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Lufthansa announced on Monday it plans to cut thousands of workers as it aims to increase profitability and efficiency, in part by relying more heavily on artificial intelligence. The airline group said it will eliminate a total of 4,000 jobs worldwide by 2030, the majority of which will be in Germanywith a focus on administration roles, not operational ones. “The Lufthansa Group is reviewing which activities will no longer be necessary in the future, for example due to duplication of work,” the company said in a statement. “In particular, the profound changes brought about by digitalization and the increased use of AI will lead to greater efficiency in many areas and processes.” (The Lufthansa Group includes Germany’s Lufthansa, in addition to Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Brussels Airlines, and ITA Airways, the successor to Alitalia.) That restructuring will include the largest fleet modernization in the company’s history. To that end, the Lufthansa Group expects to add more than 230 new aircraft by 2030, including 100 long-haul aircraft. The Cologne-based German carrier said it plans to invest in the growth of its core business, expanding locations and its international presence, including in Canada and Portugal. It also plans to extend its digital business models, as part of its Ambition 2030 program. The changes are expected to significantly increase revenue and profit by 2030. The airline also set new financial targets for 2028 to 2030, saying it expects its adjusted operating margin to reach 8-10% and over 2.5 billion euros in adjusted free cash flow per year. Lufthansa, like a number of companies including Klarna, Duolingo, and Salesforce, has recently turned to AI. Some of those companies even instituted AI-first workplaces as a way of slashing workforces toward greater profitabilitybut not without some missteps. According to a recent Nexford University survey, in the past year, around 65% of companies conducted layoffs, with 68% of companies identifying cost-cutting as the culprit, and 27% citing AI adoption. Lufthansa financials Lufthansa reported strong Q2 2025 results with considerable year-on-year growth, including a 27% increase in its operating profit compared to 2024, and a 3% increase in revenue (from 10 billion to 10.3 billion). Last year, Lufthansa increased its revenue by six percent year-on-year to EUR 37.6 billion as it offered more flights, making it the highest revenue in its history. However, the operating profit (adjusted EBIT) was EUR 1.6 billion, compared with EUR 2.7 billion the previous year, as the airline faced strikes and higher global costs. Lufthansa (Deutsche Lufthansa AG), which is traded under the stock ticker LHA on the Xetra and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges, closed up slightly on Monday.
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Electronic Arts has announced plans to go private in what will be the largest leveraged buyout in history. The $55 billion purchase of the entertainment giant behind franchises that include Madden NFL and Battlefield is set to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) will be, by far, the majority investor in EA, one of the largest third-party publishers of video games. Silver Lake and Affinity Partners (whose CEO is Donald Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner) will own minority interests. CEO Andrew Wilson will continue to head EA. The all-cash deal calls for a buyout of EA stock at a price of $210 per share. The company was trading at $202 per share Monday afternoon. On Thursday, before The Wall Street Journal reported a buyout was imminent, shares were trading at roughly $171. EA is a longtime stalwart in the video game industry, but like many publishers of late, it has been somewhat stalled financially as the gaming boom of the pandemic has slowed considerably. In 2022, EA reported $7.2 billion in revenues. The following year, it saw an increase to $7.6 billion, and in 2024 the figure was $7.4 billion. The stock has also lagged far behind the S&P 500’s gains. Was EA sold for too little? While the industry has been in the midst of a consolidation trend, both in terms of buyouts and revenues, some analysts think EA might have been undervalued in this deal. “While the $210 per share take-out price represents a substantial premium to EAs unaffected trading levels, we continue to believe the transaction undervalues EAs long-term earnings power,” wrote the Benchmark Co.’s Mike Hickey in a note to investors. “We value EA at $250 per share, with a best-case path to $300 if Battlefield evolves into the market share leader.” The leveraged buyout, Hickey argues, transfers what he expects will be a “franchise-defining growth cycle” to new owners before current shareholders can realize those gains. “In our view, this transaction is a self-serving, opportunistic move by management and the investor group,” he wrote. Wedbush Securities’ Alicia Reese didn’t go quite so far as Hickey, but she did point out that the purchase price (about 20 times the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA) was a lower multiplier than the Activision deal (which worked out to 21.5 times) and roughly on par with the industry average over the last five years of 19.8 times. EA, with its rich catalog of intellectual property (IP), would presumably be able to command a higher multiple. Boon for Riyadh Assuming the deal closes, the buyout will be a victory for the Saudi Arabia PIF, which has been expanding its interests in the video game world in recent years. The group holds stakes in several well-known publishers. Prior to Monday’s deal, the PIF owned roughly 10% of EA’s shares. It also holds 6.2% of Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive Software and 4.2% of Nintendo. This spring, the PIF purchased Niantic, maker of Pokémon Go, for $3.5 billion and also paid $4.9 billion for Scopely, the maker of mobile gaming hit Monopoly Go. The deal comes as criticism continues about the Saudi Royal family’s record of human rights abuses. While the $55 deal is expected to set a record as far as leveraged buyouts (CNBC reports EA has 45 days to solicit a better offer, though the deal was unanimously approved by the company’s board), it still falls short of an overall industry record. Microsoft’s $69 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard remains the industry’s most expensive acquisition to date. Microsoft faced several hurdles from regulators in the U.S. and U.K. as it attempted to close that purchase. The Microsoft/Activision deal closed in 2023. In July of this year, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 9,100 workers, with many of those cuts coming in the gaming division. That followed an additional 6,000 jobs lost in May of this year.
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Here he is, depicted at six months in office, chiseled and brawny, as mighty as the very nation. Here he is as a Star Wars Jedi wielding a patriot-red lightsaber, rescuing our galaxy from the forces of evil. Here he is taking over Gaza, transforming the strip into a luxury resort complete with a golden effigy of himself. You can be anything, perhaps you were told growing up. Doctor. Astronaut. Maybe, one day, the president. But even the chief executive of the United States, the free worlds leader, frames himself as something more epic as someone not entirely himself. On the social media accounts of Donald Trump and his second-term administration, a new, less official image of the president is emerging bit by bit: one generated artificially. A sign of the times, certainly when the appeal of reimagining yourself with artificial intelligence has trickled up from us everyday citizens. Bored with your selfies? Join a viral trend: Theres an image generator or a chatbot that can turn you into a Renaissance-style painting, a Studio Ghibli character, or an action figure with box art and accessories. Artificial imagery isnt new for Trump, an early target of AI-generated simulacra who later exploited the technology during his 2024 campaign for the presidency. It works both ways, the Republican president said of AI-generated content at a news conference earlier this month. If something happens thats really bad, maybe Ill have to just blame AI. The AI images of Trump posted by him and his team opt for the alternative not deceptive but self-evident in their fictitiousness. Pope Francis dies, and Trump jokes to reporters that hed like to be pope. A week later, he is, but in an AI-generated image that he posts, reposted by the White House. Trump likens himself to a king in a Truth Social post in February, and AI makes him one in an X post by the White House less than an hour later. The artifice arrives in Trumps usual style brassy, unabashed, attention-grabbing and squares with his social media teams heavy meme posting, which it has promised to continue. The administrations official social media accounts have grown by more than 16 million new followers across platforms since Inauguration Day, a White House official told NBC News. The White House recognizes the appeal. In July, it posted to its X account: Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we cant post banger memes. Attached to the post, a photo of a sign on the White House lawn parodying the naysayers: oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHis? Behind the commander in chiefs desire to craft an AI self not itself uncommon an infantry of official communications channels stands at his ready. And we, the people, cant help but tune in. Feelings dont care about your facts Like so much on the internet these days, Trumps AI portraits are primed for people to react, says Evan Cornog, a political historian and author of The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush. By the time youve seen it, youve understood it. And thats, of course, the efficacy, Cornog said. It requires no effort, either for the person generating it, but particularly for the person consuming it. The expressive power of political imagery, regardless of the truth of its message, has long been understood by politicians and their detractors. President William Henry Harrisons log cabin and hard cider campaign symbols, representing him as a man of the people, helped him win the election of 1840. Thirty years later, political cartoonist Thomas Nast would turn public opinion against William Marcy Boss Tweed with his scathing portrayals of the politician, whom he depicted satirically overweight from greed. Lets stop those damned pictures! Tweed once said, or so the story goes. The decades since witnessed the birth of photo, film, TV, the internet, computer printers, image-editing software and digital screens that shrank until they could fit in our pockets, making it increasingly easy to create and disseminate and manipulate imagery. By contrast, todays generative AI technology offers greater realism, functionality and accessibility to content creation than ever before, says AI expert Henry Ajder. Not to mention, of course, a capacity for endless automated possibility. Past presidents had to actually have fought in a war to run as a war hero, Cornog says. Now, they can just generate an image of themselves as one. On a horse or no, a battlefield. With an American flag waving behind him and an eagle soaring. The AI images of Trump shared by him and his administration chase a similarly heroic vision of the president. Potency his and the countrys is a consistent theme, Cornog added. Indeed, generative AI allows for an exposure of perhaps uncomfortably intimate inner worlds as people use such technology to illustrate and communicate their fantasy lives or cartoonish versions of themselves, says Mitchell Stephens, author of The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word. But it can just as easily fulfill an inverse desire: to depict or reinforce a subjective concept of reality. Quite a lot of people are sharing AI-generated content, which is clearly fake but is almost seen as a revelatory kind of representation of someone, Ajder said. This content feeds a mentality that mutters, We all know theyre really like this. And so, even if people know its fake, Ajder said, they still see it as kind of reflecting and satisfying a kind of truth their truth about what the world is like. Commenters take up the mantle The lack of subtlety in Trumps AI images of himself helps explain their consistent virality. Commenters can be found lamenting the demise of presidential decorum (I never thought Id see the day when the White House is just a joke. This is so embarrassing.) or relishing those very reactions (Watching the left explode over this has been a treat.). Other responses, even from the presidents base, remain unconvinced (as one X user griped under the White House post of Trump as pope: I voted for you, but this is weird and creepy. More mass deportations and less of whatever this is.). But that is tradition for Trump, who finds no trouble cashing the currency of our attention economy: Whether you cracked a smile or clutched your pearls, he still made you look. In his first administration, he used Twitter in a way no president had, said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, an organization that facilitates the transition between presidents. What they do in this administration is taking it further, as youve had an increase in what can be done online. Or, as one Reddit user referred to the president: Troll in Chief. Does Trump really think he should be pope? Does the White House really think him a king? Accuracy isnt the point, not for a man who frequently arbitrates what counts as truth. Trump’s use of AI sticks to a familiar recipe for bait: crude comedy sprinkled with wishful thinking. Its fine, Trump said in May, when asked whether the AI-generated post of him as pope diminished the substance of the official White House account. Have to have a little fun, dont you? Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira, Associated Press
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