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Happy Friday, and happy birthday to our esteemed editor Andrew Kirell! 🎂 Scroll down for seven fantastic weekend reads and a whole lot more...

Making sense of the AI chaos

Consider just how bewildering the AI boom can be to a consumer who hears about it one headline at a time. These are just from the past few days: 

NYT: "AI-generated images of child sexual abuse are flooding the internet."

WaPo: "A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials."

CNN: "Elon Musk's AI chatbot is suddenly posting antisemitic tropes."

NPR: "This TikTok video is fake, but every word was taken from a real creator."

WaPo: "AI is coming for entry-level jobs. Everybody needs to get ready."

Fortune: "AI is running rampant on college campuses."

Fast Company: "Reddit is now home to support groups for people addicted to AI chatbots."

––––

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says "people are capable of adapting to almost anything," and that's true. He's betting on society being "resilient" and reacting favorably to technological progress. But the day-by-day swirl of stories — both scary ones about people becoming addicted to AI companions and sanguine ones about AI powering medical advancements — can be overwhelming. It's enough to make someone ask a chatbot for help, right?

Perhaps this is why, when Gallup recently asked people about their attitudes on AI, 64% said they "plan to resist using it in their own lives for as long as possible," while 35% said they intend to quickly embrace it.

Something else to consider: "The people building AI are saying — subtly and unsubtly — that the technology is advancing more rapidly than the vast majority of people realize," Erica Pandey wrote for Axios earlier this week. "It's likely we won't know how and how much AI will change the way we live, work and play until it already has."

What's real anymore?

So much of the confusion, so much of the chaos of this moment, is about the difficulty of discerning what's real and what's not. (Take that Rubio deepfake that I mentioned up above; AI impersonation is "just a reality of this AI technology that's going on, and it's a real threat," Rubio told CNN's Kylie Atwood yesterday.)

This WSJ story captures the mayhem perfectly: "Was That Amazing Video in Your Feed Real or AI? Tech Platforms Are Struggling to Let You Know."

Patrick Coffee says some digital creators worry their reputations are tarnished when their work is wrongly tagged as AI-generated. Conversely, some totally-artificial ads are escaping any tags or other scrutiny. 

Of course, Meta, Alphabet and other giants profit from all this AI-generated content. Notably Alphabet's YouTube "is preparing to update its policies to crack down on creators' ability to generate revenue from 'inauthentic' content, including mass-produced videos and other types of repetitive content — things that have become easier to generate with the help of AI," TechCrunch's Sarah Perez reports. Some YouTubers have groused that YouTube is keeping more of the revenue for itself, though the policy change may be an attempt to tamp down on spammy AI slop, which is another growing problem. 

It's not an overstatement to say that society's relationship with reality is changing because of these rapid AI advancements — and even the tech companies can't keep up with it.

'A stark warning' + other AI-related headlines

I could have included a dozen more headlines up top to further prove the point. Goldman Sachs is "piloting" its first autonomous software engineer... Microsoft is touting huge savings via AI tools... The owner of two job-seeking sites is conducting layoffs because "AI is changing the world" ... Educational publisher Wiley is doing a deal with Anthropic... News outlets are "building fences around their content in an effort to cut off crawlers" that don't pay... 

And here are a few more:

 >> Later today journalists at Politico and E&E News are heading into an arbitration for a "precedent-setting fight over how AI can be implemented in unionized newsrooms," PEN Guild says.

 >> Earlier this week SAG-AFTRA members "ratified a new contract with major video game studios, marking a shift in how AI will be used in the gaming industry," Quartz reports.

 >> xAI's new Grok 4 model is winning praise from the likes of Sundar Pichai, "but it's not going to make people forget the antisemitism it spewed on X," TechRadar says. Furthermore, "Grok 4 appears to seek Elon Musk's views when answering controversial questions." 🤔

 >> Mike Lindell's attorneys evidently used AI "to prepare a court filing filled with a host of mistakes and citations of cases that didn't exist." Now they owe the court thousands of dollars. NPR's Jaclyn Diaz calls it a "stark warning."

 >> Working the AI refs? Missouri's Trump-aligned attorney general "is demanding information from several major tech firms" because he alleges their chatbots are "distorting facts and producing biased results about President Trump," per The Hill.

 >> Meanwhile, the EU is unveiling rules entailing "transparency, copyright protection and public safety" for powerful AI systems.

 >> "The tech industry and its critics occupy parallel universes," The Atlantic's Matteo Wong writes in this insightful piece titled "The AI Industry is Radicalizing."

IN OTHER NEWS...

Trump demands PBS/NPR defunding

With one week left for the Senate to pass his rescissions package, Trump is singling out the attempted defunding of PBS and NPR as the primary reason Republicans must support it. "Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement," he wrote on Truth Social yesterday, shortly after Sen. Mike Rounds told CNN's Manu Raju that he's a "no" on the package unless there's a fix that protects rural radio stations.

 >> "Rounds is up in 2026, though he's very strong in SD and probably doesn't need Trump's primary backing," CNN's Aaron Blake notes.

 >> The next Q: What amendments will Sen. Susan Collins propose?

Butler, one year later

Sunday is the one-year anniversary of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, PA, "and the media continues to pursue the story," as Poynter's Tom Jones writes here. Salena Zito's new book "Butler," which has received several presidential endorsements on Truth Social, is #1 on Amazon's new releases chart right now. Trump recounts the day in a sit-down with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump that will air in full on her Fox News show Saturday night...

More on Yaccarino's X-it

That didn't take long! "They took away Linda Yaccarino's blue check," Amanda Silberling points out at TechCrunch. Media observers saw it as evidence of Elon Musk's anger at his former CEO, but the checkmark was restored hours later. Thus far, Musk's punctuation-free reply of "Thank you for your contributions" stands as his only public comment on Yaccarino's exit, and he has not named a successor.

 >> Big picture: "As X loses its CEO, daily usage is down and competition is growing."

🔌 Seven excellent weekend reads

 >> A must-read by Texas Monthly senior editor Aaron Parsley: "On July 4, the Guadalupe ripped our home from its pillars, pulling my family into its waters and into the night. Then morning came." (Texas Monthly)

 >> Liam Scott sheds light on "how local reporters manage the dangers of covering extremism." (CJR)

>> Nicholas Quah asks: "Can the New York Times turn its writers into video stars?" (I'm gonna go with yes.) (NYMag)

 >> Will Potter analyzes how "factory farms criminalized journalism to block viral videos of animal cruelty." (Rolling Stone)

 >> Matt Gertz says the aforementioned Lara Trump show on Fox is so absurdly promotional and unethical that "to call it 'propaganda' is too kind." (Media Matters)

 >> Kayla Cobb chronicles a "podcasting scam trying to take over social accounts" of creators. (TheWrap)

 >> Both the NYT's Jake Nevins and WaPo's Emily Yahr are out with delicious reads about people who love, and love to hate, "And Just Like That..." (NYT, WaPo)

Briefly…

 >> Legendary WaPo journalist Dan Balz is taking a buyout: He "will leave the paper at the end of July after 47 years." (Axios)

 >> "At Condé Nast, the slow-motion end of remote work is arriving with an ultimatum" to return to 1 World Trade Center, Oliver Darcy reports. (Status)

 >> "NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas" is savoring its first win in the 25-54 demo versus ABC's "World News Tonight with David Muir." (TheWrap)

 >> NBCUniversal's Super Bowl inventory "is already climbing to $8 million for a 30-second unit," Bill Bradley reports. (Adweek)

 >> The Dallas Morning News, family controlled since 1885, is being sold to Hearst, "which also owns newspapers and their digital sites in the state’s three other largest markets — Houston, San Antonio and Austin." (Poynter)

 >> "Don Lemon's lawsuit against Elon Musk and his social media platform X will be allowed to go to trial." (TheWrap)

Anyway, here's 'Wonderwall'

Photo agencies say they are boycotting "the rest of the Oasis reunion tour, including the first 'homecoming' gig in Manchester on Friday, over restrictions imposed on how newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasters and digital publishers can use pictures from the gigs," The Guardian's Mark Sweney reports. "The band’s management has told photo agencies and publishers that they own the rights to shots taken at the concerts for just a year, and then they will lose ownership of the images for any future use..."

Larry David returns to HBO

"President and Mrs. Obama wanted to honor America's 250th anniversary and celebrate the unique history of our nation on this special occasion. … But then Larry David called."

That's the brilliant logline for David's new six-part sketch comedy series about American history that the Obamas are executive producing. The "Curb" reunion of sorts will be coming out on HBO next year...

Entertainment odds and ends

 >> "Saving a studio? This looks like a job for Superman!" Check out Ben Fritz's latest. (WSJ)

 >> YouTube is removing its "single, all-encompassing list for trending content" in favor of category-specific charts. (TechCrunch)

 >> Justin Bieber's long-awaited seventh album is coming out today. (THR)

 >> The first four episodes of "The Paper" will hit Peacock on September 4. (Deadline)

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here. Hope you have a great weekend!