speculations

https://www.theverge.com/robot/697890/tattoo-robot We weren’t drunk. Yes we’d had a few but we knew what we were doing. It was on the agenda for the weekend. Chris knew I was thinking about it. They’d given me the ok. It was romantic. It was a bit of a disappointing set up. I was… Read the rest

https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/how-ai-can-help-you-navigate-layoffs-according-to-one-executive-producer-at-xbox-210008717.html She hadn’t seen it coming. When her Agent told her they’d added a meeting with her boss and The (human) head of HR and their Agent, she still hadn’t guessed. Her Agent didn’t tell her. Probably some programming stopped it actually helping her, she thought later. So now, here… Read the rest

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/07/04/kawasaki_foxconn_/ There were still humans. They’d tried auto-nurses but customers had made their feelings clear and in a competitive market, once one hospital made a feature of “real” nurses, everyone followed. Patients preferred clearly stressed, occasionally grumpy, sometimes funny humans. There were autos in the background, doing work that wasn’t… Read the rest

https://uk.themedialeader.com/a-focus-group-of-synths-just-blew-my-mind It was a job. The conditions were ok, the pay wasn’t bad and it was safer than being a delivery rider dodging the self-drives. He’d been doing it since he was at college. He could fit it in around his studies and there were always the rumors that sometimes… Read the rest

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/bellwether-tolls-thee-lessons-25-years-tracking-adlands-ups-downs/1923914 I don’t like to think about it to be honest. Makes me feel old! Let’s just say that when I joined the industry, AI was in its early days. Those first years were… let’s just say “chaotic”. Senior managers seeing it as a saviour, slashing teams. Juniors scrabbling to… Read the rest

https://uk.themedialeader.com/from-celebration-to-silence-the-great-pride-disappearing-act The campaign still had a small office, if for no other reason than to house the archive. They didn’t need to work here but they liked to be surrounded by campaign ephemera. There were placards with jokes that some team members didn’t get because the cultural reference was from… Read the rest

https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1 It was part of the community. Like the pub. There was no need for it of course as the delivery drones flying over the corner clearly showed. But it kept going. It was a little island, a different sort of place: part shop, part meeting place. Older people would… Read the rest

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2025/06/28/why-dm9-s-cannes-lions-grand-prix-was-withdrawn-after-ai-manipulation-concerns He needed to calm down before he had the conversation. He was still furious. One minute he was the toast of the town, the next he was the poster child for everything that was wrong in the industry. The face of existential crisis. And all because some machine, some… Read the rest

https://hyperallergic.com/1023837/anna-wintour-to-remain-met-gala-chair/ It was still a magazine; a printed magazine. It still had journalists and photographers; real human ones. It still used human models. It was partly a marketing ploy of course, a USP. but the Grande Dame would always say there was some “quality” to humans, a particular feel to… Read the rest

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/you-ll-never-scroll-alone-how-liverpool-s-social-strategy-is-ruling-the-internet It’s not a matter of life and death, it’s much more important than that. My dad talks about how, during the Socials era, he’d curate his feeds (manually) so he read the “right stuff”. Things have changed of course but some things remain the same. You won’t find much… Read the rest