The tradition of surrealist photography has always aimed to provoke the wonder, curiosity and healthy discomfort of being in a dream. Today, a surreal photo might elicit a knee-jerk accusation: “This is A.I.-generated.”  It’s one of the things A.I. has gotten increasingly good at: making outlandish ideas into images that look like real photographs, in…

Jimmy Donaldson, a North Carolina native known to most of the world as “MrBeast,” represents peak success in the creator economy, having turned his YouTube following into a global media empire. Even with an Amazon Prime series, a thriving CPG brand and a theme park in Saudi Arabia, the mega-creator is still investing deeply in…

The emergence of bad actors such as insider traders is inevitable on prediction markets, according to Tarek Mansour, the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi. But the executive isn’t worried about such behavior sullying his business. “There’s always going to be bad actors. The goal is to just squash them,” Mansour said during an onstage interview…

We are framing A.I. and cybercrime the wrong way. Most discussions still treat A.I. as a tool used by fraudsters, but the larger threat is that A.I. is beginning to execute critical parts of fraud itself. This shift is happening in parallel with a larger industry push toward autonomous A.I. agents, systems designed to plan,…

For decades, advertising has quietly powered the modern internet. It funded the rise of search engines, social platforms, maps, email and media, making them accessible to billions of people around the world. Most users never paid directly for these services, and yet they benefited from one of the most open and expansive information ecosystems ever…

On the bustling floor of the Semafor World Economy conference in Washington D.C. this week, a row of glass-doored WeWork pods by the window offers a much-needed refuge for the business executives, journalists and other attendees looking for a quiet space to get some work done. WeWork launched these portable workspaces, called WeWork Go, at…

Banks are among the most enthusiastic adopters of A.I., but also the most exposed to the technology’s growing cybersecurity threats. That vulnerability came into sharper focus earlier this month with the release of Anthropic’s Mythos Preview, a highly advanced A.I. model that’s drawn concern across Wall Street. On earnings calls, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and…

Meta, with more than 60 offices, nearly 80,000 staffers, might soon have two Mark Zuckerbergs: one human and one digital. The company is reportedly developing an A.I.-powered version of its CEO that can interact with staff when the real Zuckerberg isn’t available, according to the Financial Times. The avatar will be trained on Zuckerberg’s images,…

Sundar Pichai’s biggest A.I. wins may come from other companies instead of Google itself. As the longtime CEO of Google and its parent, Alphabet, Pichai has poured billions into A.I. products and cloud services, but it’s Google’s early bets on companies like SpaceX and Anthropic that are set to deliver the real payday. Both firms…