hi bud buds,
intersting to see pinterest release ai slop tools, adding labels to ai images and limiting gen ai pins in categories like beauty and art. it’s one of the first times i’ve seen a social platform directly confronting ai slop. honestly, this feels like an inevitable future for other social networks.
that said, this kind of feels like a bandaid solution. i wonder if ai slop will actually accelerate a shift toward new social media paradigms:
verified human networks, where users must be vetted to join (worldcoin?)
micro social, where you only follow a few close friends (a la bereal?)
blockchain social media? #cryptosolvesforthis
just feels like traditional social is not built for the fast growing wave of ai slop we see emerging, with no signs of stopping.
tty next week!
xxo,
dj
last week’s product launches
holy shit
apple released app store rule change, allowing apps to link out for payments. follows a court win by epic. massive win for app developers
directly related, epic games released webshops, allowing game developers to bypass apple/google fees
b2c ai products
airbnb released ai customer service bots, reducing their need for live agents. tbh their customer service was already so bad, there’s only room for improvement
visa released ai-powered shopping, letting ai agents make purchases based on user preferences. “each consumer sets the limits, and visa helps manage the rest.” i’ve written about this before, but relatively bearish on agentic purchase
google released audio overviews, allowing users to generate a podcast with ai virtual hosts based on documents they have shared
google launched ai features for learning a new language, including conceptually related vocab, object identification, and slang lessons
duolingo launched 148 ai-created courses, and says it’s replacing contractors with ai agents
openai upgraded chatgpt search with shopping features, now showing product recommendations, reviews, images, and direct links to purchase
b2b ai products
amazon updated its q business ai chatbot product to help companies build public-facing chatbots
yelp released ai voice agents for restaurants, to help restaurants handle calls, answer basic questions, and accomplish tasks like adding a customer to a restaurant waitlist
new models
microsoft released phi 4, a small model for reasoning tasks. high performance on low-resource devices. this feels critical for global adoption in developing markets
amazon launched nova premier, its largest model yet. processes text, image, video and teaches smaller models via distillation
alibaba released qwen3, an open source model family that they claim outperforms top western models
hahahahah
moviepass launched mogul, a daily fantasy sports platform for film fans, built on blockchain. this one actually made me lol. first of all, moviepass still exists?? good for them man
other fun b2c launches
x now supports 4k video uploads
uber partnered with momenta, to bring manned robotaxis to europe in 2026
bye bye, love you,
dj