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Have you seen larger-than-life depictions of your friends lately? They might have been sucked into the latest social trend: creating AI-generated caricatures. The trend itself is simple. Users input a common prompt: “Create a caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me,” and upload a photo of themself, and, voila! ChatGPT (or any AI-image platform) spits out an over-the-top, cartoon-style image of you, your job, and anything else it’s learned about you. This ability is predicated on a robust ChatGPT (or other AI) chat history. Those who don’t have a close, personal relationship with the AI might need to give additional information to get a more accurate depiction. But notably, that’s yet another instance of potential AI privacy concerns. It’s not the first AI image trend. Other social media challenges have had users posting themselves as AI-generated cartoons, Renaissance paintings, or fantasy characters. AIs image capabilities have gone in a few different directions. Some of them, like with this trend, or the meme-ification of Sora, are seemingly harmless fun. However, Sora has started to see issues with bad-faith individuals being able to create AI deepfakes (see also: Grok porn). Meanwhile, even as the trend continues to rise, more than 13,000 ChatGPT users reported issues on Thursday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
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E-Commerce
Tech workers have been worried for years about the AI tidal wave coming for their jobs, but their bosses are starting to worry too. Stocks plunged this week as fears escalated that AI advancements will take a bite out of business for many software and services companies. The market losses are tied to updates to Anthropics AI-powered workplace productivity suite, Claude Cowork, which threatens to replace some software tools ubiquitous in the professional world. Companies with business in research and legal software like Thomson Reuters and LegalZoom dropped dramatically on the Anthropic news, with a wide swath of software stocks following suit. Intuit, PayPal, Equifax all dropped by over 10%, with enterprise software companies like Atlassian and Salesforce deepening their own losses, which started well before the latest AI news. The S&P North American software index also slid further this week, worsening a recent losing streak punctuated by a 15% decline in January the indexs worst month in nearly two decades. Unlike Claude Code, a coding tool designed for developers, Anthropic built Claude Cowork as a powerful, general purpose AI agent for non-coders. Available to Anthropics $100-per-month premium subscribers, Claude Cowork can knock out easier tasks like searching, collecting and organizing files, but its also capable of taking on much bigger challenges like making slide decks, producing reports and pulling and synthesizing information from other business software tools, like Zendesk and Microsoft Teams. Claudes ability to execute complex tasks with dedicated software sub-agents prompted plenty of nervous jokes about humans being replaced by C-suites full of AI. And that was before a new Anthropic update introduced powerful new plugins designed to automate tasks across domains like finance, legal, sales, data, marketing, and customer support. The market is still digesting those new agentic AI capabilities, which could pose an existential threat to the software-as-a-service companies that undergird big chunks of the economy. Fears of a zero sum software game grow Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has made his own ominous predictions about AI displacing human workers. Last year, Amodei predicted that AI could vaporize half of entry-level white collar roles, sending unemployment as high as 20% within five years. He pointed to losses in industries like tech, law, consulting and finance, specifically. “We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Amodei told Axios. “I don’t think this is on people’s radar.” Not everyone deeply invested in AI agrees. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang swatted away worries that AI would eat the traditional software industry after the stock bloodbath that began on Tuesday. “There’s this notion that the tool in the software industry is in decline, and will be replaced by AI, Huang said, emphasizing that relying on existing software tools makes more sense than reinventing the wheel. It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself.
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E-Commerce
The federal agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws in the workplace made an unexpected disclosure this week: Nike was under investigation for its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, due to claims that the company had discriminated against white employees and job applicants. The investigation suggests that Nikes diversity goals and other DEI initiatives led the company to hire non-white workers to meet quotas or award them with more opportunities for career advancement, thereby discriminating against white workers. It is notable as the first major legal undertaking by Andrea Lucas, who President Trump installed as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last year. But it also indicates that Lucas is serious about targeting corporate employers over alleged discrimination against white workers, which she has clearly signaled is a priority for the agency under the Trump administration. It is designed to instill fear into the hearts of large companies, says Chai Feldblum, a former EEOC commissioner and a member of EEO Leaders, a group of former senior officials who worked at the EEOC and Department of Labor under multiple administrations. If they’re afraid, then small companies will be afraid. And the point is to chill any form of equity and diversity efforts, even legal ones. An unusual investigation The investigation into Nike is unusual for a few reasons: It is, of course, the first inquiry into what the agency has called DEI-related discrimination. But it is also rare that the EEOCs investigations into employers become public before they have concluded, since the process is supposed to be confidential. An EEOC investigation typically either ends in a dismissal or, if the agency finds reasonable cause and concludes there was discrimination, results in a conciliation process that allows an employer to resolve the issue in private, with both parties coming to an agreement. If conciliation fails, the agency would then decide whether or not to bring a lawsuit, which is considered a last resort and happens infrequently. The EEOC does often use subpoenas to force employers to comply with their requests for information. According to Feldblum, subpoenas can be a useful tool for the agency to extract information from a company that might be stonewalling or only offering partial responses to its inquiries. In the case of Nike, however, the EEOC went to court to enforce the subpoena, thrusting the investigation into the public record. What is unusual about this is the publicity, Feldblum says. Which is what chair Lucas wants. She’s doing that by suing on a subpoena. I think it’s a question whether EEOC is following its normal process for enforcing subpoenas. Nike seemed to suggest as much in a statement to Fast Company. This feels like a surprising and unusual escalation, a company spokesperson said. We have had extensive, good-faith participation in an EEOC inquiry into our personnel practices, programs, and decisions and have had ongoing efforts to provide information and engage constructively with the agency. We have shared thousands of pages of information and detailed written responses to the EEOCs inquiry and are in the process of providing additional information. The statement continued: We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices and follow all applicable laws, including those that prohibit discrimination . . . We will continue our attempt to cooperate with the EEOC and will respond to the petition. A possible new precedent Feldblum argues the EEOCs approach to this investigation could set a precedent of taking companies to court over what the agency perceives to be insufficient cooperation with its requests for information. The press release put out by the EEOC makes evident that the agency had requested extensive details about Nikes employment decisions, including its criteria for layoffs, the use of demographic data and how it was tied to executive compensation, and specifics about 16 programs that offered mentoring, leadership, or career development opportunities to underrepresented employees. Unlike many of the cases the EEOC investigates, this one was not initiated by a complaint from a worker alleging discrimination; Lucas herself brought the charge against Nike in 2024. But its not clear exactly what prompted the investigation. The EEOC claims to be looking into systemic allegations of DEI-related intentional race discrimination at Nike that have targeted white workers. By Lucass own admission, per a statement in the EEOC release, this investigation seems to have been prompted by Nikes public disclosures about its DEI programs. (When Lucas sent letters to 20 law firms last year requesting details on their DEI practicesa move that drew widespread criticismshe had relied on public statements.) You sign a commissioner charge under penalty of perjury, Feldblum says. You need to have at least some evidence of discrimination to sign that charge. Now if you believe that simply having a [diversity] goal is reasonable evidence of discrimination, then you’ll go ahead and sign that. The future of DEI Like many companies at the time, Nike set ambitious DEI goals after the murder of George Floyd sparked a racial reckoning across corporate America. (The company has also grappled with broader culture issues over the years, including allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.) In 2021, Nike tied executive compensation to DEI commitments that were intended to increase the share of women in leadership and boost representation of racial and ethnic minorities to 35% across its workforce. In the time since, however, Nike has cycled through five chief diversity officers; the company also declined to put out a corporate sustainability report last year, which typically documents its progress on DEIthough Nike claimed it had not wavered from its diversity commitments. Depending on how the EEOC investigation unfolds, Nike could face significant repercussions. The court will likely uphold the subpoena, according to Feldblum, which means Nike will likely have to produce reams of additional information. If the EEOC decides to make an example of Nike, the investigation could ultimately result in a lawsuitwhich would have far-reaching consequences for other employers and potentially set a precedent for subsequent investigations. I think we allemployers, employees, the general publichave got to assume there will be a continued onslaught of attacks on DEI, Feldblum says, urging companies to review, not retreat” from their diversity programs and position on DEI. The EEOC is trying to stop employes from doing anything to increase diversity and equity, and they are stretching their own procedures, as well as the law . . . And that is a very sad day for an agency entrusted with enforcing employment civil rights laws.
Category:
E-Commerce
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