber risks are now visible for the world to see.

This "is what happens when AI turns up a flaw that's been hiding for years," said Eylam Milner, cofounder and chief technology officer at cybersecurity startup Echo. The vulnerabilities, he added, are "about as serious as it gets for the web."

Origin story

Understanding how this week's emergency unfolded offers a glimpse at how companies and authorities are working to stave off attacks — and how much risk they face going forward.

The origins of the incident can be traced back as far as April, when leading frontier AI firm Anthropic unveiled Mythos, leading some in the cybersecurity world to worry that systems would quickly be overrun by advanced artificial intelligence, with potential for catastrophic events to ensue.

But while researchers did find more flaws in computer systems in the months after Anthropic and other AI firms like OpenAI released those models, they had little impact in the real world. Even the Hugging Face incident, a widely discussed hack that saw OpenAI's autonomous AI agents go rogue during an internal security evaluation, related more to the level of control AI companies exert over their models than their power to break into systems worldwide.

That changed this week after researchers unveiled the vulnerability in PHP, a coding language estimated to be integrated into some 70% of the web.

The process by which information about flaws is released among cybersecurity officials and affiliated companies is crucial. Through a long-standing practice known as coordinated disclosure, researchers and companies that identify flaws can find a fix and share it confidentially with agencies and others before releasing it to the public, meaning they don't hand malicious hackers the gift of a hole without a fix.

In the case of the PHP flaw, that process worked well, but not perfectly. Information about the bugs started to circulate ahead of the planned release time. Then, according to the PHP Foundation, Chainguard "unilaterally broke the embargo," which "disregarded weeks of work by many parties toward a coordinated disclosure." PHP Foundation executive director Elizabeth Barron told POLITICO by email that while it was "disappointed" with Chainguard, it hopes to "rebuild trust with them in the future to ensure we can continue to collaborate effectively."

After the leak — which meant information about the bugs was in the open before the fix was ready — confusion quickly ensued, with government bodies and private companies choosing to temporarily shut down their websites rather than risk potentially damaging breaches to their data and the sites themselves.

Early Thursday, Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, an internet services company widely used by websites to block cyberattacks, which gives it a high level of visibility into what hackers are doing, said in a post on X that it had seen "millions" of attempts to exploit the flaw.

Cloudflare saw thousands in the 10 hours before the flaw was publicly announced, then tens of thousands in the 45 minutes after the announcement, hundreds of thousands within two hours, and now millions, Prince said.

Amazon's cloud division also said the flaw is "now being broadly exploited in the wild."

One senior US government cyber official said that federal authorities have been overwhelmed — and not just by PHP. The same day the world was racing to address PHP, they were also dealing with bugs in node.js, a widely used JavaScript framework, Fortinet, GitHub and Oracle.

"The fire department is fighting multiple fires at once," the official said, adding: "The good news is they're all one-story structures on fire, which the fire department deals with all day, every day."

More to come

Dauntingly, OpenAI said there's more on the way. "These bugs are among several significant vulnerabilities we've already found and are working to fix, and we expect similar findings to increase sharply in the coming months," the company said Wednesday in a statement.

Matthijs van Amelsfort, head of the Dutch cybersecurity agency, said in an interview that the job of keeping computer systems safe has been transformed by the advancement of AI. "As soon as the frontier models came out, that's exactly what we said: This will be the trend," he said. "And actually that's happening now."

Thomas Caspers, vice president of Germany's cyber agency BSI, concurred: "We expect that [to be] happening more and more during the coming months."

AI also ramps up the risks once the flaws are out in the open. Cyber agencies' recommendation that organizations take their websites offline was "really a drastic measure," Caspers said. "We wouldn't have done that a few years ago or so." But because AI has made it quicker and easier to exploit flaws, "we had to do that," he said.

At the same time, the use of advanced AI to detect the flaws may create a new level of protection against malicious hackers looking to take advantage of them. Caspers said that though his German agency has also seen attacks, it has not seen any successful use of the flaw by hackers.

"It seems a little bit more complicated than expected to exploit," he said.

Despite the fact that AI offers a new way to discover flaws, the work involved in keeping systems protected is more quotidian, with cyber agencies urging organizations to install the fix shared by the PHP Foundation, in a process known as patching.

"There are three things that you have to do right now," said van Amelsfort from the Dutch agency. "And that's patch, patch, and patch."

John Sakellariadis contributed to this report.

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, The Telegraph, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.

• There are clear parallels between the AI boom and the dot-com bubble, tech investor Paul Wick says.
• But solid demand, strong earnings, and less mania make for a "healthier" backdrop, Wick said.
• Seligman's chief investor brushed off Michael Burry's worries but flagged some trends to watch.

The AI boom has shades of the dot-com bubble, but fears of an imminent crash and mass unemployment are overblown, a veteran tech investor says.

At the turn of this century, there was an explosion in dot-com startups being formed, and a huge infrastructure buildout with telecoms "aggressively" spending on wired and wireless networks, Paul Wick told Business Insider in an interview this week.

The chief investor of Seligman Investments — a group within Columbia Threadneedle Investments that manages over $40 billion of assets and comprises a hedge fund, a mutual fund, and a venture capital arm — said there were clear parallels between that period and the current boom in AI startups and data-center spending. He also noted that energy prices and interest rates jumped then as they've done this year.

But Wick noted there isn't the same IPO frenzy now, or the same "frenetic environment" where stocks soar fivefold or tenfold in a day. He also said that by late 2000, a slowdown in IT spending was being forecasted for 2001, whereas enterprise spending on AI remains strong and recent tech earnings have been robust.

Simply put, the situation seems "healthier" now than in 2000, he said.

Business Insider asked Wick about Michael Burry's warnings this year around AI. "The Big Short" investor has called out aggressive accounting, circular financing, hidden debt, and overinvestment in depreciating assets like microchips as reasons to be skeptical that the boom has legs.

Wick said that Burry, known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, has been "early or downright wrong on many other things."

Burry has previously defended his track record, citing his correct predictions and sharing charts showing the timing of his market calls.

As for concerns about Nvidia's efforts to grow the AI ecosystem by investing in data center developers and software companies, Wick emphasized that the chipmaker is "extraordinarily profitable."

He cast doubt on whether Nvidia should spend its spare cash only on buybacks, rather than bolstering its customers, especially as several of the industry's biggest players are working to develop their own AI chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia.

But he also flagged some industry trends to watch, including enterprise clients opting to use older models or build their own, and token pricing coming under pressure as users embrace open-source models, raising questions over the size of the market opportunity for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Navigating a new world

Wick weighed in on how a young person can get ahead in the AI era.

"It used to be that a degree in computer science was a ticket to success," he said.

A better option today might be to learn a trade, as there's "booming demand" for workers such as electricians and HVAC technicians, and they can make an "incredibly good living" without having to go to a four-year college, Wick said.

He also took aim at the "doom-and-gloom notion that AI is going to eviscerate demand" for human labor. He described that worry as a "little premature" as nobody knows for sure how AI will affect entry-level roles in the future, unemployment is yet to soar, and there's always inertia when it comes to businesses and consumers changing their behavior.

• Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale's wife has an interesting nickname for their AI agent.
• She calls it "Tradbot," he said, a name inspired by the social media trend of tradwives.
• The Lonsdales use their "Tradbot" for help with parenting.

What does Joe Lonsdale's AI agent and Ballerina Farm have in common?

Lonsdale, who cofounded Palantir before building his venture capital firm, told CNBC on Thursday how his wife, Tayler, uses AI — and the nickname she's given their agent.

"My wife has Grok Bot at home," Lonsdale said. "She calls it the 'tradbot' for tradwife."

For those unfamiliar, a tradwife is a woman who embraces traditional gender roles, such as supporting her husband with household work and taking a primary role in raising kids. Some of these tradwives become influencers, posting videos of their ornate meals or gifts for their husbands.

The Lonsdale family's "tradbot" helps them manage parenting duties for their six children. Lonsdale said the AI agent tells them about health appointments and activities.

He asked the "tradbot" to help his two-year-old break up with his binky. "It's telling me when to and when not to give it to him," Lonsdale said.

Parents have been employing AI for all kinds of use cases. One mom of two previously told Business Insider that she sends voice memos to Claude to help organize her life. Another said that she built AI agents to help manage schedules and school emails. Business Insider's Amanda Hoover declared mom, dad, and AI the "modern parenting throuple." The debate of how much — if any — AI should be involved in parenting continues to rage online.

Lonsdale is a vocal proponent of AI, having invested in it heavily through his venture capital fund, 8VC. During September's AI extinction freak-out, Lonsdale reassured the public: "The world is going to be alright, guys."

Clearly, Lonsdale's use of AI has extended beyond the office. "My wife's definitely using it at home," Lonsdale told CNBC, "and we're using it a lot at work as well."

• Frutiger Aero, a Gen Z favorite, combines early internet nostalgia with a utopian tech vision.
• Fans say the aesthetic represents a "future that was promised" by tech but never arrived.
• Some recent tech releases have hinted at a Frutiger Aero revival.

Looking at 22-year-old Sammy Conti's room is like looking into a fishbowl.

Shades of blue fill the space, interspersed with neon green and the occasional pop of orange or yellow. Vines, bubbles, and jellyfish hang from the ceiling. Moving lamps are everywhere: lava lamps, bubble lamps, aquarium lamps with roving tropical fish. Then there are objects that feel out of place: a purple Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64 cartridges, Wii and PlayStation game cases hung like art on a gallery wall, and a DIY mirror in the shape of an old Microsoft Windows logo.

The confluence of nature and old-school tech isn't random. It's Frutiger Aero, an aesthetic inspired by the early internet, embraced by Gen Zers who say it represents a future that was promised but never arrived — one where technology is a source of inspiration and fuel for creativity, coexisting with nature and helping us ascend to our highest selves.

"You grow up thinking the world is going to be this green utopia where we coexist with nature and have technology and it helps us," Conti told Business Insider. "Then as I started getting older, things became very sleek and modernist, very gray."

For Conti, whose Frutiger Aero content has earned her more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, the aesthetic represents a promise tech abandoned. "We could have lived in that future," she said. "It could have been taken care of responsibly in a way that doesn't take people's jobs, doesn't pollute the environment, but it's not."

A corporate tech aesthetic gets a glow-up

A fervent online community has formed around the term after it first gained traction in 2023, according to Google Trends data. There's an active Discord and Subreddit, plus millions of views for #frutigeraero on TikTok.

Sofi Xian, a researcher and founding member of an online community called the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, coined the term Frutiger Aero in 2017 to describe a corporate tech aesthetic prevalent from the mid-2000s through the early 2010s. Some defining characteristics included glossy surfaces, glass or transparent materials, and macro photos of grass. "Frutiger" refers to a specific typeface, while "Aero" was Microsoft's name for the interface design of its Windows Vista operating system, which came out in 2006.

"Nobody at the time really thought it was cool," Xian said of the design style. "It was a corporate product. It was sold to us."

The recent embrace of Frutiger Aero remains somewhat of a mystery to Xian, who says the term has blossomed well beyond what she first documented. Her book on the style, "Archaeology of a Promised Future," is set to come out in November.

The modern version of the aesthetic still incorporates some of the classic elements, and then some. "Bliss," the iconic photo of rolling green hills beneath a bright blue sky with clouds — the default wallpaper on Windows XP upon its release in 2001 — remains an almost sacred image to Frutiger fans. Conti recently made a pilgrimage to the area in Sonoma County, California, and called it "just as beautiful as it is in the photos."

The future that never showed

"The future that was promised" is a central theme in the world of Frutiger Aero and is frequently invoked alongside images of clean, glistening skyscrapers set against grassy fields.

"It's really a vision of technology that is quite different to what we have," Maria Gemma Brown, a cultural studies researcher at the University of Queensland, told Business Insider.

Many young people now see technology as bland, lifeless, addictive, or even sinister. AI is increasingly associated with war, mass surveillance, and environmental degradation. Data centers, one of the most controversial physical manifestations of modern tech, face fierce opposition over environmental concerns.

Richy Srirachanikorn, a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University, has interviewed more than 30 people in the Frutiger Aero community. He said it's about nostalgia for a feeling more than about the specific objects or design that inspired it.

"Whatever this aesthetic was as a kid, it made me optimistic, not about the future, but about the present," he said was how the people he interviewed described it.

That could help explain why it's especially appealing to Gen Z, a generation rife with concerns about environmental, technological, and financial doom. Srirachanikorn said he found Frutiger Aero is used almost as a "coping mechanism" and the associated online communities as places to take "respite from the uncertainties of the world."

Lovers of Frutiger Aero are also rejecting a broader design shift toward minimalism and neutral colors. In consumer tech, translucent clamshell laptops and bright pink MP3 players have given way to sleek, uniformly gray designs, as if they're explicitly meant to disappear into the background of our lives.

"I feel like products had almost a personality. Which color you picked or what design you picked was a loud extension of you," Conti said, adding that now it feels like everything merely wants to "fit in."

The old-school tech may also represent a level of agency that feels unattainable now, Srirachanikorn said. In the early 2000s, consumer tech companies may have embraced bright colors and images of nature to make their products more appealing as they still needed us to buy in. Today, their products are almost impossible to escape.

Hope for a new bloom

Austin Horey, founder of the New York-based brand Unjust Jewelry, makes a range of products inspired by Frutiger Aero and similar strains of nostalgia. He's sold over 10,000 bottles of a Frutiger Aero-inspired fragrance — oceanic, clean, soapy — that comes in a box that, when opened, plays an original Frutiger Aero-inspired song.

Horey said not only is there a huge appetite for Frutiger Aero content and products, but that major tech companies seem to be taking notice. His work has been embraced by an icon of the Frutiger Aero movement: Microsoft. When he released a Windows XP bracelet featuring the classic application icons from the operating system, the company partnered with him to make a necklace as well.

Fans of Frutiger Aero celebrate every time Big Tech makes a move they think signals a return to the aesthetic, like Xbox introducing a new glossy neon-green logo and the release of the budget-friendly Apple MacBook Neo, which comes in a bright yellow-green. Apple's introduction of the Liquid Glass design last year also set off the Frutiger Aero antennae. Microsoft even posted a TikTok suggesting the design was reminiscent of Windows Vista.

Conti said the colorful MacBook Neo was the most Frutiger Aero product a tech company had released in years. While she's been disappointed in modern tech, the underlying vibe of Frutiger Aero is one of optimism, and she still sees the ideas behind it as something to strive for, "especially as Gen Z moves into these positions of power as we get older."

"I think it's important not to forget what it still could be," she said.

• Being a mom can be challenging and expensive.
• Some have turned to apps like Uber and Lyft to make extra money — or as their main source of income.
• Fill out our survey if you're a mom who does gig work.

Uber and Lyft often talk about the flexibility of working as a driver on their apps.

That aspect of the gig has attracted moms, among other people who often want to earn money outside a 9-to-5 schedule. The job can be appealing to mothers who need to juggle school drop-offs, childcare, and other obligations of parenting.

Others, including single moms, say they feel stuck in ride-hailing work and end up having to drive for Uber or Lyft at set times anyway, depending on when the most passengers need rides.

With costs like childcare and college rising, Uber and Lyft offer some moms a way to make extra money — if they can earn enough on the apps and keep costs like gas and car maintenance under control.

Business Insider wants to speak with moms who drive for Uber, Lyft, or other ride-hailing apps. We want to hear about how you combine the gig with taking care of your kids, including both what's working and what isn't. Please fill out the survey below.

• Everyone complains about AI-generated junk.
• But decades of sloppy human-written software may be a much bigger problem.
• This week's "Black October" freakout was caused by human slop, not AI.

The internet has a slop problem. And for once, we can't blame AI.

Most of us spend hours online every day without thinking much about the software holding everything together. We assume somebody, somewhere, has made sure it all works properly.

So it probably came as a shock this week to discover just how vulnerable some of that software is.

The cybersecurity freakout dubbed "Black October" has inspired warnings about AI-powered hackers, digital catastrophe, and even advice to stockpile cash and canned food.

At first glance, AI looks like the villain. But this is largely a human-made mess.

Here's the problem.

The internet runs on decades of software, some of it containing security weaknesses that have been overlooked, tolerated, or simply left unfixed.

For years, that was a manageable gamble. Fixing software takes time and money. Exploiting obscure weaknesses often required considerable expertise. Companies could convince themselves that the risk wasn't worth worrying about.

AI is changing that calculation. Someone who once needed years of training to hunt for weaknesses can now get help from an AI model. These tools can also examine software at speeds that humans can't match.

Suddenly, all those problems we've been ignoring look more urgent.

"Over the last 10 years the risk acceptance process has morphed from a way to accept risks to enable the business, to a way to justify never fixing security issues," Joel de la Garza and Zane Lackey, partners at a16z, wrote on Friday.

That's quite an indictment. The result is a recent surge in published vulnerabilities.

This looks like AI is creating new security problems. But it's actually AI exposing weaknesses that humans left behind.

Slop irony

The irony is delicious. We've spent the past couple of years complaining about "AI slop." Turns out human slop can be pretty consequential, too.

"The funny thing is everyone was saying AI slop code will cause a cyber crisis but it's actually all the old human slop causing it and the AI is just cleaning it up," software engineer Ben Kaufman wrote on X on Thursday.

"Humans have been the ones writing and reviewing each other's code for decades," tech founder Anant Jain wrote on X. "If we're being intellectually honest and holding ourselves to the same bar we hold AI to, we'd have to admit that we haven't been all that good at it either."

Humans are sloppy

Anyone who's worked with other humans for a decade or two knows exactly how this happens.

It's Friday afternoon. You've almost finished a project. You could spend another few hours making it perfect, or declare it 90% done and head off to that dinner party. We've all been there.

AI agents don't have dinner parties. They don't get tired on Friday afternoons. They can keep searching, testing, and trying again. That persistence is now colliding with an internet built by busy, imperfect humans who often settled for "good enough for now."

A tragedy of the commons

There's another wrinkle here, though, and it's an important one.

Much of the software underpinning the internet is freely available for anyone to use. Some of it is maintained by volunteers or small groups of experts, even as enormous technology companies depend on it.

In 2020, the cartoonist Randall Munroe captured this absurdity in an xkcd comic. Modern digital infrastructure still rests precariously on tiny foundations.

It's funny because it's uncomfortably close to reality. Take the specific PHP problems from this week. These flaws have existed for years, and the PHP Foundation acknowledges that limited resources and disagreements over fixes contributed to delays in fixing them.

Tom Occhino, chief product officer at Vercel, brought up Munroe's cartoon during my recent interview with him.

He explained that AI is finding weaknesses even in software that the industry has treated as dependable for decades.

This is partly a version of the tragedy of the commons: Everyone benefits from a shared resource, but no one has sufficient incentive to take responsibility for maintaining it.

And let's be clear: The volunteers keeping essential software running aren't the villains here. The companies benefiting from their work have a much greater responsibility.

Occhino thinks AI could help solve the problem it is exposing.

He described an idea being discussed at Vercel: Create a foundation or coalition that funds efforts to identify vulnerable software and replace it with safer alternatives.

"We need a consortium. We need a coalition," he told me.

He suggested companies could contribute computing resources and AI tools to the effort. Nothing has been formally announced, but the idea is compelling.

Indeed, OpenAI's Patch the Planet effort is an example of what's possible.

Rather than simply using AI to create more software, the industry could use it to repair what already exists.

Occhino put it nicely: Companies need to spend less time chasing new ideas and more time asking how to make existing systems "just work really, really well."

That's a better response than panicking about the imminent collapse of the internet.

AI didn't create decades of neglected software. We did. Perhaps it's time to clean up our own slop.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

The UN food agency helping Palestinians and others in need across the world has come under scrutiny for its contract with Palantir –  the controversial US tech and AI company used by various international border police and militaries to sort data and better identify targets.

The UN’s food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), prolonged its contract with Palantir in July, prompting civil organisations to urge the end of these agreements in a letter published on Friday (23 October).

Some 3,000 European citizens have written to the WFP’s leadership, calling for the agency to end its Palantir partnership.

The WFP holds one of the biggest biometric databases in the world, with millions of its records containing information about vulnerable populations.

WFP is effectively supporting a company that undermines its own operations in Palestine by helping kill civilians for another client, which is “a very strong contradiction,”  Giulio Carini, head of campaigns at an NGO WeMove Europe told EUobserver.

“On one hand, you’re feeding people of Gaza, but then, but on the other, you’re using software from a company whose technology is allegedly also being used to kill them” he added.

As many as 1.1 million people are reached by the WFP in Gaza each month, out of the 1.4 million facing acute food insecurity. The organisation is complaining that it had to scale down its food assistance in Gaza and the West Bank due to a lack of funding.

The WFP has argued that its use of Palantir’s software to compile its datasets and make better decisions has saved them $50m [€45m] that would otherwise be spent on inefficient management of its resources.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

• Canva launched Canva Craft, a tool similar to AI image models by Google, Meta, and OpenAI.
• Surprisingly, Canva fell short on a design task but did well at generating more realistic images.
• Here is how Canva's new image generation tool stacks up against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Muse.

Canva wants a shot at winning the AI image generation race.

The design platform launched Canva Craft on Thursday, its first image-generation model, similar to those from Google, Meta, and OpenAI.

Users can access Craft through Canva’s Dream Lab, including with free accounts, though it is subject to AI usage limits. You’ll need to sign in to a Canva account to get started.

In the release announcement, Canva said the tool plans a design’s layout, proportions, and text before generating an image, an approach that aims to help it produce legible lettering and accurate details.

The company also said that the model was trained on human-designed Canva templates, including posters, menus, and presentations, rather than photographs.

To test how Canva performs, Business Insider created three image generation prompts with escalating difficulty levels — from designing a simple greeting card to creating a photorealistic image from scratch.

Here is how Canva's brand-new image generation tool stacked up against three of the most powerful models.

Canva did not respond to a request for comment.

Starting off with an illustration

We started off simple with a prompt for a birthday card.

Create a cartoon "Happy Birthday" greeting card for a friend named Jessica who has pink hair, brown eyes, likes to wear paisley, and is turning 28 years old in November.

Surprisingly, Canva, the design platform, fell short in its design of the birthday card, from the awkward font to the outsize head of the cartoon character. It didn't even bother to include any paisley.

By comparison, ChatGPT and Muse understood the assignment.

ChatGPT guessed that the recipient's favorite color might be pink, while Muse thoughtfully wove in cozy fall elements for the November birthday girl.

Meanwhile, Gemini took the request literally and produced an image of an actual card. Extra points!

Winner: Muse

Editing an image

For the second task, I tested the AI models' ability to identify an element and place it in a brand-new setting.

Edit this image of me holding a necklace pendant. Take the red garnet pendant off my hand and make it look as if it is displayed in a vitrine in a jewelry showroom.

Canva did a great job of identifying the pendant and creating an atmospheric setting, but, like Gemini, it depicted the jewelry in a way that defied physics and common sense. It would be unrealistic for a pendant to float in the air or sit propped on a metal pole.

ChatGPT and Muse once again outperformed other models in understanding how things typically look in reality. Muse, however, made some alterations to the pendant, which I didn't ask for.

Winner: ChatGPT

Creating a photorealistic image from scratch

With Halloween approaching, I asked for a realistic depiction of my favorite animal.

Generate a photorealistic image of a long-haired orange tabby cat in a Halloween costume with bat wings, perched on the edge of a gothic medieval castle under the full moon and a starless night sky.

Though the cat's fur looks a little too strandy and high-contrast in Canva's creation, no components are missing or malformed, and the image composition pretty much matches the quality of Muse and Gemini.

The clear winner for me in this round, however, would be ChatGPT.

Not only is the cat's posture majestic, but the soft glow on his left side is extremely realistic, and the white balance is well done. There are also clouds softly cradling the moon, which could be a response to my request for a starless sky.

Winner: ChatGPT

Overall, it's evident that Canva still has a lot of room to grow compared to other models, especially if graphic design is its focus. For now, I'll stick to moving components around by hand.

Ukraine said Friday it is still experiencing restrictions on the Starlink satellite system, contradicting a claim by US President Donald Trump that access had been fully restored. Trump said he had not yet spoken with SpaceX chief Elon Musk about the issue.