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On a scorching hot Saturday in San Antonio, dozens of teachers traded a day off for a glimpse of the future. The topic of the day’s workshop: enhancing instruction with artificial intelligence.After marveling as AI graded classwork instantly and turned lesson plans into podcasts or online storybooks, one high school English teacher raised a concern that was on the minds of many: “Are we going to be replaced with AI?”That remains to be seen. But for the nation’s 4 million teachers to stay relevant and help students use the technology wisely, teachers unions have forged an unlikely partnership with the world’s largest technology companies. The two groups don’t always see eye to eye but say they share a common goal: training the future workforce of America.Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are providing millions of dollars for AI training to the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union. In exchange, the tech companies have an opportunity to make inroads into schools and win over students in the race for AI dominance.AFT President Randi Weingarten said skepticism guided her negotiations, but the tech industry has something schools lack: deep pockets.“There is no one else who is helping us with this. That’s why we felt we needed to work with the largest corporations in the world,” Weingarten said. “We went to them they didn’t come to us.”Weingarten first met with Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith in 2023 to discuss a partnership. She later reached out to OpenAI to pursue an “agnostic” approach that means any company’s AI tools could be used in a training session.Under the arrangement announced in July, Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million to AFT over five years. OpenAI is providing $8 million in funding and $2 million in technical resources, and Anthropic has offered $500,000. Tech money will build an AI training hub for teachers With the money, AFT is planning to build an AI training hub in New York City that will offer virtual and in-person workshops for teachers. The goal is to open at least two more hubs and train 400,000 teachers over the next five years.The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, announced its own partnership with Microsoft last month. The company has provided a $325,000 grant to help the NEA develop AI trainings in the form of “microcredentials” online trainings open to the union’s 3 million members, said Daaiyah Bilal, NEA’s senior director of education policy. The goal is to train at least 10,000 members this school year.“We tailored our partnership very surgically,” Bilal said. “We are very mindful of what a technology company stands to gain by spreading information about the products they develop.”Both unions set similar terms: Educators, not the private funders, would design and lead trainings that include AI tools from multiple companies. The unions own the intellectual property for the trainings, which cover safety and privacy concerns alongside AI skills.The Trump administration has encouraged the private investment, recently creating an AI Education Task Force as part of an effort to achieve “global dominance in artificial intelligence.” The federal government urged tech companies and other organizations to foot the bill. So far, more than 100 companies have signed up.Tech companies see opportunities in education beyond training teachers. Microsoft unveiled a $4 billion initiative for AI training, research and the gifting of its AI tools to teachers and students. It includes the AFT grant and a program that will give all school districts and community colleges in Washington, Microsoft’s home state, free access to Microsoft CoPilot tools. Google says it will commit $1 billion for AI education and job training programs, including free access to its Gemini for Education platform for U.S. high schools.Several recent studies have found that AI use in schools is rapidly increasing but training and guidance are lagging.The industry offers resources that can help scale AI literacy efforts quickly. But educators should ensure any partnership focuses on what’s best for teachers and students, said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education.“These are private initiatives, and they are run by companies that have a stake,” Lake said.Microsoft’s Brad Smith agrees that teachers should have a “healthy dose of skepticism” about the role of tech companies.“While it’s easy to see the benefits right now, we should always be mindful of the potential for unintended consequences,” Smith said in an interview, pointing to concerns such as AI’s possible impact on critical thinking. “We have to be careful. It’s early days.” Teachers see new possibilities At the San Antonio AFT training, about 50 educators turned up for the three-hour workshop for teachers in the Northside Independent School District. It is the city’s largest, employing about 7,000 teachers.The day started with a pep talk.“We all know, when we talk about AI, teachers say, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that,'” trainer Kathleen Torregrossa told the room. “But we are preparing kids for the future. That is our primary job. And AI, like it or not, is part of our world.”Attendees generated lesson plans using ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft CoPilot and two AI tools designed for schools, Khanmingo and Colorín Colorado.Gabriela Aguirre, a 1st grade dual language teacher, repeatedly used the word “amazing” to describe what she saw.“It can save you so much time,” she said, and add visual flair to lessons. She walked away with a plan to use AI tools to make illustrated flashcards in English and Spanish to teach vocabulary.“With all the video games, the cellphones you have to compete against, the kids are always saying, ‘I’m bored.’ Everything is boring,” Aguirre said. “If you can find ways to engage them with new technology, you’ve just got to do that.”Middle school teacher Celeste Simone said there is no turning back to how she taught before.As a teacher for English language learners, Simone can now ask AI tools to generate pictures alongside vocabulary words and create illustrated storybooks that use students’ names as characters. She can take a difficult reading passage and ask a chatbot to translate it into Spanish, Pashto or other languages. And she can ask AI to rewrite difficult passages at any grade level to match her students’ reading levels. All in a matter of seconds.“I can give my students access to things that never existed before,” Simone said. “As a teacher, once you’ve used it and see how helpful it is, I don’t think I could go back to the way I did things before.” The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. _This story was first published on Oct 17, 2025. It was re-published on Oct. 20, 2025, to show Brad Smith is the president and vice chairman of Microsoft, not the CEO. Jocelyn Gecker, AP Education Writer
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Can a UX change bring traffic back to X? The social network previously known as Twitter is hoping an update to its in-app browser will boost links on the timeline and lure back publishers and creators who’ve grown ambivalent to a site that doesn’t drive clicks like it used to. X head of product Nikita Bier wrote in a post Sunday that a new link experience that will first be tested out on iOS is intended to “make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.” Currently, users who click links on X are taken to an in-app browser that takes up the full screen. Under the update, which Bier shared in a demo video, clicking on a link instead collapses the post’s engagement bar to the bottom of the screen, letting users comment, repost, like, or save from inside the story as they scroll and read. We're testing a new link experience, starting on iOS — to make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and pic.twitter.com/oWraLpPwji— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) October 19, 2025 From the looks of it, it’s a more seamless experience that better integrates links into the larger X experience rather than the friction that comes from opening a link in a slow-loading browser. The change could encourage more engagement for posts with links, which in turn would surface more links on the timeline. “For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach,” Bier wrote. “This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn’t get a clear signal whether the content is any good.” The announcement comes amid wider changes at X. Owner Elon Musk also announced Sunday that the site’s recommendations are “evolving very rapidly” and within four to six weeks, xAIs Grok system “will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content theyre most likely to find interesting.” While links may be buried in X’s timeline today, the right algorithm tweaks and UX changes could better surface posts with links and make the site more friendly for creators and publishers. Bier denied that links are de-boosted on X’s timeline now, but said they do “have lower engagement and we are trying to fix that.” “If youre a writer or journalist who left X in the last couple years, coming back could be the biggest arbitrage opportunity of your career,” he wrote. Once the online water cooler of digital media, X now drives less referral traffic for publishers than it previously did, while X’s own usage data released earlier this year suggests a decline in time spent on the app. Outlets like PBS, NPR, and The Guardian have stopped posting there altogether, as news influencers and journalists have turned to alternatives like Bluesky, Substack, LinkedIn, and Threads to build their online audiences. As social media companies adapt to a changing landscape, UX and UI changes can help nudge users towards new behaviors (see Meta’s push into vertical video or upgrades to its DMs). For X, a change to the experience of clicking links and interacting with articles on its app could help make it more welcoming to the writers and readers who powered Twitter in its heyday.
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Love it or hate it, iOS 26 brought the most radical software redesign to the iPhone in over a decade. The companys new design language, Liquid Glass, mimics how light in the real world warps and transforms when passing through physical glass. Many iPhone users find Liquid Glass refreshing, fun, and technically impressive. Detractors of the new design say Liquid Glasss myriad transparent toolbars and other UI elements, which let the content behind them bleed through, make iOS 26 harder to navigate than its predecessors. Regardless of where you stand, Liquid Glass isnt going away. Yet, if you fall into the latter camp and find the new design element distracting, youll be very happy with the next major update to iOS 26. Apple will soon let you tone down the design While iOS 26 shipped in September, that was just the first iteration of the software. Apple continues to develop the iPhones OS actively, and currently it is beta testing the next major update to the new operating system: iOS 26.1. Apple has been testing iOS 26.1 for weeks now, and yesterday, it released the fourth beta of the software. Hidden inside this beta was a new feature: a toggle to increase the opacity of Liquid Glass elements, giving them a less glassy and more frosted appearance. The option to make Liquid Glass appear more like frosted glass, which Apple calls tinted (versus clear), makes it much easier to see the outline of individual buttons on menu bars and other UI elements, while still letting some of the color from behind the UI elements bleed through. In short, the new option allows users to tone down the Liquid Glass look while still enjoying many of iOS 26’s redesigned benefits (9to5Mac has screenshots here of what the new “tinted Liquid Glass looks like). How to tone down Liquid Glass in iOS 26.1 Once you have iOS 26.1 on your iPhone, you can easily switch Liquid Glass from clear to tinted thanks to a new setting in the Settings app. To tone down your Liquid Glass elements: Open the Settings app in iOS 26.1. Tap Display and Brightness. Tap Liquid Glass. Tap the Tinted option. As Apple explains in a short message below the options, Choose your preferred look for Liquid Glass. Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath. Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast. It should be noted that the steps for toning down Liquid Glass may change by the time the final version of iOS 26.1 ships to the public, but as of iOS 26.1 beta 4, this is how you do it. When will iOS 26.1 be available? If you are an Apple developer or signed up to be an Apple public beta tester, you can download iOS 26.1 beta 4 right now. But if you want to wait for the official release, you wont need to wait long. Apple is likely to release iOS 26.1 to the public next week, perhaps as early as Monday, October 27. Once its released, any iPhone that can run iOS 26 will be able to tone down the transparency effects of Liquid Glass.
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