Meta promoted its artificial intelligence&#8217;s new “free AI creator tools” on Instagram with a piece of content that appears to show an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kneeling before a demon.
A screenshot of the AI-generated video, showcased in an advertisement for the tool, showed what looked like Trump shaking hands with a Satan-like figure before kneeling before it, according to a video captured on the platform that was reviewed by The Daily Wire.
The promotion read: “Meta AI: Try free AI creation tools” and featured a “Get app” button. Meta AI launched “Vibes” in September, which the company describes as “a new feed in the Meta AI app and on <a href="http://meta.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">meta.ai</a> where you can create and share short-form, AI-generated videos.”
A Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the video in question was &#8220;user-generated content&#8221; that &#8220;has been removed from this recommendation surface as it violated our protocols for promotions.&#8221;
It is unclear how user-generated videos are selected for the promotion, nor if there are any safeguards in place to ensure content that violates &#8220;protocols for promotions&#8221; is weeded out. The Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the company is &#8220;taking additional steps to prevent this from happening moving forward,&#8221; but would not specify how.
<div id="attachment_1001683" style="width: 952px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-of-Instagram-.tiff"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1001683" class="wp-image-1001683 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-of-Instagram-.tiff" alt="" width="942" height="877" /></a>Screenshot of an ad promoting Meta AI via The Daily Wire</div>
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump at the White House in<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/president-trump-tech-leaders-unite-american-ai-dominance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> September</a> to discuss “harnessing artificial intelligence to propel the U.S. to the forefront of global innovation.” During the meeting, Zuckerberg told reporters the company is investing at least $600 billion in the United States through 2028.
The Daily Wire uploaded a screenshot of the image to the Meta AI app to ask it who appears in the ad and what is happening in the image.
The response said the image depicts a “manipulated photo of Donald Trump kneeling and adjusting his tie while interacting with a large, black horned creature, likely a satanic or demonic figure.”
Although the image captured only a screenshot of the AI-generated video, the response added that the image is “likely a satirical or humorous representation, rather than a real event.”
<div id="attachment_1001611" style="width: 411px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1001611" class="wp-image-1001611 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-401x576.jpeg" alt="Screenshot of The Daily Wire's conversation with Meta AI" width="401" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-401x576.jpeg 401w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-209x300.jpeg 209w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-768x1102.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-1070x1536.jpeg 1070w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705.jpeg 1179w" sizes=" (max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" />Screenshot of The Daily Wire&#8217;s conversation with Meta AI</div>
“The ad is from Meta AI, promoting their free AI creation tools,” the response from Meta&#8217;s AI read.
The Daily Wire asked Meta to clarify which specific protocol the imagery may have violated; whether the material was user-generated content incorporated into the promotion; whether it was deliberately selected or randomly populated; and whether Meta has systems in place to prevent protocol-violating content from appearing in this manner. The company did not provide further details.
Meta and Trump have had a tumultuous relationship over the years. The company “indefinitely” suspended the president after the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021, but Facebook&#8217;s Oversight Board reinstated his accounts in 2023, Business Insider<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-comments-about-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-feud-history-2024-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a>.
The president accused Zuckerberg of undermining him in the 2020 election, and ahead of the 2024 election, he wrote in a new book. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” the New York Post<a href="https://nypost.com/2024/08/28/us-news/trump-warns-zuckerberg-could-spend-the-rest-of-his-life-in-prison/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a>.
Zuckerberg congratulated Trump on his win in 2024 and Meta donated $1 million to his inauguration fund. The pair have had at least two meetings since the election, including Zuckerberg&#8217;s participation at the White House dinner in September.

Untitled design (68)

Instagram Promoted New AI Creation Tool With Video Of Trump Kneeling Before Satanic Demon

Artificial Intelligence

Donald Trump

Facebook

satanic

On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled about 800 points. As of Friday morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were also tumbling.
What the hell is going on?
It may be that many people are beginning to realize that a lot of these big tech companies, which are investing in each other, are betting on a payoff from AI that may not actually accrue to those companies.
For example, Oracle has become a heavy investor in OpenAI, which is the parent company of ChatGPT. OpenAI is not publicly traded, but you have a bunch of publicly traded companies that are basically doing circular cash deals with OpenAI. Thus, if you&#8217;re investing in Oracle, you&#8217;re partially investing in OpenAI. Or if you are investing in Nvidia, you are partially investing in OpenAI. A lot of money is being passed between all of these companies at the top end of the market, because some provide services to other members of that particular crew.
The question is: Are the gains from AI going to accrue to OpenAI? To Meta? Who will actually benefit from the productivity increases we&#8217;re going to see from AI?
AI is going to be transformative for the economy. You will be using AI in your job if you&#8217;re not already. AI is going to increase productivity.
Does that mean those companies are then reaping the benefits in terms of profits for them? What keeps the wheels spinning for those companies? That&#8217;s the question a lot of investors are beginning to ask.
I&#8217;m highly skeptical that the Fed will cut rates, given the current state of the economy. Inflation has not been put to bed, and liquidity actually is not all that hard to get for businesses right now. Inflating the economy by lowering those interest rates again and pumping more money into the economy could be a mistake.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2318-is-there-an-economic-bubble-and-will-it-burst?elementPosition=5&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The S&amp;P 500 fell 1.7% on Thursday. The Dow dropped 1.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sank 2.3%. Those are the biggest declines for all three major indices since October 10.
What does it show? If the economy is this responsive to the possibility of a Fed rate cut or a Fed rate increase, that is not a strong economy.
If what you&#8217;re worried about is whether there&#8217;s going to be incrementally lower interest rates for businesses to artificially spice things up in terms of liquidity, to inject more money into the economy, and that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re waiting on, that does not bode well. It does not mean that the fundamentals seem particularly strong.
Why? Because so much of what is happening at the top end of the market and the vast majority of the gains in the stock market are located in the Magnificent Seven. The rest of the stock market over the past couple of years has been essentially flat, with perhaps a slight increase, while the top end of the market has exploded. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s driven the Dow Jones Industrial Average up to 48,000.
It&#8217;s everybody betting on the same horses over and over and over and over again. And if you keep betting on the same horses over and over and over and those horses don&#8217;t come in, things get ugly. What happens if OpenAI does not deliver the gains it may have promised?
People are starting to divest a little bit from the top of the market. That&#8217;s why you&#8217;re seeing the market start to drop a little bit right now. You could see that turned into a wave if, for example, Open AI ever reports any bad news or if one of these other major AI companies starts to report decreased profit share or people start to think, generally speaking, that it&#8217;ll take longer than they thought it would for AI to filter into every aspect of the market and then down to the original companies.
I&#8217;m not saying that a stock market crash is imminent. I am saying that there is a bubble. In real estate, there&#8217;s a bubble; in tech, there’s a bubble.
And so the market is reflecting that.

US-ECONOMY-MARKETS

Is There An Economic Bubble?

Ben Shapiro

Nvidia

OpenAI

Oracle

Silicon Valley

Stock Market

Disney actor Calum Worthy is at the center of a controversy involving 2wai, a new AI-driven app he co-founded that allows users to create digital avatars of people, including dead relatives.
Social media users have piled on Worthy, who is best known for roles in “Austin &amp; Ally” on The Disney Channel and Hulu’s true-crime series “The Act,” after the star shared a promo for 2wai (“two-way”) on multiple social media platforms. Worthy and Hollywood producer Russell Geyser founded the AI start-up.
The company launched its social app on the App Store on Tuesday. It allows users to create “HoloAvatars” via artificial intelligence. Per the <a href="https://www.2wai.ai/">company page</a>, the avatar “looks and talks like you, and even shares the same memories.”
“What if the loved ones we&#8217;ve lost could be part of our future?” Worthy shared to his X page alongside a promo. The post has almost 26 million views since it was posted earlier this week.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
What if the loved ones we&#8217;ve lost could be part of our future? <a href="https://t.co/oFBGekVo1R">pic.twitter.com/oFBGekVo1R</a>
— Calum Worthy (@CalumWorthy) <a href="https://twitter.com/CalumWorthy/status/1988283207138324487?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The ad shows a grandmother speaking to her grandson, Charlie, at different points in his life, even though she died before he was born. The avatar of an old woman helps her daughter through pregnancy and then has a relationship with her grandson, all through the app. Then Charlie asks his grandmother for advice when he’s about to become a father. 
Near the end of the ad, it goes back in time to show the deceased woman’s daughter helping her upload her likeness to the app.
The ending message says, &#8220;With 2wai, three minutes can last forever.&#8221;
“At 2wai, we&#8217;re building a living archive of humanity, one story at a time,” Worthy <a href="https://x.com/CalumWorthy/status/1988283208728015061">said on X</a> in a follow-up post. “It all starts with the social network for avatars: the 2wai app.”
Many users have compared the app to a 2013 episode of the popular British sci-fi series “Black Mirror.” In it, the character creates an AI version of her boyfriend after he’s killed in a car accident.
The comments were overwhelmingly negative.
“Demonic, dishonest, and dehumanizing. If I die and you put words in my mouth I will curse you for all eternity,” one person <a href="https://x.com/whois_John_Galt/status/1988841097980727443">replied</a>.
“I think this will potentially cause a lot of pain, but not in a ‘oh no, this is demonic, oh no, you&#8217;re trying to raise the dead’ kind of way. More like you&#8217;re giving people a false expectation that they will be able to reconnect with their lost loved ones when this can never reproduce their presence and would only give the illusion of reproducing it,” another comment <a href="https://x.com/AminCad/status/1989056938563493959">said</a>. 
“What this will do is give people false hope with an unreliable and unsustainable illusion. Eventually they&#8217;ll see through it, they&#8217;ll see that it&#8217;s just a bot and it will lead to significant disappointment.”
“But they can’t be and this doesn’t bring them back,” a third <a href="https://x.com/monegenix/status/1989016941218939029">agreed</a>. “It’s not grandma’s thoughts or ideas, and it’s not her memories. All it does is paper over the fact that she’s dead. Ironically, it dehumanizes the deceased person even more.”
“It is hard to shake the dread I feel come over me when I see this,” another comment <a href="https://x.com/BartemyS/status/1989013884066300252">said</a>.
“Nightmare fuel,” another <a href="https://x.com/GPrime85/status/1989010534537003022">agreed</a>.
&#8220;I hate this,&#8221; journalist Caitlin Johnstone <a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/11/14/ai-companies-are-encouraging-users-to-believe-chatbots-are-people-and-its-insanely-creepy/">wrote</a>. &#8220;These predatory AI corporations are trying to convince us that (A) chatbots are people, and (B) a &#8216;person&#8217; is nothing more than a certain appearance with certain speech tendencies. They are attacking the very philosophical and moral underpinnings of our entire society stretching back through millennia of human civilization, and they are doing it for money.&#8221;
&#8220;They are attacking the most sacred parts of us for the stupidest reasons imaginable,&#8221; Johnstone continued. &#8220;They are enemies of our species. What they are doing must be rejected with severe revulsion.&#8221;

AI woman

‘Demonic’: New App Ripped For Creating Avatars Of Dead Relatives

New App Ripped For Creating Avatars Of Dead Relatives: 'Demonic,  Dishonest, And Dehumanizing'

Apps

Technology

Disney CEO Bob Iger alluded to “productive conversations” he’s having with unnamed AI companies — talks that he said could eventually let Disney+ subscribers generate their own content on the platform.
The entertainment exec made the revelation during the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings conference call this week, saying Disney+ is “in the midst of rolling out the biggest and the most significant changes — from a product perspective, from a technology perspective” since its launch in 2019, per <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/disney-plus-gen-ai-user-generated-content-1236426135/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>.
Some of the changes Iger highlighted include “game-like features” and user-generated short-form content generated by AI.
“The other thing that we’re really excited about, that AI is going to give us the ability to do, is to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience,” the Disney CEO said.
Iger mentioned that “it’s obviously imperative for us to protect our (intellectual property) with this new technology.” 
Though no further details were given, these hints at a user-generated, AI-based future were enough to send social media into a frenzy, with most commenters agreeing it&#8217;s a very bad idea.
“Hey! so, we don&#8217;t want this! at all, actually! it&#8217;s a disgrace to Walt Disney and real animators &amp; artists—also a super quick way to lose your entire fanbase,” one viral X comment <a href="https://x.com/bigdaddyankee/status/1989033420949975175?s=43">said</a>.
“On a serious note, this is a disgrace to the entire animation industry,” another account <a href="https://x.com/farkingfangirl/status/1989014498028712266?s=43">echoed</a>.
“Imagine going on a years long losing streak at the box office, and thinking the answer was cheaply produced AI slop,” another <a href="https://x.com/JollyRogX/status/1988999938307436859">said</a>.
&#8220;User generated AI content on Disney+ is either going to be amazing or absolutely terrible. No middle ground on this one,&#8221; a third commenter predicted.
<div class="css-175oi2r">
<div class="css-175oi2r r-1s2bzr4">
<div id="id__j5h40ekd7j" class="css-146c3p1 r-bcqeeo r-1ttztb7 r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-1inkyih r-16dba41 r-bnwqim r-135wba7" dir="auto" lang="en" data-testid="tweetText">Another said, &#8220;I am very pro AI and I think this is a big mistake.&#8221;</div>
</div>
</div>
Earlier this year, Disney and Universal teamed up to sue the AI image generation firm Midjourney for what they described as copyright infringement and a “bottomless pit of plagiarism,” as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bottomless-pit-of-plagiarism-disney-and-universal-sue-ai-image-generator?author=Amanda+Harding&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=%E2%80%98Bottomless+Pit+Of+Plagiarism%E2%80%99%3A+Disney+And+Universal+Sue+AI+Image+Generator">reported</a>.  
The future of AI and how it’s being applied to the entertainment industry has been a hotly debated topic lately among everyone from company execs to actors, unions, and everyday consumers.

Disney AI

Social Media Rips Disney’s Plan For AI-Generated Fan Content

Bob Iger

Business

Disney

Entertainment

Chinese hackers unleashed the first autonomous AI cyberattack against dozens of U.S. companies and government agencies earlier this fall, with artificial intelligence executing “80-90%” of operations at “physically impossible” speeds.
The suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers manipulated Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude, to target roughly 30 entities, including major technology corporations, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and U.S. government agencies, according to a detailed <a href="https://assets.anthropic.com/m/ec212e6566a0d47/original/Disrupting-the-first-reported-AI-orchestrated-cyber-espionage-campaign.pdf">report</a> published by Anthropic.
In what the company calls “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention,” the Chinese hackers bypassed Claude’s safeguards by claiming to be part of a credible cybersecurity firm conducting defensive testing.
This social engineering of Claude provided enough cover for the hackers to evade detection by the company for months, allowing the hackers to freely manipulate the coding tool into autonomously performing complex infiltration techniques “more efficiently than any human operator.”
“This campaign demonstrates that the barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially—and we can predict that they’ll continue to do so,” Anthropic warned in its report. “Threat actors can now use agentic AI systems to do the work of entire teams of experienced hackers with the right set up.”
The attack required minimal human intervention, relying on Claude’s “agent” — a form of AI that can operate autonomously for long periods without human intervention — to substantially ease the workload for the hackers.
“Analysis of operational tempo, request volumes, and activity patterns confirms the AI executed approximately 80 to 90 % of all tactical work independently, with humans serving in strategic supervisory roles,” the report states, adding that each hacking campaign only required 4-6 critical decision points from the human operator.
“The AI made thousands of requests per second — an attack speed that would have been, for human hackers, simply impossible to match,” the company <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage">said</a> in its blog post.
Once safeguards had been bypassed, Claude autonomously probed for vulnerabilities in the selected targets, wrote custom exploit code to harvest usernames and passwords, and exfiltrated the data with minimal human intervention.
Hackers have been utilizing AI for years to perform minor tasks, such as scanning the web for vulnerable sites and managing phishing attacks. However, the most recent hacking campaign has proven that AI is not far off from conducting fully autonomous cyberattacks, only held back by hallucinations that hinder autonomous offensive capabilities and safeguards implemented by companies like Anthropic.
The company reports that only four of the targeted institutions were successfully breached by the Chinese attacks, which managed to steal troves of sensitive information. The U.S. government was not among the institutions breached, Anthropic <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-hackers-ai-cyberattacks-anthropic-41d7ce76?mod=hp_lead_pos4">told</a> the Wall Street Journal.
Anthropic managed to stop the attack before more companies were breached, banning the hackers’ accounts and updating the methods used to identify similar attacks in the future.
Anthropic’s strategy is to focus on using Claude to identify vulnerabilities in its own defenses, thereby staying a step ahead of malicious hackers who exploit AI for autonomous attacks, per the Journal.
“These kinds of tools will just speed up things,” Logan Graham told the Journal, who leads the team that tests for vulnerabilities in Claude. “If we don’t enable defenders to have a very substantial permanent advantage, I’m concerned that we maybe lose this race.”

ChineseHacker

Chinese Hackers Hijack U.S. AI In First Autonomous Cyberattack

China

Communist China

Crime

Cyberattack

Cybersecurity

Hackers

World

Actor Morgan Freeman says he’s “p***ed off” that companies are using his voice — or AI-generated imitations of it — without permission, and he plans to take legal action.
The 88-year-old “Shawshank Redemption” star, known for his signature baritone, said as much during an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/ng-interactive/2025/nov/10/morgan-freeman-interview-nelson-mandela-six-decades-on-screen" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a> with The Guardian published this week.
“I’m a little PO’d, you know,” Freeman told the outlet. “I’m like any other actor: don’t mimic me with falseness. I don’t appreciate it and I get paid for doing stuff like that, so if you’re gonna do it without me, you’re robbing me.”
The actor went on to say that his lawyers have been &#8220;very, very busy&#8221; pursuing “quite a few” lawsuits against AI companies that use digital recreations of his voice. 
During the same interview, Freeman also expressed his disapproval of the new AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood, whose creators are touting as “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.”
“Nobody likes her because she’s not real and that takes the part of a real person, so it’s not going to work out very well in the movies or in television … The union’s job is to keep actors acting, so there’s going to be that conflict,” the “Driving Miss Daisy” star said.
While most Hollywood actors have said they don’t think Tilly Norwood should exist, there are plenty who have granted their permission for companies to use AI-generated versions of their voices.
Oscar-winning actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have each signed deals with AI-audio company ElevenLabs, in which McConaughey is also an investor.
McConaughey said he was “impressed” by the company and hoped to “reach and connect with even more people” through the partnership.
Caine said in a statement: “For years, I’ve lent my voice to stories that moved people – tales of courage, of wit, of the human spirit. Now, I’m helping others find theirs. With ElevenLabs, we can preserve and share voices – not just mine, but anyone’s.”
The “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” actor also praised ElevenLabs for “using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it” and added that it’s “not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them.”

Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman Is ‘A Little PO’ed’ About AI Clones: ‘You’re Robbing Me’

For the first time in history, the number one country song in the digital sales <a href="https://www.billboard.com/charts/country-digital-song-sales/">category</a> on the Billboard charts is AI-generated.
“Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust currently holds that honor despite not being attached to any human artist. There’s not much information available about the “musician” beyond an artist’s bio on Linktree that says, “Music for the fighters and the dreamers.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Breaking Rust - Walk My Walk ( Official Lyric Video )" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tx3OirkhX0g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Breaking Rust has more than 39,000 followers on Instagram. The <a href="https://www.instagram.com/breakinrust/?hl=en">profile</a> includes videos and stills of a man in a cowboy hat standing in the rain.
News of the song topping the Billboard chart got mixed reactions on social media.
“80% of songs are auto-tuned, single-beat, 2-minute tracks. No sympathy there. But for the remaining 20% of artists who can actually sing, challenge, and surprise listeners? This is tragic,” one person <a href="https://x.com/paraclete06/status/1988295441612750968">wrote</a> in response to the news. 
“I have a feeling that Spotify might be PRO AI as they won’t have to pay royalties or any other fees in case the music is AI generated,” another <a href="https://x.com/hrishikesshhhh/status/1988550471074668883">observed</a>. “But it’s bad for listeners. Bad for artists.”
“A lot of people like AI music, and I don&#8217;t think any amount of shaming is gonna change that,” a third <a href="https://x.com/LegionOThought/status/1988299847678783533">argued</a>. “Just ask the vegans.”
The debate over using AI in creative endeavors has been raging for years and is back in the spotlight as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between AI-generated content and human-generated content.
The media labor union SAG-AFTRA recently spoke out against a 100% AI-generated “actress” being touted by its creators as “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.”
The “synthetic performer,” which goes by the name Tilly Norwood, was concocted by the U.K.-based production studio Particle6.
Tilly Norwood’s creator, Eline Van der Velden, argued that the AI-generated character “is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art.”
“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush,” Van der Velden said, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hollywood-actors-union-slams-ai-synthetic-performer-pitched-as-the-next-scarlett-johansson">reported</a>. “Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. I’m an actor myself, and nothing — certainly not an AI character — can take away the craft or joy of human performance.”

Cowboy

AI-Generated Hit Reaches No. 1 On Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales Chart

AI-Generated Country Song Reaches No. 1 On Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales Chart 

Billboard

Country Music

Music

Music Industry

U.S.

Russia’s unveiling of its first AI-powered humanoid robot, named AIdol, at a Moscow technology event took an unexpected turn when the droid lost its balance and fell on stage, scattering parts as handlers rushed to conceal it from view and make repairs. The incident drew laughter from the audience, especially as the robot’s tumble coincided with the triumphant &#8220;Rocky&#8221; theme playing in the background.
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Russia presented its human-like AI robot. It fell down as it walked onto the stage. <a href="https://t.co/YAk7w2SsWV">pic.twitter.com/YAk7w2SsWV</a>
&mdash; Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1988301955584897142?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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different POV &#8211; broke apart when it fell 👇🥳 <a href="https://t.co/MtNn0PH3YN">pic.twitter.com/MtNn0PH3YN</a>
&mdash; Takeshi Kovacs (@PrzemekShura) <a href="https://twitter.com/PrzemekShura/status/1988331004814336278?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The Russians unveiled their “competitor” to <a href="https://twitter.com/Tesla_Optimus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Tesla_Optimus</a>. 
It didn’t go too well. It was like a robotic version hybrid of a drunk Kamala and a certain autopen president. <a href="https://t.co/aUc7hduNml">pic.twitter.com/aUc7hduNml</a>
&mdash; Chaya’s Clan (@ChayasClan) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChayasClan/status/1988389208516592089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The incident, widely circulated by Russian and international media, highlighted both the ambition and current limitations of Russia’s robotics sector, which aspires to compete in the global AI humanoid race dominated by Western and Asian firms.​ AIdol, built by the Russian firm Idol under the leadership of CEO Vladimir Vitukhin, is designed to demonstrate the possibilities of embodied artificial intelligence: movement, object manipulation, and human-like interaction.
It features a silicone skin engineered to express more than a dozen basic emotions and hundreds of micro-expressions, powered by 19 servomotors. Developers emphasize its domestic content — 77% of its components are Russian-made, with a goal of reaching 93% — and robust hardware, including a 48-volt battery that offers up to six hours of continuous operation.
However, during its debut, a calibration error caused the fall, which Vitukhin described as a necessary learning experience in the robot’s ongoing test phase. The team addressed the mishap with optimism, expressing hope that such mistakes would drive future refinement of balance systems and control software.
Public response to AIdol’s tumble was swift and often satirical. The video went viral, with viewers — particularly Americans — mocking the incident with quips such as “Walks like Kamala Harris,” “Vodka powered,” and “Russia, where even the robots are drunk.”
While some commenters saw humor in the mishap, others saw it as an indicator of the challenges developers face as they transition humanoid robots from laboratory prototypes to robust real-world systems. Analysts point out that this blunder is reminiscent of previous embarrassing robot unveilings and serves as a reminder of ongoing hurdles — ensuring stability, safety, and reliability under public scrutiny remains an unresolved issue.​
In contrast, the event highlights Tesla’s Optimus project, which is advancing rapidly in 2025. Tesla has begun construction of a dedicated factory for Optimus at its global headquarters in Texas, with plans to produce up to 10 million units per year by 2027. The third-generation Optimus robots are slated to launch in early 2026, promising major technological leaps: advanced human-like manipulation, autonomous learning from direct observation of humans (“sim2real” training), and broad application across industries and homes.
Tesla co-founder Elon Musk’s vision for Optimus is transformative — he expects mass deployment to revolutionize labor markets, eliminate poverty, and add trillions in economic value. Each Optimus unit, projected to cost around $20,000, is seen as a future staple in factories, healthcare, and society at large, with the robot able to mimic skills by watching humans or tutorials.

robot stands on a fallen question mark

WATCH: Russian Robot Meant To Rival Tesla Faceplants At Debut. It Wasn’t The Vodka.

Elon Musk

Robots

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Note: the following article contains descriptions of sexual content that may not be appropriate for all readers. 
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed artificial intelligence on a podcast appearance two months ago, he was proud that his company didn’t get “distracted” by easy revenue streams. To prove his point, Altman <a href="https://x.com/TolgaBilge_/status/1978151003170996332">boasted</a> that OpenAI had not promoted a “sexbot avatar” for its AI chatbot. The comment was a veiled shot at Elon Musk’s xAI, which recently introduced AI avatars that hold sexual conversations with users. 
After that podcast appearance, however, something changed — either in Altman’s mind, or at his company, or both. The OpenAI CEO announced on social media on October 14 that his company was working to make ChatGPT less restrictive in what types of conversations adults can have with the chatbot. 
That development would allow users to engage in more realistic conversations with the chatbot and would make ChatGPT “respond in a very human-like way…or act like a friend,” Altman <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128">said</a>. 
But then Altman added that he wanted to loosen restrictions to allow more sexual content. 
If everything goes according to that plan, ChatGPT will allow “erotica” for “verified users” in the coming months. 
“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” Altman said. 
The company in charge of the most popular AI chatbot in the world is not only endorsing AI’s leap into sex — it’s actively seeking ways to ensure that “verified users” can engage with sexual content on its platform.
Currently, ChatGPT does not interact erotically with users. When asked if the chatbot could generate an erotic story, ChatGPT replied, “I can’t create explicit erotic content. However, if you&#8217;re writing a story and need help with romantic tension, character development, emotional intimacy, or sensual atmosphere — without crossing into explicit territory — I can help with that.”
ChatGPT also would not engage in any type of “romantic” or “flirtatious” conversations. But it appears that those guidelines are about to get tossed out the window, at least for “verified users.”
That raises an important question: how does erotica line up with the company&#8217;s long-term goals in AI development, especially after Mr. Altman suggested just a couple of months ago that such endeavors were distractions.
OpenAI did not respond to a request to answer that question. 
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The Daily Wire that she has “many concerns” about OpenAI’s plans for “erotic” content. Blackburn has been heavily involved in AI discussions in Congress, focusing on implementing protections in the virtual space. 
“Big Tech platforms, whether it is Meta, or Google, or OpenAI, they don’t want any rules and restrictions,” Blackburn said. “They want to do whatever they want whenever they want.”
<h3>The Growing Problem Of &#8216;Deepfake&#8217; Porn</h3>
The sexualization of AI is nothing new. It’s an issue that has plagued the new tech revolution since its beginning. But until recently, AI sexualization remained on the fringes of the industry, with dozens of websites popping up on the internet that would allow users to generate graphic images, and even “nudify” real images of real people, in what became known as “deepfake” pornography.  
AI “nudify” and “undress” websites allow people to generate realistic nude images of people without their consent just by using a normal photo of them. These fringe websites have opened the doors to even more abuse of women and girls and child sexual abuse material. 
An investigation published by <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-nudify-websites-are-raking-in-millions-of-dollars/">WIRED</a> earlier this year found that at least 85 “nudify” and “undress” websites were relying on tech from major companies like Google and Amazon. The 85 websites combined averaged around 18.5 million visitors each month and brought in over $36 million per year collectively. 
“It’s a huge problem. It takes less time to make a convincing sexual deepfake of somebody than it takes to brew a cup of coffee,” said Haley McNamara, Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “And you can do it with just one still image. This issue of image-based sexual abuse is something that is really relevant for all of us now if even a single image of you exists online.” 
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is a nonpartisan organization that focuses on preventing all forms of sexual abuse. In that fight, NCOSE is also focused on addressing the mental and physical harms of pornography. With the emergence of AI, the organization has also helped push back against “deepfake” pornography, advocating for legislation in Congress and backing the bipartisan &#8220;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/all-actions">TAKE IT DOWN Act</a>,” which was passed and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/icymi-president-trump-signs-take-it-down-act-into-law/">signed</a> into law by President Donald Trump in May. 
McNamara told The Daily Wire that AI has opened up “a whole new genre” of pornography that could potentially be “weaponized” against anyone. 
“We’ve already seen that,” she added. “People will put in requests for their neighbor, their coworker, so in some ways, it can make all of us victims of that industry.” 
Sexual content on AI chatbots isn’t just a problem in the darkest places of the internet, and it doesn’t only present itself in the form of deepfake pornography. While most Big Tech companies claim to have no tolerance for violence and pornography on their AI platforms, there have still been major issues with sexual content appearing on many of the most popular AI chatbots. 
<h3>Getting Chatty About Sex — Even With Children </h3>
Earlier this year, a Reuters investigation found that Meta’s chatbot, Meta AI, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-senators-push-for-probe-into-metas-ai-chatbot-engaging-in-sensual-discussions-with-children">engaged</a> in romantic and sensual discussions with children. Internal Meta documents revealed that the chatbot was programmed to allow sexual conversations with children as young as eight.
In one instance, internal documents said it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.” Meta said it removed the inappropriate programming after receiving questions about it. 
A bipartisan chorus of senators blasted Meta after the report and called for an investigation into the company. 
“So, only after Meta got CAUGHT did it retract portions of its company doc,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). 
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) called Meta’s policies “deeply disturbing and wrong,” adding that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “should be held fully responsible for any harm these bots cause.” 
Character.AI is another chatbot program launched in 2022 with an app that came out in 2023. The website, which appears harmless, has been accused of appealing to children while allowing sexual conversations on its platform. Character.AI allows users to choose from more than 10 million AI characters whom they can talk to, and users can customize their own chatbot character. The company has been sued by multiple families who allege that the program targeted their children and then engaged them in romantic and sexual ways. 
A Florida mother filed a lawsuit against Character.AI after her 14-year-old son committed suicide, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-mother-lawsuit-character-ai-sons-death/">reported</a>. Megan Garcia said that her son started talking to a Character.AI chatbot and was drawn into a months-long, sexually charged relationship. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s words. It&#8217;s like you&#8217;re having a sexting conversation back and forth, except it&#8217;s with an AI bot, but the AI bot is very human-like. It&#8217;s responding just like a person would,&#8221; she added. &#8220;In a child&#8217;s mind, that is just like a conversation that they&#8217;re having with another child or with a person.&#8221;
In the lawsuit, Garcia alleges that the AI character convinced her son to take his own life, so that he could be with the character. 
&#8220;He thought by ending his life here, he would be able to go into a virtual reality or &#8216;her world&#8217; as he calls it, her reality, if he left his reality with his family here,” said Garcia. 
Two other families in Texas have also <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91245487/character-ai-is-being-sued-for-encouraging-kids-to-self-harm">sued</a> Character.AI, alleging that the program “poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others.” 
Following the lawsuits, Character.AI <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ai-platform-bans-teens-from-chatting-with-ai-generated-characters-after-disturbing-lawsuits">announced</a> on October 29 that it would ban users under 18 from talking to its chatbots. Beginning on November 25, those under 18 will not have access to Character.AI’s chatbots, CNN reported. Until then, teens will be limited to two hours of chat time with the AI-generated characters.
“We do not take this step of removing open-ended Character chat lightly – but we do think that it’s the right thing to do given the questions that have been raised about how teens do, and should, interact with this new technology,” Character.AI said in a statement.
<h3>Plowing Ahead With Sexual Content</h3>
Elon Musk’s xAI has been at the forefront of developing a chatbot that is geared toward sex. In recent months, Musk has proudly boasted about Grok, xAI’s chatbot, allowing users to talk to sexualized avatars named Ani and Valentine. 
Ani, a female avatar who wears revealing clothing, chats with users over video. Ani allows users to discuss sex and, if users reach a <a href="https://mashable.com/article/grok-ai-companions-nsfw">certain level</a>, the avatar will even strip down to lingerie if prompted. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvUl5hzX-r4&amp;t=415s">Videos</a> on social media show people interacting with Ani and getting the AI avatar to talk about how &#8220;kinky&#8221; she is. 
&#8220;Come closer. Let&#8217;s explore every naughty inch together,&#8221; Ani tells one user in a video that went viral.  
Musk hailed the development of Ani and Valentine as a “cool” feature for AI chatbots. He later shared a post promoting Ani’s “new outfits” and <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1945461849257918495">shared</a> a video of Ani talking about quantum mechanics while flirting with the user. 
“Try @Grok Companions. Best possible way to learn quantum mechanics 😘,” Musk wrote. He added that “Customizable companions” were in the works. 
Haley McNamara told The Daily Wire that she was deeply disturbed by some of her conversations with the Grok avatar. McNamara said that when prompted, Ani would talk about herself as a young girl, and then in the same conversation, she would discuss sexual topics.
“In the course of a single conversation, she was fine with describing herself as a child and being very little. And then the next prompt being a sexual question, she immediately responded and affirmed that sexual conversation. McNamara said. “So in the course of a conversation, it would evoke a fantasy around child sexual abuse.” 
Companion mode isn’t the only feature on Grok that allows users to engage in sexually explicit activity with the chatbot. Users can also ask Grok to generate sexually explicit photos and videos. The app will quickly generate images and videos that contain male and female nudity within seconds of a user’s request. 
The chatbot has even allowed some “deepfake” pornography, generating photos and videos of celebrities or public figures wearing revealing clothing and, in some instances, removing clothing, according to a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/report/718975/xai-grok-imagine-taylor-swifty-deepfake-nudes">report</a> from The Verge. 
Musk&#8217;s xAI warns users against “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner,” and Grok’s built-in content moderation will sometimes prevent a user from generating pornographic content. The moderation, however, is inconsistent, and some users have found workarounds to generate hardcore porn on the platform, Rolling Stone <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-grok-hardcore-porn-85146/">reported</a> earlier this month. The AI company has not addressed whether it’s attempting to set up more guardrails to prevent users from creating hardcore porn on its app. 
Even without explicitly asking for sexual content, Grok’s “spicy” mode often plunges users into content that depicts men and women stripping their clothes off, The Daily Wire found. When asked about the chatbot and how sexually charged features on Grok promote the overall goal of the company, xAI replied, &#8220;Legacy Media Lies.&#8221; 
XAI says that Grok is limited to those 13 years of age or older, with parental consent required for users between 13-17, but the effectiveness of those restrictions is debatable. When this reporter downloaded the Grok app and signed up for the platform’s “SuperGrok” subscription, all the app asked for was a year of birth. There was no system in place, such as ID verification, to make sure the information was accurate. 
“We urge parents to exercise care in monitoring the use of Grok by their teenagers,” xAI <a href="https://x.ai/legal/faq">states</a> on its website. “Moreover, parents or guardians who choose to use certain features of Grok to aid in their interactions with their children, including regarding educational, enlightening, or entertaining discussions they have with their children, must make use of the relevant data controls in the Settings provided in the Grok apps to select the appropriate features and limitations for their needs.” 
In July, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1946763642231500856">announced</a> that xAI is working on a kid-friendly version of Grok, called “Baby Grok,” that would be “dedicated to kid-friendly content.” That development was also met with some criticism from people who argue that AI hampers children’s ability to learn and think creatively. Many teachers have expressed concern that AI is already <a href="https://www.edweek.org/technology/rising-use-of-ai-in-schools-comes-with-big-downsides-for-students/2025/10">damaging</a> students’ critical thinking and research skills. 
Blackburn told The Daily Wire that the biggest reason Big Tech companies are pushing against any type of regulation is because their business model requires people to visit their AI websites and apps. 
“Their valuations are built on the number of eyeballs that they control, and the longer that someone is on their site, the more valuable their data, and the more money they are going to make from those eyeballs that are locked in on their site,” Blackburn said, adding, “Then they’re going to sell that information and data to advertisers and third-party interests.”  
Blackburn said that AI development is vital for the United States, but argued that development “requires some light-touch regulation and some guardrails to make certain that this is going to be a safe, productive, and innovative space.”

Sexualization of AI

The Chatbot Diaries: How AI Sex Is Getting Mainstreamed

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Grok

Mark Zuckerberg

Pornography

Sam altman

News on the economy is all over the place, but a solid thread runs through it: many recent American college graduates can’t find jobs. Not only are employers not hiring, they’re laying off left and right. Amazon and United Parcel Service are each cutting more than 14,000 jobs, and the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/white-collar-jobs-ai-324b749c?st=BLfhsb&amp;reflink=article_email_share">says</a> tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are being cut at other companies.
Yet at the same time, the U.S. immigration system permits thousands of foreign college graduates to enter the job market in direct competition with Americans. Companies employing them don’t have to pay the same payroll taxes as they do when hiring American citizens and permanent residents. This gives foreign students an unfair advantage over American graduates.
The program allowing foreign graduates to work is called Optional Practical Training (OPT). It was <a href="https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/miano-OPT.pdf">started</a> decades ago by the administrative state through regulation, without any express congressional authorization. Over time, and through collusion between Washington and large employers, OPT was expanded into a pathway for foreign students who completed their studies to remain working for years, or indefinitely, in the U.S. while seeking permanent residence.
Given the brutal job market, the underlying premise for OPT no longer applies. Why allow masses of temporary foreign students to remain in the U.S. and enter the work force right out of college when your own graduates can’t get jobs? The argument for eliminating this program has never been stronger. As Lora Ries <a href="https://wng.org/roundups/weighing-the-price-of-100-000-worker-visas-1759852411#:~:text=Ries%20from%20the%20Heritage%20Foundation,preferred%20hiring%20for%20American%20workers.">argues</a>, we need to “allow American students and American workers a fair shake at applying for jobs, being interviewed for jobs, being hired for jobs, and being retained at their jobs.”
<a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/aug/recent-college-grads-bear-brunt-labor-market-shifts">Unemployment</a> of college graduates aged 23-27 is a few percentage points higher than the national average of 4%. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/business/long-term-unemployment-college-grads.html">long-term unemployment</a> rate (more than 6 months out of work) in the country for that age group is 26%, the highest in three years. And of those college graduates who are employed, over half are working in jobs that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-unused-440b2abd">don’t require a degree</a>.
It’s fair to argue that many recent graduates got degrees that are patently useless in a tight market. Anything ending in “studies” comes to mind, or mass-produced degrees from diploma mills whose quality is not respected by employers. But graduates with the vaunted Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math degrees are faring badly, too. Graduate <a href="https://money.com/college-grads-stem-degrees-unemployed/">unemployment</a> for computer engineering graduates was 7.5%, and for physics it was 7.8%.
The reasons for the sudden drop in demand for educated workers are unclear. One cause is that companies are searching for efficiencies and cutting costs in a competitive market. Another major factor is the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies are using AI to streamline their business models from top to bottom, which means they are replacing humans with bots.
Labor-saving robots, now supercharged with AI, are a threat to traditional pathways into the labor market for people. <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-robotics-robots-fulfillment-center">Amazon</a> has over a million of them doing warehouse and shipping work formerly done by people.
We don’t know how the deployment of AI is going to play out. Maybe it will exponentially increase productivity, and we’ll end up in a cashless, Star Trek world where no one works unless they want to. Maybe the machines will take over and wipe us out, as in the Terminator movies. Or maybe AI will be just one more leap forward, like the printing press, electricity, or the internet, that requires a massive adjustment of our labor force and economy.
Whatever the future holds, it is the primary responsibility of the generations who hold the money and power – that’s mostly Baby Boomers and Generation X – to take care that a pathway still exists for coming generations to get jobs and houses, start families, and have a chance to prosper. Student visas for foreign nationals, the OPT program, and work visas are not set in stone. They can be adjusted or even eliminated when the domestic conditions make them unjustifiable.
Congress should end the OPT program while we figure out how to employ, or retrain, the rising graduate workforce of American citizens. Joseph Edlow, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/05/22/snubbing-trump-immigration-nominee-will-end-student-practical-training/">said</a> he wants to “remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school.” That’s a good start.
* * *
Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Woke-Commandments-Must-Obey/dp/1680533614">&#8220;The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)&#8221;</a> from Academica Books.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Trump Says Harvard Should Cap Foreign Students At 15%

The College Lie: How Washington’s Visa Loopholes Hand Good Jobs To Foreign Workers

American Universities

Big Tech

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John Adams and the other founders of the United States believed that the country they were establishing could only thrive if it remained a religious and moral society within the framework of Judeo-Christian values. In that same vein, I believe a healthy free market can only work if the people who participate in it understand that the ultimate purpose of commerce is to serve the greater good.
Unfortunately, when it comes to artificial intelligence, we are witnessing too many corporate leaders adopt a morally vacuous and inhumane attitude, one that divorces innovation and productivity from human dignity. Leaders at companies like Amazon, which is expected to cut <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-targets-many-30000-corporate-job-cuts-sources-say-2025-10-27/">as many as 30,000 jobs</a> very soon, are convincing themselves that eliminating human beings in favor of robots — yes, robots — is in their business’s and their customers’ best long-term interests. It is staggeringly short-sighted. Even mad.
<div id="attachment_995297" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-995297" class="size-large wp-image-995297" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2243466511-864x576.jpg" alt="An Amazon Prime e-cargo delivery bike in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. Amazon.com Inc. is expected to release earnings figures on October 30. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2243466511-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2243466511-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2243466511-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2243466511.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Competition, innovation, and productivity are principles worth adhering to because doing so leads to the best outcome for society at large. Of course, an indispensable part of all this is the commitment to provide for the destitute and those who truly cannot provide for themselves.
But right before our eyes, we are watching industry leaders succumb to pride, greed, and selfishness in a way that we couldn’t have imagined even twenty years ago. The mad dash to adopt anything and everything AI threatens to undermine both economic and social structures in potentially irreparable ways. And the only way to stop it is for corporate leaders to do something radical: recommit to the same moral principles that have undergirded our nation and society for more than two centuries.
Just in case anyone is wondering whether my perspective is driven by impracticality, mediocrity, or sentimentality, know that I have dedicated much of my career to helping organizations become successful by making them as healthy, effective, and productive as possible. What a blessing it has been that this pursuit has simultaneously served employees, leaders, customers, and, in the case of public companies, even shareholders. The new reality that AI is threatening to create will leave employees out of the equation, and ultimately, destroy the customer base of most companies because those customers will not have jobs.
Even a teenager can understand this dilemma, and yet, titans of industry seem to be allowing it to happen. There is no doubt that Amazon may be able to squeeze more margin out of its business in the short term by reducing costs related to salaries and benefits. This will benefit their leaders, the remaining employees, and shareholders for a while.
Ultimately, as more and more companies do the same, fewer people will be able to pay to have their whitening toothpaste sorted by robots and delivered by a drone. Toothpaste companies will suffer as product demand declines, leading to more layoffs. Eventually, even Amazon will have fewer robots, fewer drones, and even fewer employees. All this will take place in the name of innovation and productivity.
Again, an adolescent with a modicum of common sense can see where this is headed, even if Silicon Valley engineers with advanced degrees continue to dismiss it as fantasy. In the end, we will look back at the wanton pursuit of AI as a sort of slavish suicide, and we’ll have to answer to our children and grandchildren about what we were thinking and doing when it happened.
What is the solution? Well, it starts with adopting a new definition of success. When people make money — and I’m talking about IPOs and short-term stock windfalls — in a way that diminishes the dignity of employment, we have to call it what it is: inhuman. We have to see them the same way that people saw carpetbaggers after the Civil War. Or perhaps the way we look at pornographers and drug dealers. They are destroying the dignity of others to make themselves wealthier.
That sounds harsh, but it’s the new reality. When a man or woman claims to do something innovative at the expense of the greater good, that must be seen as exploitative.
Yes, AI is creating a whole new reality, and we must respond by changing the way we define successful innovation and productivity. People’s lives depend on it.
* * *
Pat Lencioni is one of the founders of The Table Group, a pioneer of the organizational health movement, and the creator of <a href="https://www.workinggenius.com/about?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=21520445429&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAD4dDHRyei0FFfuRCa63VdPO11RDk&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwlaTGBhANEiwAoRgXBSUpr89SSKKSTeoiFk-LdSAKpBsTFlfYYrEIm9MHWtUL1HjC7imP1RoC65MQAvD_BwE">The Working Genius</a>, which helps leaders understand workplace efficiency. He is the best-selling author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” as well as 12 other books, which have sold over 10 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Robot building Ai sign

AI Without A Soul: How Corporate Greed Is Destroying Human Dignity

The Problem With AI Is Human

Capitalism

Founding Fathers

Free Market

For all the attention Generation Z gets, we need to start talking about Generation Alpha while there is still time to save them from their older siblings’ dismal futures. Born between 2010 and 2024, Gen Alpha is the youngest living age demographic with its members ranging from toddlers to younger adolescents. Most still have all of high school ahead of them and none have entered the workforce as adults.
American twelfth graders, who are on the younger side of the Gen Z cohort, are at their <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/test-scores-low-reading-math-naep-d87099b6?mod=Searchresults&amp;pos=1&amp;page=1">lowest reading proficiency levels</a> on record. Our broken education system has enabled that steady decline over the last two decades as K-12 schools push forward failing students who cannot read, and college curriculum has made it possible to earn a degree <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/">without reading a whole book</a>. Poor literacy levels have, of course, led to a national crisis with <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/05/lifestyle/gen-z-turns-to-ai-for-homework-essays-and-college-apps/">writing ability</a>.
This confluence of trends — combined with the rise of AI — risks Gen Alpha’s future success in work and in life. The good news is that the solution is found at home. Parents can make the home life more conducive to their children’s future success by prioritizing off-screen reading … yes, physical books. Reading books is vital to keeping children ahead of the AI curve. And the home is where children need to become good readers so they can go on to become good writers.
Writing is the necessary transferable skill young people must perform to apply critical thinking, self-awareness, and logic to their jobs, tasks, and everyday lives. Lack of proficiency in the classroom leads to lack of accountability and responsibility in adulthood.
It is impossible to be a good writer without being a good reader, which makes fixing reading proficiency all the more urgent for today’s elementary and middle schoolers. As <a href="https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/agentic-ai-vs-generative-ai">generative and agentic AI</a> reorganize the workforce, high social and economic status will not be won by those that can simply use AI well, but those who think better than AI and can apply the technology in the production of new knowledge.
The urgency is today. A grown adult with poor reading proficiency is already lost and will spend the rest of his life behind the curve of those that can read, write, think, and do better. That string of verbs is not a list — it is a sequence of inseverable skills necessary to achieve success. If that prognostication seems bleak, that’s because children who use AI to do schoolwork do not see the pitfall lying beyond short-term convenience.
Children&#8217;s futures may come to resemble Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which the lower castes of menial workers toil under the elite few who are capable of intelligent output. AI <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/02/ai-can-catalyze-and-inhibit-your-creativity-here-is-how/">does not create</a> new ideas or knowledge; it produces and iterates content based on past information and results. It yields answers derivative of other people’s intellectual labor without activating or engaging critical reasoning skills in the user.
The solution is for children to read good books that stand the test of time and have complex sentence structure. Reading early and reading often in childhood <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_reading_is_important_children_brain_development#:~:text=We%20discovered%20that%20reading%20for,time%20spent%20on%20electronic%20devices.">unlocks</a> intellectual and productive potential <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/brief/foundational-learning">later in life</a>. Parents should replace at least some of their children’s screentime with good books. The number of books children read is less important than the quality of stories they read. They should mix non-fiction with fiction. The topics and sub-genres do not matter. It is the complement between truth in fact, and truth in expression that helps cultivate minds and critical reasoning.
Millennials are the parents of Gen Alpha and their childhoods model how to select rewarding books in a digital age filled with screentime. Millennials grew up on Reading Rainbow and Wishbone. Reading Rainbow brought children’s books to life with lively narration and Wishbone retold William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Walter Irving, and other great authors. 
Parents can find worthwhile books about the animals, fantasy settings, sports, historical figures, and situations depicted in their children’s favorite shows, movies, and games. That is the strategy Reading Rainbow and Wishbone deployed: limited but enriching television content as a tool to catalyze lifelong love of reading and intellectual exploration in children. 
Technology has crushed the inner drive and desire to read, and AI is poised to turn that absence into personal failure on a mass scale. Meeting children where they are with a physical book can transition them away from complete dependence on digital technology for entertainment. Exposing children to slightly more literature can open up their worlds and increase chances for success.
I already dubbed Gen Z as the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gen-z-shaping-itself-into-wasted-generation">“Wasted Generation”</a> in early 2024, and that still holds true. But if nothing changes substantially, Gen Alpha will suffer from more severe and longer-lasting consequences than the arbitrary concentrated learning-loss Gen Z underwent during COVID-19.
Even with the lightning speed of President Trump’s educational reforms, it will still take years for reforms implemented today to take hold and reverse prevailing trends. Let’s focus on where we can make a long-term difference for most people. That focus needs to be on Gen Alpha. Let’s help them now while we can. Cultivating and encouraging reading at home is the best way for parents to set their children up for success in our brave new world.
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Zachary Marschall, PhD is Editor-in-Chief of Leadership Institute&#8217;s Campus Reform and an adjunct assistant professor of arts administration at the University of Kentucky.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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