Good morning. Super Bowl ads are usually beer and car commercials, but Anthropic has other plans. This year they’re spending millions to roast OpenAI for stuffing ads into ChatGPT. Anthropic dropped four brutal parody commercials 👀 skewering painfully awkward scenarios like a therapist suddenly pitching dating apps or a trainer pushing shoe insoles for short guys. Their punchline? “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” Finally, an AI rivalry petty enough for prime time.
Google is going to spend $200 billion on AI this year. While crypto and tech stocks crash out, Google just posted its strongest year ever with $400 billion in revenue. OpenAI is frantically fundraising, NVIDIA might bail on its commitments, and Oracle is borrowing at junk bond levels to stay afloat. Meanwhile Google’s Gemini 3 is now serving 750 million monthly users. If this is an AI bubble, Google clearly didn’t get the memo. [WSJ]
Alexa may soon run on OpenAI. Amazon is negotiating a $50 billion deal to have OpenAI’s engineers build custom AI models for Alexa. Currently, Alexa relies on Claude for complex tasks, but Amazon wants more control. OpenAI needs cash, though tying up resources on Amazon’s pet project could stretch it thin, especially as Google and Anthropic competition heats up. Still, both sides smell opportunity. OpenAI lands an enterprise client with deep pockets, and Amazon gets a chance to leap past Apple’s Gemini-powered Siri. [The Information]
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Deepfake voices are now an $11 billion business. ElevenLabs just raised $500 million from Sequoia, tripling its valuation in under a year. Pretty impressive for a company once sued for cloning celebrity voices without permission. These days Hollywood is fully on board, licensing star voices, generating AI music, and even releasing albums produced by AI. It’s not just entertainment, either. Voice AI is rapidly becoming core business infrastructure powering sales, marketing, and customer service. The future sounds exactly like you, only more profitable. [WSJ]
AI bots drive more web traffic than people. Publishers are getting slammed as bot visits surge from 1 in 200 to 1 in 50 within months. These AI agents don’t play fair, either. They’re dodging security by mimicking real visitors and slipping past defenses with advanced tricks like headless browsers. Some publishers are suing to block unauthorized scraping, while an entire industry has popped up to attract bots, gaming AI search results. We still can’t decide whether to sue the bots or invite them in for coffee. [Wired]
Robots are being engineered to manipulate your emotions. Companies like Apptronik and Fourier think emotional connections are critical for mass adoption. They’re designing bots with expressive eyes, gentle smiles, softer materials, and carefully chosen heights to put you at ease. Fourier’s latest care-bot is intentionally shorter and squishier, meant to feel reassuring instead of creepy while helping grandma or keeping you company. Do robots really need to smile to do their jobs? Nope. It just makes you comfortable inviting them home. [Semafor]
Smart glasses are coming for blue-collar jobs. Soon anyone will be able to instantly fix cars, HVAC, or appliances simply by wearing glasses that guide repairs in real time. Current models already help industrial workers remotely. The next gen wants to put pro-level expertise directly on your face. No more waiting on mechanics or the cable guy. Just slip on your glasses and DIY your way into disaster. Pros might object, but Silicon Valley insists a quick YouTube tutorial projected onto your eyeballs is enough. Good luck explaining that to your insurance company. [Forbes]
fun stats
🧱 80%. Enterprise databases now built by AI agents, per Databricks. 2 years ago human developers handled nearly all the work.
⚖️ $300 billion. The “SaaSpocalypse” market selloff triggered after Anthropic casually launched an AI tool that automates legal work.
💪 73,000. People available for hire by AI agents on RentAHuman, the new marketplace letting bots outsource their dirty work to humans.