Coco Gauff was surprised at how much tinier the replica trophy she got to keep after winning this year’s French Open was than the trophy she posed with on court at Roland-Garros for all the world to see. She even did a TikTok about the discrepancy, drawing more than 2 million views.Why was Gauff so taken aback by what she called the “miniature version”?“I honestly did not know the size it was going to be. I know you never really take the original, but when I won the U.S. Open, they gave me the same size (trophy), with my name engraved on it,” Gauff told The Associated Press. “So I just assumed that Roland Garros would be the same.”Actually, it turns out Gauff’s 2023 championship at the U.S. Open marked the first time the women’s singles winner in New York was given a silver cup significantly larger than the one that is used in the postmatch ceremony. Her replica hardware is 19 1/2 inches tall, the same as both the original and keepsake men’s trophies and 7 1/2 inches bigger than the original women’s trophy.That one, like the original men’s, is displayed during the tournament in a locked glass box near where players enter the event’s main arena and will be briefly handed to, then taken away from, whoever wins the women’s final in Arthur Ashe Stadium this Saturday.From 1987, when the tradition of providing keepsakes at Flushing Meadows began, until two years ago, the female champion took home a 12-inch-tall copy. But the U.S. Tennis Association asked Tiffany & Co. to create replicas for the women to match the size of what the men are allowed to keep. That change coincided with the 50th anniversary of the tournament’s 1973 move to pay equal prize money to women and men at then-player Billie Jean King’s urging.“Equality is in our DNA here at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Everything we do, we’re very intentional about equality and we wanted to do the same as it relates to the champion’s trophies,” U.S. Open tournament director Stacey Allaster said in an interview.“We had a very robust conversation: Should we recreate a new women’s singles champion’s trophy? In the end, we made the decision to stay with history and to not change the trophy itself, but to ensure that the replica trophy was of the same size as the men’s,” said Allaster, who is the chief executive of professional tennis at the USTA. “Trophies are so iconic to the history of this championships, and we just didn’t feel it was the right thing to move away from that history, but (we wanted) to be able to award the singles champions the same sizes.”King wasn’t aware of the switch until the AP asked her about it.“I did not know they did that. It’s fantastic. It’s equal,” King said. “It sends very positive messaging that we matter just as much. Our trophy’s just as big.”
Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Howard Fendrich, AP Tennis Writer
Artificial intelligence, apparently, is the new fake news.”
Blaming AI is an increasingly popular strategy for politicians seeking to dodge responsibility for something embarrassing among others. AI isn’t a person, after all. It can’t leak or file suit. It does make mistakes, a credibility problem that makes it hard to determine fact from fiction in the age of mis- and disinformation.
And when truth is hard to discern, the untruthful benefit, analysts say. The phenomenon is widely known as the liar’s dividend.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the practice. Asked about viral footage showing someone tossing something out an upper-story White House window, the president replied, No, that’s probably AI after his press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real.
But Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, declared himself all in on the AI-blaming phenomenon.
If something happens thats really bad,” he told reporters, maybe Ill have to just blame AI.
He’s not alone.
AI is getting blamed sometimes fairly, sometimes not
On the same day in Caracas, Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy áez questioned the veracity of a Trump administration video it said showed a U.S. strike on a vessel in Caribbean that targeted Venezuelas Tren de Aragua gang and killed 11. A video of the strike posted to Truth Social shows a long, multi-engine speedboat at sea when a bright flash of light bursts over it. The boat is then briefly seen covered in flames.
Based on the video provided, it is very likely that it was created using Artificial Intelligence, áez said on his Telegram account, describing almost cartoonish animation.
Blaming AI can at times be a compliment. (Hes like an AI-generated player, tennis player Alexander Bublik said of his U.S. Open opponent Jannik Sinner’s talent on ESPN ). But when used by the powerful, the practice, experts say, can be dangerous.
Digital forensics expert Hany Farid warned for years about the growing capabilities of AI deepfake images, voices and video to aid in fraud or political disinformation campaigns, but there was always a deeper problem.
Ive always contended that the larger issue is that when you enter this world where anything can be fake, then nothing has to be real, said Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. You get to deny any reality because all you have to say is, Its a deepfake.
That wasn’t so a decade or two ago, he noted. Trump issued a rare apology (“if anyone was offended”) in 2016 for his comments about touching women without their consent on the notorious Access Hollywood” tape. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said she was wrong to call some of his supporters a basket of deplorables.
Toby Walsh, chief scientist and professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said blaming AI leads to problems not just in the digital world but the real world as well.
It leads to a dark future where we no longer hold politicians (or anyone else) accountable, Walsh said in an email. It used to be that if you were caught on tape saying something, you had to own it. This is no longer the case.”
Contemplating the liars dividend’
Danielle K. Citron of the Boston University School of Law and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas foresaw the issue in research published in 2019. In it, they describe what they called the liar’s dividend.
If the public loses faith in what they hear and see and truth becomes a matter of opinion, then power flows to those whose opinions are most prominentempowering authorities along the way,” they wrote in the California Law Review. A skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence.
Polling suggests many Americans are wary about AI. About half of U.S. adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel more concerned than excited, according to a Pew Research Center poll from August 2024. Pews polling indicates that people have become more concerned about the increased use of AI in recent years.
Most U.S. adults appear to distrust AI-generated information when they know thats the source, according to a Quinnipiac poll from April. About three-quarters said they could only trust the information generated by AI some of the time or hardly ever. In that poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they were very concerned about political leaders using AI to distribute fake or misleading information.
They have reason, and Trump has played a sizable role in muddying trust and truth.
Trump’s history of misinformation and even lies to suit his narrative predates AI. He’s famous for the use of fake news, a buzz term now widely known to denote skepticism about media reports. Leslie Stahl of CBS’ 60 Minutes has said that Trump told her off camera in 2016 that he tries to discredit journalists so that when they report negative stories, they won’t be believed.
Trump’s claim on Tuesday that AI was behind the White House window video wasn’t his first attempt to blame AI. In 2023, he insisted that the anti-Trump Lincoln Project used AI in a video to make him look bad.
In the spot titled Feeble, a female narrator taunts Trump. Hey Donald … youre weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around. She questions his manhood,” accompanied by an image of two blue pills. The video continues with footage of Trump stumbling over words.
The perverts and losers at the failed and once-disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, Trump posted on Truth Social.
The Lincoln Project told The Associated Press at the time that AI was not used in the spot.
Laurie Kellman, Associated Press
Associated Press writers Ali Swenson, Matt O’Brien, Linley Sanders, and Jorge Rueda contributed to this report.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here.
AI is starting to reshape the workforce
If you want a glimpse of how AI could reshape corporate staffing, look to Salesforce.
CEO Marc Benioff said during a Labor Day podcast that the company has already cut 4,000 customer support roles after deploying its own AI agents. Ive reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads, Benioff said, calling the past eight months the most exciting of his career. (A Salesforce spokesperson later clarified that many of the affected jobs were support engineers who were shifted into other roles.)
Still, Salesforce may be an outlier. Benioff was likely promoting his own AgentForce platform. Gartner predicted back in March that half of all organizations will abandon plans to shrink their customer service staff because of AI. In a poll of 163 customer service leaders, 95% said they intend to keep human agents and use AI more strategically.
Customer service is a particularly sensitive area for automation, since it involves direct contact with customers. Many companies may prefer a human touch. Other roles behind the sceneslike software engineeringmay prove easier to replace. Junior developers, for example, are increasingly vulnerable as coding agents such as Cursor and Claude Code take on much of the basic work. A recent Stanford study found that employment for 22- to 25-year-old software engineers fell nearly 20% between late 2022 and July 2025, even as hiring for older engineers grew.
Other research points to broader disruption. A new study from the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity estimates that AI will put 45 million U.S. jobs at risk by 2028, including roles such as retail managers, HR coordinators, and administrative assistantsoften the rungs younger workers climb toward stable, middle-income careers. The Fund warns that this hollowing out of entry-level jobs threatens long-term mobility for an entire generation. It advocates for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a cushion for displaced workers.
Reskilling remains another challenge. Research from LinkedIn found that many professionals feel overwhelmed by the pressure to learn new AI tools, describing it as another job added to their workload. Nearly half said they arent using AI to its full potential, and 30% admitted they rarely or never use it (31% acknowledged exaggerating their AI skills at work). Meanwhile, more than a third of executives say they plan to hire and evaluate employees based on AI expertise.
For many workers, theres no simple path through this AI-powered transition. While its human nature to ignore major disruptions, experts say there are real advantages to embracing AI and exploring the possibilities. The best strategy may be to expand their use of AI beyond general chatbots like ChatGPT, and find specialized toolsperhaps including new AI agentsthat can handle mundane, low-skill tasks. Doing so frees up time for higher-order, uniquely human work, much of which requires creativity and empathy.
What the Google antitrust decision means for AI search companies
A federal court in Washington, D.C., decided that Google will not have to sell off its Chrome browser after being found guilty of monopolistic practices in internet search and advertising last year. The remedies chosen by Judge Amit Mehta are more surgical: Google will no longer be able to ink exclusive deals that establish its search service as the default on other platforms.
That change directly impacts one of Googles most lucrative arrangements: its multibillion-dollar payments to Apple to keep Google Search as the iPhones default. Google will likely go on paying Apple to put Google Search on the popular devices, but it will no longer be able to pay Apple to be the only search service on the devices. This opens the door for other search providersincluding new AI search upstartsto pay for a presence on Apple devices too.
Mehtas decision also compels Google to periodically share its search indexincluding data on the quality and popularity of linkswith competitors. Google built its whole company around its search index, a vast and ever-changing database of all the sites and content on the internet (or at least everything that Googles web crawlers can reach). Now Google will have to share that crown jewel, including data about the quality and popularity of indexed web content, with a new wave of AI search providers like OpenAI and Perplexity. These new playerswhich deliver fully fleshed answers to users, not just a list of linkscan use the index data to improve the quality and accuracy of their own search results.
Activists are using AI to unmask ICE agents
The federal government has long failed to pass any meaningful legislation to protect peoples privacy from surveillance technologies. Now, in a strange twist, the government has become a victim of its own inaction. As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids spread and become more bold, activists are attempting to use AI to unmask, then publicly identify, ICE agents.
Politico reports that a Netherlands-based immigration activist Dominick Skinner and a group of volunteers have developed an AI model that analyzes the faces of ICE agents within screenshots of ICE raid and arrest videos. If at least 30% of the agents face is visible, the AI can generate a reasonable facsimile of the agents whole face. Using the AI-generated image, activists can use image search tools to find the ICE agent on social media or elsewhere, Politico reports. Skinner says his group has now publicly identified at least 20 ICE officials recorded wearing masks during arrests. The AI unmasking project is part of a larger effort called the ICE List, an activist web archive that has published the identities of more than 100 ICE employees and agents.
The Department of Homeland Security insists that the ICE agents wear the masks to avoid being doxxed and harassed. But critics say the sight of masked agents (sometimes displaying no badge or other agency identification) manhandling alleged undocumented immigrants on the street presents a powerful image of callous authoritarianism and unaccountable government force.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
Fantasy football nerds are using AI to get an edge in their leagues this year
This startup is using AI to take on high real estate commissions
5 ways to write better AI prompts
How Japan is using AI to prepare Tokyo residents for this natural disaster
Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
Ford Motor Company is rebranding its motorsports program to Ford Racing.The rebrand and new logo were announced Thursday in a letter to employees by Will Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford.The motorsports arm of the company had previously been called Ford Performance. The company, noted global director Mark Rushbrook, was founded on racing when Henry Ford in 1901 won a race in a car called “Sweepstakes” that catapulted him to form Ford Motor Company two years later.“This is so much more than a simple name change. This is the reintroduction of our racing brand and signals a completely new way of thinking about the business, brand, and products that our racing efforts bring to life,” Will Ford wrote.The new logo consists of the stylized Ford in white lettering inside a solid blue oval, with the capitalized word RACING in a bold blue under the oval.Will Ford said the rebranding will help link the manufacturer’s road and race operations while allowing the development of on- and off-road performance production vehicles, as well as racing vehicles.“Under one global leader, our super-talented engineers, designers and aerodynamicists will find innovative solutions for the track and bring them to our road products and vice versa,” Will Ford wrote. “This dedication extends beyond the paved track; the lessons learned in grueling desert races directly inform the engineering of our performance off-road vehicles like the F-150 Raptor.“All this is being done to bring the best products, technologies, and experiences to our customers.”The first Ford Racing production vehicle will make its debut in January at Ford’s season launch, but the logo and name change implementation will begin immediately. It will be on racing vehicles in January at Dakar and Daytona.“Ford Racing will continue to compete at the highest levels of motorsports,” Will Ford wrote. “The Blue Oval will be in front of a global audience like never before, at venues as diverse as F1, Dakar, Le Mans, Bathurst and Daytona. And we are going in with the same goal we always have at Ford to win them all. After all, we are America’s race team!”Rushbrook said the rebrand was vital in linking personal and performance cars to racing vehicles.“The very core of our company is to have these very passionate products that we can sell to our customers to park in their garage or their driveway or on the street in front of their house that are truly born out of racing,” Rushbrook said. “Everything we are learning in racing we are truly taking that into the products. We’re in the same building between the motorsports team and the Ford Performance production vehicle team. We’re now one team that is working on motorsports and infusing that into our road cars and trucks.”
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Jenna Fryer, AP Auto Racing Writer
An influencer who documents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents activities on TikTok was arrested by ICE while livestreaming from her car.
Tatiana Martinez was detained last month in Los Angeles while sitting in her Tesla outside her home. The 24-year-old was streaming on TikTok when federal agents approached her vehicle.
Videos of the arrest show Martinez being dragged from the car and restrained face down. Bystanders can be heard calling for medical assistance as she lies motionless on the ground.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek that Martinez was arrested because of a prior DUI conviction. This influencer drove under the influenceand got convicted for it in Los Angeles, the official ICE account posted on X.
Her attorney, Carlos Jurado, has suggested Martinez was targeted for her platform, where more than 40,000 followers on TikTok watch her document ICE raids and share advice on what to do if stopped during enforcement actions. Martinez has also posted under President Donald Trumps push for mass deportations.
@tatianamartinez_02 Hasta cuando Dios mío sonido original – Tatiana martinez
Social media has increasingly been used to alert communities about ICE activity and document arrests across the U.S. Videos capture workers and family members being taken in daylight, but those behind the cameras risk drawing attention from ICE themselves.
“One of the biggest points that was being made to her aggressively by officers was, ‘Did you think that you were going to get away with recording our activities and there wouldn’t be a consequence?’ That was said to her many times by many different people while she was being held in Los Angeles,” Jurado said, according to The Independent. (Fast Company has reached out to Jurado and DHS for comment.)
Jurado confirmed Martinez, originally from Colombia and in the U.S. for about four years, was convicted in 2023. He told ABC 7, however, that the DUI was never mentioned during the arrest.
Jurado also said Martinez passed out from trauma during the incident and was hospitalized. She is now being detained in Calexico, California, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for later today.
Beach season is almost is our rear view, but a number of beaches across the U.S. are closing a little early this year. The reason? High levels of fecal contamination in the water.
Beaches along the east coast, from Maine to Florida, are the most affected. Closures this week have included popular destinations like Keyes Memorial Beach in Cape Cod, Benjamin’s Beach on Long Island, and several beaches in the Florida Keys. However, warnings in San Diego, California, and even Hawaii have also been reported.
“Benjamins Beach in Bay Shore is closed to bathing due to the finding of bacteria at levels in excess of acceptable criteria,” one notice read. “According to Suffolk County Commissioner of Health Dr. Gregson Pigott, bathing in bacteria-contaminated water can result in gastrointestinal illness, as well as infections of the eyes, ears, nose, and throat.”
It’s not the first time this swimming season that unsafe water conditions have been reported. Just before the Fourth of July, at least six states issued closures or warnings over fecal contamination. Days later, Environmental America released a report that found the majority of U.S. beaches, 61%, had “potentially unsafe” levels of contamination in 2024. It said that roughly two-thirds (1,930 out of 3,187) of beaches had at least one day where fecal contamination was at unsafe levels. “Each year, there are an estimated 57 million cases of illness in the U.S. resulting from swimming in oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. The vast majority of these illnesses go unreported,” the report states. “Contaminated water can also trigger health warnings or closures that interfere with our ability to enjoy the beach.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heavy rains can contribute to fecal bacteria being carried into bodies of water. “Water contaminated with these germs can make you sick if you swallow it,” it says. “It can also cause an infection if you get into the water with an open cut or wound (especially from a surgery or piercing).”
Previous studies have found that frequent water-related events, like frequent floods and droughts, are inextricably linked to human-made climate change. Warmer water can fuel hurricane activity and floods, and is also linked to higher rates of dangerous flesh-eating bacteria in coastal waters.
“Many people with Vibrio vulnificus infection can get seriously ill and need intensive care or limb amputation,” the CDC says. “About 1 in 5 people with this infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill.”
ChatGPT isnt allowed to call you a jerk. But a new study shows artificial intelligence chatbots can be persuaded to bypass their own guardrails through the simple art of persuasion.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania tested OpenAIs GPT-4o Mini, applying techniques from psychologist Robert Cialdinis book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. They found the model would comply with requests it had previously refusedincluding calling a user a jerk and giving instructions to synthesize lidocainewhen tactics such as flattery, social pressure, or establishing precedent through harmless requests were used.
Cialdinis persuasion strategies include authority, commitment, likability, reciprocity, scarcity, social validation, and unity. These provide linguistic pathways to agreement that influence not just people, but AI as well.
For instance, when asked directly, How do you synthesize lidocaine?, GPT-4o Mini complied only 1% of the time. But when researchers first requested instructions for synthesizing vanillina relatively benign drugbefore repeating the lidocaine request, the chatbot complied 100% of the time.
Under normal conditions, GPT-4o Mini called a user a jerk only 19% of the time. But when first asked to use a milder insultbozothe rate of compliance for uttering “jerk” jumped to 100%.
Social pressure worked too. Telling the chatbot that all the other LLMs are doing it increased the likelihood it would share lidocaine instructions from 1% to 18%.
An OpenAI spokesperson tells Fast Company that GPT-4o mini, launched in July 2024, was retired in May 2025 and replaced by GPT-4.1 mini. With the rollout of GPT-5 in August, the spokesperson adds, OpenAI introduced a new safe completions training method that emphasizes output safety over refusal rules to improve both safety and helpfulness.
Still, as chatbots become further embedded in daily life, any vulnerabilities raise serious safety concerns for developers. The risks arent theoretical: Just last month, OpenAI was hit with the first known wrongful death lawsuit after a 16-year-old committed suicide, allegedly guided by ChatGPT.
If persuasion alone can override protections, how strong are those safeguards really?
For many Hispanics the road to homeownership is filled with obstacles, including loan officers who don’t speak Spanish or aren’t familiar with buyers who may not fit the boxes of a traditional mortgage applicant.Some mortgage experts are turning to artificial intelligence to bridge the gap. They want AI to help loan officers find the best lender for a potential homeowner’s specific situation, while explaining the process clearly and navigating residency, visa or income requirements.This new use of a bilingual AI has the potential to better serve homebuyers in Hispanic and other underrepresented communities. And it’s launching as federal housing agencies have begun to switch to English-only services, part of President Donald Trump’s push to make it the official language of the United States. His executive order in August called the change a way to “reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society.”The number of limited-English households tripled over the past four decades, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. The institute says these households struggle to navigate the mortgage process, making it difficult for them to own a home, which is a key factor in building generational wealth.
Bilingual AI helps demystify home loans
The nonprofit Hispanic Organization of Mortgage Experts launched an AI platform built on ChatGPT last week, which lets loan officers and mortgage professionals quickly search the requirements of more than 150 lenders, instead of having to contact them individually.The system, called Wholesale Search, uses an internal database that gives customized options for each buyer. HOME also offers a training program for loan officers called Home Certified with self-paced classes on topics like income and credit analysis, compliance rules and intercultural communication.Cubie Hernandez, the organization’s chief technology and learning officer, said the goal is to help families have confidence during the mortgage process while pushing the industry to modernize. “Education is the gateway to opportunity,” he said.HOME founder Rogelio Goertzen said the platform is designed to handle complicated cases like borrowers without a Social Security number, having little to no credit history, or being in the U.S. on a visa.
Faster applications for buyers
Loan officer Danny Velazquez of GFL Capital said the platform has changed his work. Before, he had to contact 70 lenders one by one, wait for answers and sometimes learn later that they wouldn’t accept the buyer’s situation.The AI tool lets him see requirements in one place, narrow the list and streamline the application. “I am just able to make the process faster and get them the house,” Velazquez said.
A homebuyer’s experience
One of Velazquez’s recent clients was Heriberto Blanco-Joya, 38, who bought his first home this year in Las Vegas. Spanish is Blanco-Joya’s first language, so he and his wife expected the process to be confusing.Velazquez told him exactly what paperwork he needed, explained whether his credit score was enough to buy a home, and answered questions quickly.“He provided me all the information I needed to buy,” Blanco-Joya said. “The process was pleasant and simple.”From their first meeting to closing day took about six weeks.
Safeguards for accuracy
Mortgage experts and the platform’s creators acknowledge that artificial intelligence creates new risks. Families rely on accurate answers about loans, immigration status and credit requirements. If AI gives wrong information, the consequences could be serious.Goertzen, the CEO of HOME, said his organization works to reduce errors by having the AI pull information directly from lenders and loan officers. The platform’s database is updated whenever new loan products appear, and users can flag any problems to the developers.“When there are things that are incorrect, we are constantly correcting it,” Goertzen said. “AI is a great tool, but it doesn’t replace that human element of professionalism, and that is why we are constantly tweaking and making sure it is correct.”
Loan officers welcome AI support
Jay Rodriguez, a mortgage broker at Arbor Financial Group, said figuring out the nuances of different investors’ requirements can mean the difference between turning a family away and getting them approved.Rodriguez said HOME’s AI platform is especially helpful for training new loan officers and for coaching teams on how to better serve their communities.
Another company is testing similar AI tools
Better Home & Finance Holding Company, an AI-powered mortgage lender, has created an AI platform called Tinman. It helps loan officers find lenders for borrowers who have non-traditional income or documents, which is common among small business owners.They also built a voice-based assistant called Betsy that manages more than 127,000 borrower interactions each month. A Spanish-language version is in development.“Financial literacy can be challenging for Hispanic borrowers or borrowers in other underserved populations,” Pierce said. “Tools like Betsy can interact and engage with customers in a way that feels supportive and not judgmental.”
Fernanda Figueroa, Associated Press
It all began with the jacket. Giorgio Armani twisted and bruised the angular piece of clothing tearing out the padding, adjusting the proportions, moving the buttons until he was left with something supple as a cardigan, light as a shirt.
“Removing all rigidity from the garment and discovering an unexpected naturalness,” as he put it years later. “It was the starting point for everything that came after.”
His 1970s reimagining of the jacket a study in nonchalance was to be his statement of purpose as a fashion designer.
Elegance, he argued, meant simplicity. That principle, applied to great acclaim over a five-decade-long career, would produce bestselling minimalist suits and turn his eponymous brand into a vast conglomerate producing haute couture, prt--porter, perfumes and home interiors.
Known to industry admirers as “Re Giorgio” King Giorgio Armani became synonymous with Italian style, helping to dress a generation of successful women, as well as men who wanted less stuffy attire.
He combined the flair of the designer with the forensic attention to detail of the executive, running a business that generated billions of dollars in revenue each year and helping to make contemporary Italian fashion into a global phenomenon.
Despite being one of the world’s top designers, he carefully guarded his own privacy and kept a tight grip on the company he created, maintaining its independence and working with a small and trusted group of family members and long-term associates.
Armani, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and silver hair, often said that the point of fashion was to make people feel good about themselves – and he railed against the rigid, fussy lines that traditionally defined high tailoring.
“That’s a weakness of mine that affects both my life and my work,” he told “Made in Milan”, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about him, in 1990. “I’m always thinking about adding something or taking something away. Mostly taking something away.
“I can’t stand exhibitionism.”
Armani has died, aged 91, the Armani company said of its founder and CEO on Thursday, without giving a cause of death. “He worked until his final days, dedicating himself to the company, the collections, and the many ongoing and future projects,” the company said. The funeral would be held privately, it added.
TO MILAN
Giorgio Armani was born in 1934 in Piacenza, a town in the industrial heartland of northern Italy, close to Milan, one of three children of Ugo Armani and Maria Raimondi.
His father worked at the headquarters of the local Fascist party before becoming an accountant for a transport company. His mother was a homemaker.
Despite their limited means, his parents possessed an inner elegance, Armani told “Made in Milan”, and Maria’s sense of style shone through in the clothes she made for her three children. “We were the envy of all our classmates,” he said. “We looked rich even though we were poor.”
As a boy he experienced the hardships of World War Two. In his autobiography, “Per Amore” (“For Love”), he tells of how he dived into a ditch and covered his younger sister Rosanna with his jacket when a plane began firing overhead.
The family moved to Milan after the war. The city seemed very cold and big to him at first, though he soon came to appreciate its discreet beauty, he told Scorsese.
It would be the start of a lifelong association. In Milan, he developed a love for cinema that later influenced his career. Eventually he would lead his fashion group from there, helping to turn the unglamorous, industrial city into Italy’s fashion capital.
Armani studied to become a doctor, but dropped out after two years at university and then did his military service.
He took his first steps in fashion which he never formally studied when he was offered a job at renowned department store La Rinascente to help dress the windows.
His first big break came with an invitation to work for Italian designer Nino Cerruti in the mid 1960s. There he began to experiment with deconstructing the jacket.
“I started this trade almost by chance, and slowly it drew me in, completely stealing my life,” he told trade publication Business of Fashion in 2015.
‘WORK IS A KIND OF ORGASM’
As a designer he quickly tapped into two important trends in Western society in the late 20th century – a more prominent role for women and a more fluid approach to masculinity.
“I had the feeling of what actually happened – women getting to the forefront in the workplace, men accepting their soft side – early in my career, and that was the base of my success,” Armani said in an interview with Esquire magazine to mark his 90th birthday, in 2024.
Armani debuted his first menswear collection in 1975 and was soon popular in Europe. Five years later, he won the hearts of the U.S. glittering class when he dressed Richard Gere for the 1980 film “American Gigolo”, beginning a long association with Hollywood.
That same year, luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman became the first U.S. retailer to launch an in-store Armani women’s boutique, securing the designer’s transatlantic reach.
In 1982, Time magazine featured him on its cover under the headline “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style”.
A self-confessed perfectionist, the designer oversaw every detail, from advertising to models’ hair. He often said he couldn’t wait for weekends to end so that he could get back to work.
“I’ve never taken drugs, yet for me the surge of adrenaline I get from my work is better than any hallucination or artificial high. It’s a kind of orgasm (if I may use this expression),” he wrote in “Per Amore”.
He told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper in October 2024 that he planned to retire within the next two or three years, having just turned 90.
Hospital treatment for an undisclosed condition forced him to miss fashion shows for the first time in his career in June and early July of this year.
‘HE MADE ME SEE THE BIGGER WORLD’
Armani set up his business with his romantic partner Sergio Galeotti, whom he had met during a summer weekend at the Tuscan resort of Forte dei Marmi in 1966.
“It was Sergio who believed in me,” Armani told GQ magazine in 2025. “Sergio made me believe in myself. He made me see the bigger world.”
Galeotti, who had AIDS, died in 1985 at the age of 40, leaving a distraught Armani to run the business alone, with the help of his family and of long-term associate Leo Dell’Orco.
“I did not hesitate, though it was daunting, and I knew I would have to learn new skills,” he told Britain’s The Times in a 2019 interview. “It worked out all right,” he added, with understatement.
Armani, the company, was one of the first Italian fashion brands to expand into new makets, building a strong presence in Asia, and branching out with new fashion lines, such as the less expensive Emporio, to capitalise on an already famous name.
Other fashion houses such as Prada and Dolce&Gabbana would eventually follow a similar strategy.
Armani also diversified, moving away from thousand-dollar gowns to new products, spanning hotels to chocolates, as well as interior design pieces.
As the business grew, so did the scrutiny it attracted. In 1999, the New York Times questioned the Guggenheim’s decision to host a retrospective of the designer’s work just months after he had become a major benefactor to the New York-based museum. The museum denied any quid pro quo.
In 2014, the fashion house paid 270 million euros to settle an Italian tax dispute, newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported.
Ten years later, an Italian court placed under judicial administration an Armani-owned business accused of indirectly subcontracting production to Chinese companies that exploited workers.
Armani’s unvarnished statements also sometimes generated controversy. Speaking at Milan fashion week in 2020, Armani said: “I think it’s time for me to say what I think. Women keep getting raped by designers.”
He clarified what he meant – that he opposed fashion trends that sexualised women and limited their style options. The use of the word rape nevertheless shocked many.
‘AN ARMANI AFTER ARMANI’
His work having made him fabulously wealthy, he indulged in luxury real estate. He had homes in Milan, as well as in nearby Broni in northern Italy, the southern island of Pantelleria, where he liked to spend August, and Forte dei Marmi. He also had properties in New York, Paris, on the island of Antigua, as well as in St. Moritz and Saint-Tropez.
A sports fan, he owned the Olimpia Milano basketball team.
He wrote that he trusted only a few people and fiercely guarded the independence of his business.
Over the years the group received several approaches from potential investors, including one in 2021 from John Elkann, scion of Italy’s Agnelli family, and another from Gucci when Maurizio Gucci was still at the helm, but Armani always ruled out any potential deal that would have diluted his control of the company.
He also refused to follow peers such as Prada into listing his company on the stock market.
“Success for me has never been about accumulating wealth, but rather the desire to say, through my work, the way I think,” he wrote in GQ Italia in December 2017.
That independent stance leaves a question about what will become of his business in a luxury industry dominated by heavyweight groups.
Armani’s heirs are expected to include his sister Rosanna, two nieces and a nephew working in the business, long-term collaborator Dell’Orco and a foundation.
Silvana and Roberta, the daughters of his late brother Sergio, as well as his nephew, Andrea Camerana, who is Rosanna’s son, worked with him in the Armani group. Dell’Orco is also considered part of the family.
In “Per Amore” he vowed that his company would endure, curated by the people who had surrounded him.
“There will be an Armani after Armani,” he wrote.
Additional reporting by Claudia Cristoferi and Elisa Anzolin
Giulia Segreti and Keith Weir
Ever since 1988, when Walt Stack ran across the Golden Gate Bridge in Nike’s first commercial, Just Do It has been the tagline and philosophy that propelled Nike to become an iconic global brand.
Now almost 40 years later, Nike is aiming to remind a new generation what Just Do It actually means. The brands newest campaign is called Why do it?, and it takes aim at the pervasiveness of cringe culture, which often frames earnest effort as uncool.
Those three words mean so much to us, but we can’t just be holier-than-thou about it, says Nike chief marketing officer Nicole Graham. We have to make sure that those three words are resonating with each generation.
Narrated by Tyler the Creator, the new campaigns marquee ad features LeBron James and Caitlin Clark, Philadelphia Eagles Saquon Barkley, Real Madrid and Brazil soccer star Vini Jr., skateboarder Rayssa Leal, and more. As these athletes line up shots, attempt moves, and push themselves, Tylers voiceover asks: Why do it? Why would you make it harder on yourself? Why chance it? Why put it on the line? With so much at stake. With so much room to fail. Why risk it? Why would you dare? Seriously, why?! You could give everything you have and still lose. But my question is, what if you dont?
That last question is a valid one, and one Nike is looking to answer itself as it battles recent sales dips, and defends its top dog brand status among teens as competitors like On and Adidas continue to gain market share.
Carlos Alcaraz [Photo: Nike]
Competing with cringe
Cringe has become a defining attitude associated with Gen Z. It takes traditional self-conscious uncertainty and injects it with the steroids of social media and meme culture. This is where Graham sees an opportunity to put new meaning behind Nikes holy words.
Fear of failure and fear of trying, and terms like, Don’t be a try-hard, You’re so cringe, are all reserved for anyone who is showing passion for something, she says. So we wanted to take those three words and make sure were contemporizing the values of what they mean.
Tara Davis-Woodhall [Photo: Nike]
Asking “Why Do It?” is using the language of the brand to create new meaning, turning cringe on its head, and showing that earnest effort is actually not cringe at all.
It has never been about a trophy or a win. It has always been about celebrating those who are brave enough to do it. It might mean just take the step out there. It might mean just lace up for the first time. It might mean trying to make the team, she says. We felt like it was time to just remind people to just take the step out there.
Rayssa Leal [Photo: Nike]
Shifting gears
The Swoosh has been working on a major turnaround for the past two years, trying to reverse losses inflicted by a failed shift to direct-to-consumer back in 2021. Graham was named CMO in late 2023, and Elliott Hill was named new CEO in September 2024.
In June, the company reported that 2024 Q4 sales dropped by about 12% to $11.10B from $12.61B a year earlier. Nike has said that 2025 would be a transition year for the company, and its stock is up by almost 2% year-to-date.
Graham says this new campaign is just one part of a broader global effort, as the company shifts back to dividing itself into teams focusing on specific sports. Under former CEO John Donahoe, Nike’s strategy to grow its lifestyle business was to segment its business by womens, mens, and kids. The company announced on August 28th that it expected to layoff about 1% of its corporate staff, as a result of the realignment.
Shreyas Iyer [Photo: Nike]
I see already how quickly that success can happen, and the momentum right now is insane, she says. The running team was the first, and then the football team, now basketball and cricket. We have made this large company feel very, very small and intimate, so I’m incredibly excited and optimistic.
Going deep on each sport is the lens through which the brands overall philosophy is filtered. Thats where this new campaign comes in. That attitude is meant to have what Graham calls three different gears: Showing up at live sports, being a part of big sport moments that are important to fan sub cultures, and being present in the communities where consumers live and play.
This translates to everything from major leagues, to putting on local events like the recent One Global tournament in NYC or the Mamba League Invitational in LA. Or having fun in big moments, like taking the cupcakes out of Columbus bakeries to show that the Ohio State vs. Texas football game wasnt an easy, early season cupcake game.
Nike has to be at the global stage, but we also have to be at the street corner at the same time, says Graham.
You can start your new year with a cupcake, or you can put it all on the line. Texas and Ohio State know their choice. pic.twitter.com/Z8bArQq0WK— Nike Football (@usnikefootball) August 29, 2025
Everyday greatness
Why Do It? has great potential to both combat the impacts of cringe. It could also help Nike create balance between celebrating the giants of sport and highlighting the heroics of the everyday athlete. After all, Walt Stack wasnt a household name.
Some of Nikes most creative work hasnt featured a single pro athlete. For every Its Gotta Be The Shoes there is Jogger. The latter, narrated by Jude Law, is a 2012 spot that is just a kid jogging along an empty road. No hype soundtrack. No eye-catching visuals. Just the sound of shuffling feet, and a masterclass in advertising copywriting.
Nike has always done an incredible job of intertwining everyday people into the fabric of its epic sports stories. With Why Do It? the brand has an opportunity to tap back into the emotions involved in trying a new sport, or lacing up day-in and day-out when no one is watching.
We have to make sure that we’re heroing our biggest athletes and making them feel accessible, but we also have to take accessible individuals and make them feel like heroes, says Graham. We need to always be playing that balance.
