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Tech News
A contributor for Entrepreneur argues that small business owners who initially manage marketing themselves often hit a ceiling as their companies grow and technical demands multiply. The piece describes how tasks like website maintenance, SEO, video editing and social scheduling can overwhelm a single in-house coordinator, leaving no time for strategy or new campaigns.
E.l.f. Beauty's chief technology and AI officer Ekta Chopra has introduced an AI system called E.l.fluencer that helps community managers respond to the huge volume of comments the brand receives on TikTok and Instagram. The tool was trained on the company's stylebook and years of past human-written replies, allowing it to autogenerate answers to common shopper questions about product launches, comparisons, and suitability for different skin or hair types.
A comedian posted a viral joke mocking the 24 boxes required to assemble a Lovesac couch, and the furniture company tried to capitalize on the moment with its own social media response. Instead of landing well, Lovesac's reply drew criticism online, with many users viewing the brand's attempt at humor as tone-deaf or poorly executed. The incident has become a case study in how brands can misfire when trying to jump on viral trends.
X users have reported receiving unsolicited password reset emails following the rollout of the platform's new X Money payment service. X engineer Mridul Singhai confirmed the company is investigating the surge of reset requests, stating no evidence of actual account breaches has been found so far.
California lawmakers passed AB 1709, which would bar platforms from offering recommendation algorithms and basic follow/like features to users under 16 starting in January. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking Governor Gavin Newsom to veto the bill, arguing it effectively locks minors out of most modern digital services by banning tools essential to how those platforms function.
Federal investigators say Daejon Labrayae Love, posing as an injured San Francisco 49ers receiver or a wealthy Swiss developer, and 18-year-old accomplice Taylor Jamie Chan, who claimed to be his financial advisor, met victims on dating apps and convinced them to invest in fake opportunities. The FBI alleges the two swindled at least 26 women across four states out of roughly $1.3 million, with some victims taking out loans to fund the fake investments. When suspicious victims searched online, Google's AI Overviews reportedly echoed Love's fabricated social media claims, lending false credibility to his identity.
A commentary piece, drawing on Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, weighs evidence on both sides of the question of whether today's kids are better or worse off than previous generations. It notes gains such as more parental time, less substance abuse, fewer car deaths, and greater tolerance for minorities, alongside concerns like heavy phone use, isolation, less sleep and reading, and rising anxiety, depression and suicide rates among teens, especially girls. The author frames this as an open question worth academic examination rather than settling on one conclusion.
Walmart has released a purse styled after its popular $5.97 rotisserie chicken, a nod to the deli item's huge social media following. The retailer said more than 15,000 mentions of the chicken online helped push it to create the novelty accessory. The company kept the item's signature price point attached to the promotion as a marketing hook.
Thryv's 2026 AI and Small Business Adoption Survey found that AI adoption among small businesses rose from 55% to 66% year over year, with 70% reporting revenue gains and 92% saying it saves time. However, 70% of respondents said they still need more AI training, even though 86% describe themselves as comfortable using the tools.
Meta reached a settlement with attorneys general from 47 states who had sued the company for allegedly manipulating children's attention through its algorithms. The deal could cost Meta as much as $17 billion, though the company admitted no wrongdoing, and the Wall Street Journal reported it spent over $2 billion on legal defense in a single quarter of 2026 alone.
A Washington Post review found that transcripts of conversations with ChatGPT and similar chatbots have been used as evidence in a dozen public court cases over the past two years, obtained through phone searches, subpoenas or discovery. In one lawsuit against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube over alleged social media addiction, defense lawyers accessed the teenage plaintiff's ChatGPT history, including messages about a proposed settlement; the case was later settled or dropped without the transcripts affecting the outcome.
A research paper compiles evidence that widespread adoption of large language models is homogenizing written language, drawing on decades of linguistics and computational research into personality, gender, regional and cultural markers in text. The authors argue that as LLMs become the dominant tool for writing assistance, they risk flattening distinctive dialects, sociolects and individual voice patterns documented in prior sociolinguistic studies.