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More than half of Americans now use a chatbot, with an increasing number of people replacing search engines with large language model (LLM)-powered chat queries to navigate the web and find answers. In general, the quality of these outputs is improving as the underlying models get better. However, the challenge of processing so much information means AI models sometimes misfire, hallucinating detailsincluding website URLs. One analysis of 18,000 landing page visits from ChatGPT found that the AI system included the wrong URL in roughly one out of every 33 links. Sometimes, the mistake is just a single letter off; other times, the URL is entirely fabricated. The result is that website hosts are beginning to adapt, trying to capture this traffic and redirect it to the intended target. From designing new 404 error pages that explain what may have gone wrong and offer contextual links, to creating on-the-fly contentoften with the help of AI tools themselvesvarious strategies are being deployed. These efforts arent quite AI engine optimization, the anticipated successor to traditional search engine optimization (SEO), but they reflect a growing urgency as users shift from Google searches to chatbot interactions. They’re an attempt to acknowledge and improve the experience of those who land on websites via AI hallucinations or errors. Jack Arturo, who runs WP Fusion, a WordPress plug-in, has noticed the impact of artificial intelligence on traffic to his site. Data shared with Fast Company shows that in September 2024, ChatGPT was responsible for less than 0.5% of his referral traffic. A year ago, it didnt really exist as a referrer, he explains. But if we go for the last 30 days, its number threewell, actually, really number two, after Google, because these are direct visits, he says. Most of the AI chatbot traffic Arturo receives is directed to live pages. But in line with broader trends, about three out of every 100 links are broken. Until recently, those users landed on WP Fusions standard 404 page, similar to many others that have existed on the web for decades. It informs visitors that something went wrong and the page cant be found, suggesting they use the on-site search tool to locate what theyre looking for. Still, it seemed like a missed opportunity to auto-redirect a chatbot-referred visitor to something more relevant than a generic Ooops message. To address that, Arturo built an AI-powered system that generates content for nonexistent pages that users were sent to. We know what they’re looking for based on the title, Arturo explains. Why not just generate something for them? The system took only about an hour to set up, but Arturo believes the time was well spent and expects future enhancements will be, too. We see the traffic increasing consistently from those sources, he says. I think it’s worth spending some time and getting it right, and then we’ve open-sourced it, so ideally, other people would contribute. SEO experts agree that website owners will need to adapt as AI chatbots become more embedded in everyday browsing. LLMs have a tendency to hallucinate URLs that dont exist, so if the user clicks on them, they will land on your 404 page, says SEO expert Lily Ray. This makes it important for site owners to rethink how 404 pages function and to guide users toward the content they were originally seeking. The best way to provide an optimal UX [user experience] on 404 pages is to provide messaging about the content not being found and include links to important pages on the site, says Ray, who also suggests incorporating standard site navigation into the 404 page template. Arturo, for his part, acknowledges this is yet another case of AI systems creating new challenges for those not involved in their development. It would be nice if it sent them to the correct page, he says. But he adds that even AI companies may not fully understand how their models behave and may not be able to fix the issue right away. Until they fix itif they can fix itwe just have to kind of adapt and work around it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Janet Feldman spent 20 years working in footwear. As VP of her family’s business, she flew to Asia, supervised factory operations, and negotiated with suppliers. Then her father had a stroke, and her life took a twist. All of his life, Feldman’s father had been staunchly independent. Now, he struggled to get get up from a chair without a helping hand. Feldman bought all of the lift recliners she could find on the market. These chairs were designed to help people transition between sitting and standing by tilting their entire bodies forward, but none of them fit the bill. Some were monstrously big. Others were plain ugly. Every single one of them reclined in such a way that her father slid out of it when he reclined. Then Feldman came to a resolve. “Finally, I said, you know what? I’ll make my own chair,” she recalls. Feldman saw a gap in the market for a chair that performs better than any other lift chairand looks good while doing it. “I wanted to have a beautiful chair that anybody would be proud to have in the living room. She left her family business, and in 2014, started her own company, called Assistance With Elegance. Ten years, eight patents, and a pandemic later, she is now launching her company’s first product: the Awe chair. While other lift chairs push up from the floor, the Awe chair never leaves the ground. The only thing that lifts is the seat itself, which makes for a much more elegant experience. To prevent anyone from sliding out, the chair comes with an ingenious footrest that glides out as the chair reclines and scoops up your feet into place. It took 10 years to make, and two years to figure out the footrest alone. Its cost is $10,000. A chair for the “silver tsunami” When Feldman became her father’s caregiver, she noticed that people, including doctors, started to look at her instead of him. “Old people, they’re invisible,” she told me. “Nobody wants to look at old people because nobody wants to be old, and it’s sad to look at what we’re all going to be.” It’s high time we started looking, because 73 million Americans, or one-quarter of the U.S. population today, is between 60 and 78 years old. By 2035, the Census Bureau estimates that older adults will outnumber American minors. The so-called silver tsunami is projected to fuel an economic boom: By 2050, people over 50 are projected to generate more than $28trillion globally. And yet, the elderly are still largely left out of design meetings. They’re seldom the target audience for new product launches. Over the past few years, the tide has been turning, albeit slowly. Independent designers like Sarah Hossli and Lanzavecchia + Wai have each designed their own version of a chair that helps the elderly get up with dignity and grace. More broadly, Remsen makes pill containers that look like jewelry boxes. Boom Home Medical makes pastel-colored bedside urinals that look like flower vases. Can Go specializes in high-tech smart canes with GPS and activity tracking, an integrated flashlight, and cellular data for emergency phone calls. The Awe chair sits within this ecosystem, and Feldman hopes to keep expanding the offerings. “We do realize that not everybody’s going to like a club chair. Some people might want much more modern designs,” she says. “It was so hard to do just this, that we figured we’d start really small and focused.” From the dreamworld to reality The look and feel of the Awe chair quite literally came to Feldman in a dream: “I wanted an old-style club chair that your grandfather would sit in,” she remembers. Brown, crinkly, straight from 1929, but with a modern takeand, of course, the technology to go with it. The chair comes in two sizes and seven colors, including midnight blue, crimson red, and emerald green. For now, it is available directly to customers via the company’s website; the team is also hoping to partner with high-end assisted living facilities, airport lounges, and even golf clubs. Feldman isn’t a designer, so she surrounded herself well. The chair was designed in collaboration with Jessica Banks, a robotics expert who runs a studio in Brooklyn, New York, that focuses on robotics and furniture design. It was engineered in Germany, with motors from China, and handcrafted in North Carolina, with leathers from Italy. Feldman declined to share how much it cost her to bring it to market, in part “because it’s still so shocking to me,” she says, noting she is now selling her house in West Hampton to replenish the coffers. Earlier this month, I went out to the company’s offices in SoHo to try it out. As the seat gently lifted me, I thought of my grandfather, whose weakened arms could no longer push him up from his old armchair. As the chair gently lowered me back down, I thought of the thud he would make when he sat back down, letting gravity do the work his knees no longer could. Of the four people who were at the office that day, three of them had experienced a similar moment with their parents or grandparents. “It’s such a common experience,” Feldman said. Every other touchpoint was carefully thought through. The edges of the front of the armrests are slightly recessed, which provides an extra handgrip when getting up. A cupholder is built straight into the armrest. A side pocket lets you store glasses or a book. Of the chairs Feldman’s father tried, all had pockets that were too far down to reach. “We just raised the pocket,” she says. “All you have to do is look at how people use things.” One of Feldman’s biggest pet peeves with other chairs was the lack of a footrest to stop people from sliding outbut adding one turned out to be more challenging than expected. Her team cycled through factories in Michigan and Florida that make airline chairs or theater chairs, but they couldn’t build the right mechanism. The German factory she ended up partnering with went bankrupt twice before resuming business. Finally, they found a way to coordinate the reclining flap and the footrest so that the footrest slides out until the two meet to form a “T.” A safety curtain at the bottom prevents small pets or children from crawling under. These features are almost enough to make you forget about the sticker shock. t $10,000, the Awe chair is almost 10 times more expensive than the average lift recliner in the U.S., which is between $700 and $1,500. Feldman is sensitive to the price tag and hopes to follow through with a more affordable line that’s “maybe not made in Germany, maybe not using Italian leathers.” She also knows that her target audienceretired boomershas a lot more disposable income than the average working American. “I know it’s a very high price. But for now, we feel like it’s such a beautiful, special chair.”
Category:
E-Commerce
A recent survey by online résumé builder ResumeHelp found that 60% of millennials and 58% of Gen Z employees say they sometimes or frequently talk about politics at work. In contrast, only 41% of Gen X and 40% of boomers do the same. In short, the generational divide is stark. But this isnt just about politicsits about identity, inclusion, and the evolving role of work in peoples lives. For many in Gen Z, work isnt just about a paycheck; its a platform. Its where they spend the majority of their waking hours. They want to be seen, heard, and valuednot just for their productivity, but for their principles. I asked my 29-year-old son, Ryan, and a few of his friends why political conversations feel so natural at work. Here’s what I heard: Theyve grown up in a world where expressing opinions online is second nature. They’re passionate about climate change, racial justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and economic fairness. They are deeply concerned about increasing war and violence (including political violence). They feel disappointed by political leaders on both sidesand want meaningful dialogue. They believe that silence can be dangerous, and dialogue is the way forward. And most critically, theyre anxious about their future and want to feel empowered in it. Why political talk feels so riskyand so necessary The workplace reality, of course, is more complicated. In MIT Sloan Management Review, Michael Platt and Morela Hernandez explain that political discussions become polarizing for three key reasons: Politics feel moral, not just rational. Political views are often experienced as moral truths, processed through emotion rather than logic. Political beliefs become identity markers. Once moralized, political stances become deeply tied to ones sense of self-worth and moral character. People form moral tribes at work. Individuals tend to seek validation by clustering with like-minded colleaguescreating ideological silos that fuel tension and division. These dynamics contribute to an increasingly hostile work environment. What should be a well-tuned chorus has descended into a discordant melee, often incivil or toxic. Besides making the workday an unpleasant source of stress and even violence, this fracturing can negatively impact a firms productivity and culture. For example, a SHRM survey reports that it takes up to 30 minutes for an employee to resume productive activity following a workplace conflict. Now consider that reported uncivil acts in U.S. workplaces increased to more than 200 million per day following a presidential debate in 2024, per SHRM, and the magnitude of the problem becomes clear. Incivility also has a negative effect on corporate culture and morale. If ignored or handled clumsily, internal conflict can erode a companys identityand even damage its reputationfrom within. These dangers cant be laid at the feet of Gen Z alone: its a problem decades in the making. Today, nearly every human action appears to have been politicized, and we all have a responsibility to address this issue. Many wear their political sympathies on their sleeves, supporting certain politicians and policies in an attempt to capture market share among their target demographic. Atop that, the outcome of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that endowed businesses with the rights of people, now enables campaign contributions to be considered a protected form of speech. Knowing all this, it would be strange if the workplacewhere people spend most of their timewasn’t also drawn into the days political conflicts and culture wars. Not surprisingly, a recent survey by Indeed found that 60%of workers overall would favor working for companies with politically sympathetic leadership. Already, 42% of respondents were working for companies aligned with a single party. These numbers may be more stark among recent college graduates, but its clear that the blurred role of politics in the office is already well-established. A teachable moment for leadership Many leaders worry that political conversations will fracture teams or harm productivity. And yes, boundaries matter. But what if this moment isnt just a challenge, but a profound opportunity? The truth is that empathy is not a soft virtueits a strategic one. Empathy, when practiced with consistency and courage, builds trust. And trust is the foundation of any thriving workplace. This is our chance to cultivate the next generation of leaders. Those who will: Understand that disagreement is not a threat to unity, but a path toward it. Learn to listen across ideological and experiential divides. Develop the skills to speak with curiosity, clarity, and respect. Embrace dialogue as a tool for problem-solvingnot conflict. This is how we grow, not just as professionals, but as citizens. And we dont have to do it alone. Grassroots organizations like Braver Angels, Listen First Project, US United, Stand Together, More in Common, Convergence, Living Room Conversations, and Starts With Us offer free, practical tools for fostering civil discourse. As efforts to create multicultural workplaces that leverage rather than suppress diversity have demonstrated, proactive leadership and pragmatic processes are an essential combination. How leaders can respond to politics in the workplacewith grace This isnt about encouraging political debate, its about not silencing it out of fear. Leaders dont have to take sides. In fact, they should avoid taking sides. But they do have an obligation to set the tone. Here’s how: Affirm respect as a ground rule. Accept that employees will have differences, but make it clear that political discussions must remain respectful. No personal attacks. No shaming. No exclusion. Offer dialogue training. Provide employees with tools and workshops that teach active listening, civil disagreement, and conflict navigation. Model thoughtful engagement. Leaders dont need to be apoliticalbut they should be intentional. Share your views with humility, and create space for others to do the same. Create safe spacesnot echo chambers. Welcome diverse viewpoints across the spectrum. Curiosity is contagious. Remember the bigger picture. Helping employees engage across differences doesnt just protect moraleit strengthens democracy. We may live in divided times. But our workplaces dont have to mirror that division. Instead, they can model something better. Political conversations, when approached with care, can be the crucible in which better citizensand better leadersare forged. Lets ot waste this moment. Lets teach the next generation not just how to workbut how to listen, engage, and lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
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