Mia Sato | The Verge

Microsoft, like, totally gets why students are booing AI-pilled graduation speakers

2026-06-10T13:45:11-04:00

New college graduates around the country have been booing and heckling commencement speakers who hype up AI. Microsoft would like everyone to talk it out.

In a blog post running more than 3,100 words, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith addressed the recent spate of viral clips from graduation ceremonies, like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt getting an earful at the University of Arizona, or the speaker in Florida who seemed surprised when students booed at the mention of AI as “the next industrial revolution.” The videos speak to a broader societal sentiment around AI — the technology is deeply unpopular even as technology companies insert it everywhere without consent. Young people use AI, yet feel bad about it. The backlash against massive data centers is shaping up to be a defining political issue. There’s the sense that these viral clips are a cathartic expression of just how out of touch executives and technocrats really are.

In the blog post, Smith takes a conciliatory tone: Of course young people are reacting this way. It’s the wake-up call for the adults in the room!

“Graduating students who grimace or even boo at references to AI are telling us what we need to hear, that it’s time once again to raise the bar,” Smith writes. “That has been a frequent refrain from students for decades. The key is always to channel uncertainty into purposeful steps that build a better future.”

But in substance, the blog post is similar to the line of reasoning that have elicited the boos in the first place: that AI will reshape culture, labor, and relationships in ways we might not even understand yet. Smith also suggests graduates are more attuned to an AI-filled future, having grown up with technology and being more nimble to change.

“You’re in a unique position to have a positive impact. You’ve lived through significant challenges,” he writes. “While it may feel unfair that the job market is so uncertain, you were made for this moment.”

The idea that what the tech industry needs to do is “raise the bar” will also likely be met with skepticism from consumers: It was, after all, these very same people — including Microsoft partners like OpenAI’s Sam Altman — who once warned of the catastrophic effects of AI, only to walk it back after realizing it landed poorly (Microsoft execs, too, are trying to thread the needle around jobs). Why should the public trust the people who caused this uncertainty to be the ones to clean up the mess?

An alternative way to understand Microsoft’s missive is that it’s directed not at the new grads who are angry, but at the C-suite execs who are seeing these clips and rolling their eyes. In a post on X, Smith said the booing graduates are “reminding us that AI should serve people, not replace them.” That they needed reminding in the first place is the whole problem.

Amazon is launching AI-generated custom merch

2026-06-08T17:59:23-04:00

Amazon is expanding its print-on-demand features to AI-generated designs created using Alexa for Shopping for products like T-shirts, water bottles, and hoodies.

Shoppers can use text prompts to generate images that are then printed onto blanks for sale on Amazon. They can then share the link to the design so other people can buy the same custom item. Amazon offers family reunions and pet-themed designs as use case examples, but the feature also threatens an entire ecosystem of drop-shipped products — as well as other custom printing companies.

Amazon already had a Merch on Demand feature where shoppers could drop in images, text, and clip art-style icons into blank T-shirts and other products. Now with Alexa, shoppers can use AI to auto-generate designs and then tweak or edit them. Custom designs still need to adhere to Amazon’s content policies around things like trademarks and copyright. (A New York Knicks design I generated for testing was flagged for “third-party content concerns,” for example, and Amazon said I wouldn’t be able to purchase it.) But theoretically, customers will be able to create endless assortments of unbranded products right on Amazon.

The new feature rolls up the process of designing, purchasing, and printing custom products all under one roof, and competes with sites like Redbubble, Printful, and Shutterfly, which for years have been the go-to for anyone needing a custom, fast print job. In the last few years, those platforms — along with other marketplace-style platforms like Etsy, TikTok Shop, and eBay — have become overrun with seemingly AI-generated designs, giving shoppers endless (middling) options. The designs I tried generating using Alexa all have an unmistakable AI quality to them: overly smooth, frictionless illustrations, lots of cliches, and garbled text. (Relatedly: Has AI ruined bootleg merch?)

AI designs are increasingly becoming more ubiquitous — and now, your kid’s little league merch might also reek of AI image generation. Amazon itself is pushing deep into AI-powered commerce on its platform. The company recently launched a tool that lets shoppers describe what kind of item they’re looking for, after which Amazon will display mockups of products that aren’t for sale but that will be used to find lookalikes — a fake dupe to find a dupe of something else.

MAHA wants to make cotton the new beef tallow

2026-06-05T10:26:21-04:00

In between beef tallow fries, raw milk, and vaccine denialism, Make America Healthy Again figureheads have set their sights on another slice of life: our clothing.

“The MAHA movement doesn’t stop with what we EAT — It’s also about what we WEAR,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a post on X in late May. “For decades, America offshored textile jobs and allowed foreign synthetic, plastic-based materials to take over the clothing market.” Rollins went on Fox News to promote a new Department of Agriculture campaign dubbed “the Great American Cotton Plan,” an initiative that promises subsidies for American cotton farmers, revitalization of domestic manufacturing, more favorable trade policies with other countries, and a marketing campaign aimed at consumers that urges them to buy “plant, not plastic.” The campaign is at least partially a problem of the Trump administration’s own making: Cotton farmers themselves have said tariffs and increasing costs are making the job harder and more expensive.

The focus on cotton clothing and textiles as part of MAHA ideology is coming at an opportune time for the movement. There’s been a wave of interest in clothing made from natural fibers like cotton, wool, and linen, as opposed to synthetics like polyester that are common in fast fashion especially, but also in clothing more generally. Some brands are cashing in on growing consumer interest in natural-fiber clothing, marketing their products using imprecise and unregulated buzzwords like “non-toxic” and “clean.” And at every turn, influencers document their efforts to swap out plastics and other synthetics in their homes for “natural” alternatives. Now, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA is subsuming cotton as part of the official platform.

The government’s appeal to consumers to buy, wear, and use cotton products over others seems, on its face, fairly harmless — cotton clothing does feel nice. It is a versatile fabric that comes in an endless array of textures, knits, colors, weights, and prints. It’s breezy in hot weather, especially with a looser weave that isn’t skin-tight. There are some products that I will only purchase if they’re 100 percent cotton, like pajamas, graphic T-shirts, or denim. Cotton, like every fiber, has its place in our wardrobes; the MAHA evangelists and profiteers, though, rarely untangle the nuances.

The Great American Cotton Plan is about one thing: Putting American cotton first again.

Real “_____” wear cotton. 👖🌱

Americans. Cowboys. Farmers. Families. MAHA. Because cotton is real, natural, American-grown, and made by U.S. farmers.

Here’s the plan 👇

✅ Promote… pic.twitter.com/PkzvY9nHBb
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) May 28, 2026

One garment category that’s gotten a lot of attention in recent years is activewear, which tends to be made of synthetics for performance and comfort purposes, and is often worn close to the skin. On social media, influencers dramatically stuff their leggings, sports bras, and underwear into garbage bags, vowing to toss their clothing and replace it with cotton products. The influencer content often goes for maximum panic. (“If you want to have babies one day, throw away all your activewear,” one video begins. It’s promoting a so-called “low-tox” athletic brand.)

But some average consumers also worry about working out in petroleum-based materials, citing polyester garments shedding microplastics and the potential of their skin absorbing chemicals from their clothes. A piece from Wirecutter dealing specifically with the plastic activewear question lays out some of the complicating factors: When it comes to chemical exposures, it’s not clear what risk clothing poses compared to, say, eating or drinking. Scientists are still trying to understand what effects microplastics have on the human body, or how to best measure microplastics to begin with. Synthetic fabric and materials also do play an important role in having comfortable, durable clothing: You need elastic in the waistbands and legs of underwear, for example, or they wouldn’t stay in place. Socks made of 100 percent wool or cotton would wear out faster. Even the “low-tox” activewear brands promoted by influencers have some amount of synthetic fibers with unidentified origins in the fabrics they use — 100 percent cotton leggings won’t have the same stretch.

There’s another reality that much of the “non-toxic” and administration’s MAHA branding is glossing over: Being made from natural fibers like cotton doesn’t necessarily mean a garment is safer or chemical-free. Manufacturers will sometimes treat fabrics (including cotton) to make them more resistant to staining or wrinkling, which can lead to chemicals like formaldehyde being present in clothes. Some early research has also called into question claims that natural fibers do in fact biodegrade, as often claimed by manufacturers and brands.

The USDA’s Great American Cotton Plan has also angered some MAHA influencers, who say it’s a scheme backed by the agriculture industry to sell more pesticides — cotton is water-intensive to grow, process, and dye, and uses massive amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Their preferred course of action is to focus on organic farming, but even that comes with a caveat: Generalized organic labels are squishy, and reporting by The New York Times found evidence of fraud along the supply chain for certified organic products. In other words, it’s a mess.

One thing that’s for sure, though, is that consumer fears around what clothing is made of is great for business. There are “low tox,” “natural,” and “clean” clothing brands popping up every day, with nice-sounding but unregulated claims around safety and health with sparse details — but with plenty of products for consumers to purchase. MAHA Action, a group that says it is “committed to supporting president Donald Trump’s MAHA Agenda,” celebrated the Great American Cotton Plan on social media. True believers can fill their shopping carts in the MAHA Action online store, which is stocked with a handful of organic cotton T-shirts — and plenty of polyester, too.

Hundreds of prolific Wikipedia editors are threatening to go on strike

2026-05-28T23:19:10-04:00

Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of trust on the internet. But last week, volunteer editors and contributors were alarmed to hear that a small but important team of engineers at the nonprofit that supports it had been laid off. The layoffs didn’t just threaten to sever an important link between the Wikimedia Foundation and its community — they also raised concerns that the WMF was engaging in union-busting. After days of heated discussion, some Wikipedians are ready to support a strike. What that even looks like on a platform where creators mostly aren’t being paid is a different question.

On May 20th, the WMF said it was disbanding the Community Tech team, a group of five engineers and one manager who are among WMF’s paid staff. The team was a bridge between the foundation and Wikipedia’s army of volunteers. The team developed tools and features that contributors use every day: things like plagiarism detectors, dark mode, or chart and graph tools. Editors and former foundation employees describe it as an approachable group — somewhere volunteers could turn if they needed help, or to have their voice heard.

Even so, this system could get backlogged. The WMF acknowledged that the process of responding to community requests for features and tools was not working perfectly, and said that having a centralized team was “leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays.” So going forward, that work would be distributed among multiple teams instead of through a centralized Community Tech team.

“Why aren’t you backtracking like hell right now?”

The reaction from the community was immediate and negative. Longtime contributors demanded the reinstatement of team and changes to the way the wishlist, a log of new features and tools the community requests, was run. Others suspected an ulterior motive. In recent months, Wikimedia staff had announced their intent to unionize, and some suggested the foundation was specifically laying off staff involved in the union drive. The breakup of the Community Tech team was also not the first instance of shocking, sudden departures. The union Wiki Workers United, which has not yet been recognized, declined a request for an interview.

Jimmy Wales, a cofounder of Wikipedia, argued with contributors on the site’s discussion pages, saying it was “time to get serious about meeting community needs,” and assuring volunteers that there would still be dedicated staff working on the wishlist. Volunteers did not find it comforting.

“If it’s not about the money, it’s not about the union, why aren’t you backtracking like hell right now?” says Hannah Clover, an editor and former Wikimedian of the Year. “Even Jimmy is trying to pass this off as somehow listening to the community, and that’s infuriating.”

In an email to The Verge, Nadee Gunasena, chief of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, said that the restructuring was based on internal assessments dating back to September 2025. Gunasena said the restructuring will ensure that volunteer requests will be fulfilled by a variety of teams with expertise in different areas, and that it will seek to place the six Community Tech employees in other roles; if none are found, they’ll be laid off next month. Gunasena also denied that WMF has terminated any staff for union activities. If union supporters recruit enough staff to call for a vote — which hasn’t yet been requested — “we respect the rights of all eligible staff to vote, and if the majority of eligible staff vote in favor of representation, we will proceed to negotiate in good faith,” Gunasena said.

The relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteers that maintain Wikipedia had been improving consistently, says Femke Nijsse, a volunteer contributor — until the layoffs. Now, Nijsse says, it feels like the relationship is moving in the opposite direction.

“The wishlist has been broken for two, three years, and the response has not been to fix that, but to fire the people that are still making it sort of work,” she says. Nijsse has suggested a way to overhaul the process that has unsurprisingly prompted extensive discussion among volunteers. At the top of the list is to reinstate the Community Tech team.

Both editors and former employees worry that the work done by the Community Tech team will fall by the wayside without dedicated staff. One former foundation employee, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely, told The Verge that several of the employees on the disbanded team were “one-of-a-kind developers who know segments of the tech stack that no one knew.”

“This follows a pattern of breaking up community-facing teams with the idea that now everyone’s going to be responsible for it,” they say. “And what happens every time is no one’s responsible for it, and then it gets neglected.”

Tamzin Hadasa Kelly, another volunteer editor, said in a message to The Verge that it was clear immediately that the community was angry. Kelly created a petition in solidarity with the union in which volunteers are saying they are willing to engage in collective action — potentially even an editors strike — if WWU asked them to. It’s since been signed by more than 700 editors, most from Wikipedia’s English-language site, who are collectively responsible for writing tens of thousands of articles and making nearly 10 million edits. “The goal was not to do some performative stunt or just turn this into a community vs. WMF power struggle, but to put the power in the hands of the people who need it, which is WWU,” Kelly said.

A strike would likely not happen unless WWU called for one, and there’s no clear timeline for this. For now, the volunteer community is rapidly signing on to the petition, and will need to hammer out what a strike would look like via Wikipedia’s consensus-based guiding decision-making process. Some proposed actions don’t necessarily impact Wikipedia’s content. Contributors have discussed measures like blocking banners calling for donations to the WMF, which could cut into the foundation’s funds.

Routine vandalism, spam, errant sentences, and other less urgent rule-breaking would go unmoderated

The version of a strike proposed by Kelly, however, would call on editors to cease any activity on Wikipedia other than to remove the most egregious examples of abuse, like the posting of personal information, harassment, or adding fabricated and unsourced information about living people. Routine vandalism, spam, errant sentences, and other less urgent rule-breaking would go unmoderated. Pages might go blank, or quickly become outdated, says Nijsse.

The effects of any kind of work stoppage could be profound, given how much weight the site carries on an internet filled with sludge. “Wikipedia can very quickly become dated if there’s not hundreds and hundreds of people updating it every day,” Nijsse says. “Breaking news is probably where you’ll see a bigger problem, where articles just don’t get created.” Wikipedia is also a major source for AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT. If Wikipedia breaks, the internet breaks — and Wikipedia needs the unpaid editors, whose anger is quickly mounting.

“There will be no Wikipedia. It will quickly deteriorate” if even a critical mass of volunteers stop working, says another former Wikimedia Foundation employee. “That would be a disaster, not for Wikipedia, but for humanity.”

The AI fight brewing inside The New York Times

2026-05-27T08:06:35-04:00

Yellow taxis pass in front of The New York Times newspaper building. | Alexandra Schuler/dpa (Photo by Alexandra Schuler/picture alliance via Getty Images)

How newsrooms should use AI — or if they should at all — has been a recurrent debate within the media industry over the last several years. Increasingly, these rules are being hammered out at the bargaining table between unions and publishers. Right now, employees at The New York Times are gearing up for a fight.

Unionized staff with the Tech Guild say Times management has refused to provide the union with information related to how the company has used AI, its plans for AI use in the future, and how it will affect employees’ jobs and workflow. (The union filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month.) The Tech Guild, a NewsGuild of New York unit of around 700 software engineers, designers, product and project managers, and data analysts, also filed grievances saying Times management violated their collective bargaining agreement when it started using two internal AI tools that track and evaluate employee performance and activity.

One of the AI tools, called DX, advertises itself as an engineering productivity tool that lets companies track employees’ output, generative AI use, and efficiency, among other metrics. DX was originally announced internally as a way to improve the developer experience, says Ben Harnett, a software engineer at the Times and chair of the unit’s generative AI committee. The goal, at least according to Times management, was to measure the company as a whole. Over the last few months, though, the DX data has become more personalized, with benchmarks being applied to individuals, Harnett says.

“Now people in disciplinary situations are suddenly having read back to them, ‘You only did one [pull request] per week, per whatever, and that’s 25 percent below industry standard,’” Harnett says. He is concerned that the blanket metrics flatten all work the unit members do and erase the nuance of engineering into an opaque set of metrics that can be used against staff in disciplinary or performance review settings. The metrics don’t correlate to quality of work or the actual number of features an employee delivers, Harnett says.

“All this [data] reasonably could be expected to … help us understand how we’re doing, but not the way that they’re using it and implementing it, which we think is amounting to a de facto quota,” Harnett told The Verge. DX statistics have been cited in recent disciplinary conversations, the Tech Guild says.

“We feel really [this] amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers.”

Another software called Glean takes internal knowledge bases like wikis, GitHub documents, Google Docs, and emails, and allows employees to query the system to find what they’re looking for more easily. But there are concerns among employees that Glean can also be used to monitor workers because it pulls in vast amounts of internal documentation: Harnett says that if he’s working on a draft document to describe a feature he’s building or leaves a comment in a file that’s available in Glean, for example, a manager could query the tool about his individual performance or contributions. The Tech Guild told The Verge that the style and format of recent disciplinary notices sent to staff suggest they were generated using Glean. Harnett says that Glean has issues — namely that it generates falsehoods and can lead a user on “wild goose chases.”

“The way that they’re using [DX and Glean] we feel really amounts to deploying surveillance and monitoring tech against the workers,” Harnett says. The union believes that the use of these tools violates multiple parts of their contract, including protections around privacy and monitoring, job descriptions, and requirements for notifying employees and bargaining with them.

Both the Tech Guild and the Times Guild (which represents 1,500 editorial, ad sales, and support staff at the Times) filed unfair labor practice charges against the Times, saying that company violated labor law by refusing to respond to their requests for information around AI use at the outlet.

The Times did not respond to specific questions about how it uses DX and Glean, but spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email that the company disagrees with the characterizations made in grievances and that it would respond as part of its “normal contractual process.”

“Likewise, we will respond to this Request for Information (RFI) in due course as we’ve done with 80+ other RFIs from the Guild in recent years,” Rhoades Ha said.

The Times Guild is currently bargaining a new contract, pushing for robust protections against AI, like requirements that a human is behind any AI tool being used, that any journalism utilizing AI is transparently labeled, and that staff are compensated for AI model training deals the company might make. The Times deploys artificial intelligence tools for some reporting, like using it to parse millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein or scan satellite images of Gaza to try to find where Israel had dropped a specific kind of bomb.

Journalists across the industry are in the process of negotiating union contracts, and AI is one of the most urgent issues at stake. In April, 150 unionized employees at ProPublica walked off the job for 24 hours; one of the key sticking points with management was how AI would be used and disclosed to audiences. After McClatchy, the company that publishes newspapers like the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, started rolling out a generative AI tool that spits out different versions of stories, some staff withheld their bylines in protest.

Harnett emphasizes that the unit’s position is not that AI shouldn’t ever be used, but that workers should have a say in how it’s deployed. Metrics like how many tokens an employee uses or how often they’re using AI to do their jobs create pressure to do more and incentives that don’t align with doing quality work.

“It’s going to distract [you] from actually doing a good job, which is what we think the company should want,” he says.

Pope Leo calls for being ‘profoundly human’ in the age of AI

2026-05-26T14:19:06-04:00

Pope Leo XIV attends the presentation of his first encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25th, 2026 in Vatican City, Vatican. | Photo: Getty Images

Pope Leo XIV warned of the risks of AI and unconstrained technological power in his first major papal document released on Monday. Magnifica Humanitas is the pope’s manifesto on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” in which he discusses the dangers of AI-powered warfare, the effects of AI on labor, and the need for new legal and ethical frameworks to govern technology.

In his papal encyclical — a kind of open letter from the Catholic Church — Pope Leo stressed the economic and social upheaval that rapid AI adoption is creating, with inadequate protections for individuals that threaten human dignity. He compared the current era of AI to the Tower of Babel, saying society must “avoid the ‘Babel syndrome,’” which he defines as “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”

Pope Leo’s letter touches on major areas of modern life that AI has become deeply embedded in: job loss and labor generally, AI-powered warfare, and children being exposed to AI tools and content, among other topics. Above all, the encyclical calls for the dignity of humans to be a central part of decision-making and governance. The letter is an appeal for “moral and social discernment that safeguards the primacy of the human person, in order to ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with its conscience and freedom, that guides technical innovations and responsibly determines their use and limits,” Leo writes.

The letter, which runs more than 42,000 words, frames the call for “prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI” as “an exercise of responsible care for the human family.” Among some of the proposals:

A social criteria for introducing automation and AI, along with protections and retraining programs for workers
Humans, not opaque technological systems, should make decisions about when to use lethal force
Help for teachers and students to engage with new technology in responsible, critical, and creative ways
Transparency and accountability when algorithms are used to make decisions around hiring or access to services and opportunities
Develop more environmentally sustainable AI technology

The effects of AI on humanity have been a defining issue for Pope Leo: He chose his papal name in reference to the Industrial Revolution, during which his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, issued his own encyclical on protecting workers amid technological advancements. Pope Leo has also been engaging with the AI industry — Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah was present when the pope presented his encyclical on Monday. Politico reported that representatives from Amazon, Meta, and Google have met with Vatican officials ahead of the publication of Monday’s encyclical as the tech industry tries to influence the Church’s positions. (There’s also a subset trying to “AGI-pill” the pope; Magnifica Humanitas doesn’t explicitly mention artificial general intelligence.)

The encyclical isn’t a blanket objection to AI. Rather, Pope Leo calls for the “disarming” of the technology — both in a military sense and also economic and societal sense. AI shouldn’t be used for a race to amass power or monopolize society, he says.

“To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.”

Who gets to own the Luigi Mangione story?

2026-05-21T15:51:22-04:00

Luigi Mangione, accused of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attends a court hearing on May 18, 2026. | POOL/AFP via Getty Images

On Monday morning, a judge overseeing the New York state case on the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO ruled that some evidence collected by police could not be shown to a jury.

It wasn’t the only news coming out of the hearing. Outside the courthouse, Molly Crane-Newman, a New York Daily News reporter, captured on video several attendees giving incendiary remarks to the press. One of the attendees, Lena Weissbrot, said the children of Brian Thompson, who was shot and killed in December 2024, were “better off without him” and that they “needed to learn to not be like their dad.” Another attendee who identified themselves only as Ashley chimed in, “I’m standing on business. Fuck Brian Thompson. I don’t give a flying fuck he died.” They went on to discuss the US for-profit healthcare industry and people who have died without necessary medical care.

Ordinarily this would be a minor tabloid news item, along the lines of previous coverage of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering Thompson. I had seen — and interviewed — the attendees in question at previous hearings while covering the case. They, like other supporters of Mangione, have become regulars at the courthouse in lower Manhattan. But this time the comments spawned a different kind of news cycle: This handful of attendees had press credentials hanging from their necks.

Local reporters criticized the fact that the city had apparently doled out press passes to the three supporters, who run social media accounts under the moniker “The Mangionistas.” Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams described them as “reporters” and accused the current administration of being “reckless” in how they credential journalists.

The city-issued press passes require applicants to submit six examples of on-the-ground reporting, which can include traditional formats like a written story or a broadcast — but the application leaves room for more nontraditional formats as well. The city defines a member of the press as someone who “gathers and reports the news, by publishing, broadcasting, or cablecasting articles, commentaries, books, photographs, video, film, or audio by electronic, print, or digital media, such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines, wires, books, and the Internet.” What separates a reporter from a person who witnessed something and posted about it? Is a Substack essay on equal footing with a reported story? How do you demand that a reporter disentangle their personal opinions or feelings from the story they’re covering? (I’d argue this is nearly impossible.) It’s a definitional quagmire that could affect newsgathering beyond the Mangione case and shut out smaller outlets or independent journalists.

At the same time, there are practical reasons the city might want to be more rigid in its credentialing. A press pass is required to cross police and fire lines and attend city-sponsored press events. Even before the Mangionistas, some local reporters have raised concerns about the city’s credentialing practices: A right-wing anti-vax local political candidate known as the “Sperminator” managed to get a press pass at some point during the Adams administration. The New York Post reported that the city blocked him from renewing his credentials in 2025 after he was accused of impersonating a reporter. If everyone can theoretically become “media,” credentialing becomes useless.

Who gets to decide what is and isn’t reporting?

By the end of the day, The New York Times reported that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration was reviewing the press credentialing process, and on Tuesday Mamdani said that the three Mangionistas should not have been issued press passes to begin with. (Reached via email, the Mangionistas declined to comment.) City Hall pointed The Verge to Mamdani’s comments earlier in the week, in which he said the three fans “don’t fall within [the] debate” of who should be able to get a press pass. Weissbrot appears to have started publishing dispatches from Mangione’s court hearings in September on a blog called The Bicoastal Beat, though there is no disclosure that she is directly involved in organizing for Mangione; a message to the author’s Bicoastal Beat email address was not returned.

“These individuals do not represent the views of Luigi, nor the tens of thousands who have shown their support from around the world,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mangione, said in an email. “The only people who speak for Luigi are his attorneys. We condemn these vile and irresponsible statements that have no place in the discourse around these cases.”

The incident is weird on several levels. For one, it has become increasingly difficult to draw clean distinctions between a journalist, an influencer, a gadfly, a fan, and an activist. Who gets to decide what is and isn’t reporting, and who might be blocked from access if stricter rules are put in place? The situation also reveals the fault lines within the larger Luigi Mangione universe, and the messiness inherent in making a celebrity out of someone on trial for murder.

This situation might be an edge case, but the questions it raises cut across wider changes in our information ecosystem and evolving media consumption habits. Some of this comes from the way people are consuming the news: through vertical video, through clips, or through “news influencers” who are not doing their own reporting but instead summarizing or responding to the news. Institutions and those in power have also cozied up to personalities who do deliver news and information to their audiences, albeit lacking journalistic standards or rigor: Donald Trump and his administration have used content from MAGA-aligned influencers as justification for carrying out immigration raids. Influencers are getting exclusive White House briefings. Mamdani has also hosted influencer-only events and press conferences where creators can interact with him and make content. It’s probably reasonable to expect a baseline level of decorum from everyone, press pass holders or not — but if the Mangionistas had not made the statements this week, would it still be a problem that they, as a kind of Mangione influencer group, had gotten credentialed? All of a sudden the mayor’s office finds itself having to referee what opinions or views are acceptable for members of this loosely defined press to have. Revoking a press pass is also not so simple — it requires a hearing with the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.

It’s fitting we are arguing about whether Mangione fans should get press credentials — his case is all about narrative control. From the beginning, the killing of Thompson was less about the individuals involved than it was about what they represented: the US health insurance industry versus everyone else. Mangione supporters have long expressed frustration with how “the media” writes about them (they typically are referring to the more sensationalist coverage labeling them as ghoulish and loony). Many supporters of Mangione are adamant that they do not condone this specific violence, and instead use the case to advocate for healthcare reform and for a fair trial for the accused.

But there are also tensions within the wider community of people following the case closely. When I spoke with supporters in December outside the courthouse, some complained about other attendees — the ones who show up dressed “like they’re going to Comic-Con,” or those who seem more interested in the spotlight. The annoyance stems from a belief that it both makes all supporters look bad and also takes the focus away from the man who is actually on trial. (I also spoke with Weissbrot that day; she has attended many of the pretrial hearings in the New York case against Mangione.)

Indeed, some of the loudest condemnations of the Mangionistas’ statements have come from within the Mangione support network. People Over Profit NYC, a healthcare reform group that has become a mainstay outside the courthouse, issued a statement denouncing the comments. Some Mangione supporters wondered whether his legal team could bar the Mangionistas from court, or whether Mangione could get restraining orders against them. Others accused the three women of purposely sabotaging Mangione by saying maximally controversial things to elicit negative public opinion. It speaks to the wider challenge of how to talk about the case: If you ask supporters, Mangione is some combination of a folk hero, a symbol of the failures of the US healthcare system, an innocent man, and someone who is guilty in a literal sense but shouldn’t be by legal standards.

Threading that needle is impossible in a case where public participation has been a hallmark of its notoriety. Supporters have sent in more than $1.5 million to Mangione’s legal defense fund; he is reportedly inundated with letters in jail. The upcoming jury selection process will similarly be a spectacle, and prospective jurors will surely be asked if they’ve shared some Luigi meme in the last year and a half. This is the problem with being the internet’s favorite defendant, of having support so fervent it becomes a recurring Fox News or Daily Mail cliche. Eventually someone will put their foot in their mouth and you will have to answer for it.

Would you let robots spend your money? Google is betting on it

2026-05-19T13:07:06-04:00

Google is going all in on AI-driven shopping even as some competitors back off.

At Google I/O, the company unveiled the latest iteration of its AI commerce tools: a “Universal Cart” that works across different retailers and Google products like Gemini — and eventually YouTube and Gmail, too. Users can add products to Google’s universal cart as they browse Search and chat with Gemini and then check out through Google. The cart will also track prices, provide in-stock notifications, suggest potential discounts, and alert shoppers to potential issues with their selections.

Despite the transformative changes AI has brought to the workplace, business, and culture, tech companies are still trying to make the case to the average person that AI can improve their lives or make tedious, unpleasant tasks easier. One place Google thinks that could be is shopping. In November, the company introduced a way for shoppers to dispatch an AI voice to call brick-and-mortar stores to ask about inventory; it also began rolling out a semi-automatic way for shoppers to have AI agents purchase items online on their behalf.

The Universal Cart attempts to corral people’s shopping habits into one place. People shop over the course of days, across different devices and accounts, says Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and general manager of ads and commerce at Google.

“A lot of the ways I capture this is by having many, many, many tabs open and by syncing profiles and things like that. And it kind of works,” Srinivasan said in an exclusive briefing. “What the shopping cart does from a current problem perspective is it brings all of this together … It is a cart that’s going to be available wherever I am across Google properties.” A cart icon will be displayed next to a user’s profile picture.

Srinivasan envisions the cart almost like a personal shopper working in the background. The Universal Cart works across different retailers, including Sephora, Target, Wayfair, and Walmart, and eventually users will be able to add items to their cart from YouTube or when they see products in Gmail. Once a product is in the cart, users can get price-drop alerts, view price history, and be notified when an out-of-stock item is available again. Srinivasan says the cart — which runs on Gemini — can also alert a user to potential issues with their planned purchases. She gives the example of someone building their first PC choosing a motherboard and processor with incompatible sockets without realizing it; the cart would flag the discrepancy and warn the shopper of potential problems. Shoppers can also connect retailer loyalty programs and credit cards through Google Pay, and the Universal Cart will suggest payment methods and potential ways to save money. If a shopper wants to build a cart but doesn’t want to check out through Google, they can also transfer the contents of their cart to a retailer’s website and finish checkout there.

“The retailer might have other things they want to show the person when they land over there, and they can go deeper in other ways potentially,” Srinivasan says.

Agentic shopping is only possible — and helpful — with the buy-in from a variety of actors: search engines, retailers, payment processors, and so on. Participation from retailers is especially important, considering widespread adoption of agentic shopping could mean customers have little reason to actually visit a store’s website at all (we’ve been calling this “the Doordash problem” at The Verge). Amazon sued AI company Perplexity in November for allowing users to buy products through its Comet AI browser. OpenAI’s efforts at checkout features within ChatGPT were disappointing. As more shoppers use AI chatbots to research products to buy or get recommendations, getting surfaced in AI search platforms is becoming more and more urgent for retailers and brands, which are already tweaking their online presence to try to get chatbots to mention them.

Google seems to know it is getting between merchants and their customers; Srinivasan says the company is “very focused” on the value exchange between all parties. “[Consumers] benefit, but also merchants benefit, because [in the] long run, that’s the only way it works,” she says.

Srinivasan describes Google’s place in the interaction as a “matchmaker”

Having billions of products available for purchase within Gemini is great for Google, but retailers need something in return. Srinivasan says Google does not currently take a cut of sales or a commission for products purchased. I asked Srinivasan whether she’s heard concerns from retailers about the idea that Google could become the portal through which shoppers buy things online. She describes Google’s place in the interaction as a “matchmaker.”

“We really want to facilitate lots of consumers talking to lots of merchants,” Srinivasan says. “We don’t want to be the merchant of record.”

On the infrastructure level, there are signs that the retail industry is coalescing around Google. In January, the company announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard it developed with major retailers like Walmart, Shopify, and Target that makes the entire AI shopping journey possible: researching items, putting them in a cart, buying them, paying for them, and getting post-purchase customer service. (OpenAI has its own competing version.) In April, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe joined the committee that governs UCP.

Google previously introduced a way for shoppers to purchase products directly within AI Mode in Search and in the Gemini app, and it’s now expanding into hotel and local food delivery categories. Using Gemini Spark, a new “24/7 personal AI agent” announced by Google, users will also be able to give AI agents more specific guidelines for purchases, like the brands they like, items they’re looking for, and budget. The shopping agent can then make purchases on the shopper’s behalf, provided all criteria are met. A shopper could specify the exact model of a pair of boots they want, for example, set a price limit, and have the AI agent purchase the item when it finds it. The purchases use a technology called Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), essentially a digital paper trail and approval process for having an AI agent carry out a task like buying something.

Shopping is complicated — what happens, for example, when the robot buys something under the price a user specifies, but with tax and shipping it ends up being much more expensive than another option? Would most shoppers trust AI enough to spend their money on their behalf? (Srinivasan tells me Google is currently working through all of this, but that in general, a shopper would go to the actual retailer, not Google, to resolve problems after purchase. Which raises another question: Will retailers introduce policies around purchases made with AI?) Buying things is also emotional: If a rare item on my wishlist pops up for $4 more than I told the chatbot was my limit, I might pull the trigger even if the robot couldn’t. It is hard to imagine a world where shoppers immediately outsource their shopping to a machine: It would be a radical reshaping of what it means to buy things. Most of all, adoption would require an enormous amount of consumer trust — and that is still an uphill battle.

YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tool to all adult users

2026-05-15T18:21:33-04:00

YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection program to all users over the age of 18 — meaning just about anyone can have the platform hunt for potential deepfakes of themselves.

The likeness detection feature uses a selfie-style scan of a person’s face to monitor YouTube for lookalikes. If there is a match, YouTube alerts the user; the person then has the option to request that YouTube remove the content. YouTube has said in the past that it has found the number of removal requests to be “very small.”

YouTube began testing the feature with content creators, and then expanded it to government officials, politicians, journalists, and finally the entertainment industry. The expansion to any user 18 years or older is a significant shift — it essentially gives the average person the ability to constantly monitor content on YouTube that could use their likeness. Takedown requests are evaluated using YouTube’s privacy policy, and the company says it considers removals based on criteria like whether the content is realistic, is labeled as AI-generated, and if a person can be uniquely identified. There are carveouts for things like parody or satire, and the tool only covers facial likeness, not other identifying features like a person’s voice. Users can withdraw from the program and have YouTube delete their data.

The news was announced on YouTube’s creator forum, but spokesperson Jack Malon says there are no requirements on what constitutes a “creator” who is eligible.

“With this expansion, we’re making clear that whether creators have been uploading to YouTube for a decade or are just starting, they’ll have access to the same level of protection,” Malon said in an email.

Deepfake content often centers on celebrities, politicians, or other public figures, but the ability to create a convincing digital replica is a concern for private citizens, too. There have been instances of teenagers being deepfaked by classmates, and three teenagers sued xAI alleging that the company’s Grok chatbot generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of them.

YouTube is courting creators — and sponsors — with streaming shows

2026-05-13T15:49:37-04:00

In the ongoing fight for content and talent, YouTube is pitching itself as the connector between the creators and advertisers — and marketing its creators not just as the future of social media, but also of advertising, TV, streaming, and entertainment more broadly.

At the company’s annual advertiser event in New York on Wednesday, YouTube introduced a new slate of exclusive shows coming to the platform, hosted by some big names: a travel show with Trevor Noah, a Met Gala documentary series from podcaster Alex Cooper, a new series from Kareem Rahma, the host of the popular show Subway Takes, and more. The pitch to advertisers: Invest in these YouTube-only series.

On the content creator side, YouTube’s appeal has long been its relatively generous ad revenue split that creators earn through views. But the company has steadily added more and more ways for content creators to make money, like shopping features and a hub for brands to find creators that might be a fit for them. Advertisers are also increasingly dumping money into sponsored videos, where creators can swap out brand sponsors when a campaign is over, essentially creating a billboard that constantly updates.

YouTube accounts for a huge chunk of what people watch: 12.7 percent of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen. It also offers advertisers more than 3 million eligible content creators whose content can serve as an ad space, along with built-in AI tools to help advertisers find those channels. Rahma told The New York Times this week that when he started posting his series on YouTube, the company offered to help him secure sponsors for his new show (and spin up his Emmy campaign). YouTube has tried to make its own original content with celebrities and internet stars in the past, but it has largely flopped (YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has said executives “weren’t good at picking content”). The company seems to have realized that it makes more sense for it to be a platform for video content that creators are already making — and a place to find brands that will bankroll that work.

YouTube has to offer creators something unique to keep them on the platform. Even though YouTube played a major role in the podcast world’s pivot to video and is also the top podcast platform, some creators have jumped ship — especially to Netflix, which is building up its own slate of video podcasts. In December, iHeartRadio brought 15 shows to Netflix, including The Breakfast Club and My Favorite Murder. Netflix also launched its first original podcasts in January: one hosted by comedian Pete Davidson and another with sports commentator and former NFL player Michael Irvin.