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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, Im focusing on the implications of OpenAIs official entry into the browser game with its ChatGPT Atlas. I also talk to Stanford HAIs James Landay about the AI industrys UX design challenges, and examine AI czar David Sackss recent X skirmish with Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. With OpenAIs ChatGPT Atlas, the AI browser war officially kicks off Using the internet with the help of an AI is a real thingand it became even more real Tuesday when OpenAI, the generative AI industrys de facto avatar, announced the release of its new ChatGPT Atlas browser. A new race has begun to reinvent the Chrome-style browser experience weve used for so long: The race to reinvent the browser around natural language AI. Think of Atlas as an extended workspace and set of features around ChatGPT, specialized for fetching, parsing, and organizing web content. For months, Ive been using the ChatGPT desktop app. I simply hit a keyboard shortcut, a small chat window appears toward the bottom of my screen, and I ask my question. When I click a source link within the answer, a new Chrome tab opens up behind the chat window. When talking to ChatGPT within Atlas, theres no need to open that new Chrome tabeverything opens within Atlas. The chatbot stays open on the right, so I can ask it questions about the web page Im viewing. OpenAI has some other ambitious ideas about how artificial intelligence can be used in browsing. Importantly, Atlas can leverage its memory of the users past browsing behavior so that it can more thoughtfully suggest ways of finding and organizing new data or web content. For example, it might remind the user of a specific piece of data they searched for within the same subject area at some point in the past. The user can control how much the browser remembers, OpenAI says. Atlas goes beyond fetching web content. It offers to act as the users agent, interacting with websites on the users behalf. This could mean planning a theater date (complete with dinner reservations, for example) or buying concert tickets when they become available. This kind of autonomous agent is something of a holy grail, both for AI labs trying to build enterprise (work) AI and companies building consumer AI. Ive heard numerous tech company executives talk as if agents are already advanced enough to make a big difference in business and personal life. Other execs and experts Ive spoken with say that the agent revolution will not happen this year, and maybe not even next year. Thats because the AI models behind the agents still arent good enough to reason through complex tasks. They also still cant process all the contextual information needed to safely complete high-stakes tasks involving real money (like all the small considerations involved in booking a plane ticket), influential AI researcher (and OpenAI cofounder) Andrej Karpathy points out in a recent podcast. There are other hurdles, too. An entire technology ecosystem must form to accommodate new AI agents, says Devi Parikh, co-CEO of the agentic AI company Yutori. The websites and services of today are built for human users, so agents must learn how to click buttons, scroll pages, and search menus. They might work more reliably if they could exchange data with a website or service via an application programming interface (API) or some other secure and standardized handshake. Because its so crucial that users trust these AI agents, she says, AI companies would be wise to err on the conservative side in talking about what AI agents can really do; giving users a bad first impression could damage trust and make them hesitant to rely on agents. While Atlas is getting lots of attention, Google has been (more quietly) upgrading its Chrome browser with AI. Just last month, the company added a spate of features that make its Gemini AI a bigger part of Chrome, saying that the browser is entering a new era powered by AI. Within Chrome, Gemini can summarize content, organize tabs, and ask questions about web pages. Googles new AI search function, now called AI Mode, shows up at the top of a wider range of searches and can also be called up using a keyboard shortcut. But Google is building these features onto an existing browser-slash-search tool. Thats very different from building an AI-first browser from scratch as OpenAI did. Its also true that Google has introduced the AI features in such an understated way that many users probably dont even know theyre there. (I saw the shortcut to AI Mode in Chromes search bar for the very first time Tuesday.) And Google is also freighted with a decades-old business model that knows how to make money from the traditional 10 blue links search results. So it has to be very careful about how and when it pushes Chrome users toward AI search, which represents a very different revenue model. At any rate, lots of AI talent and money will go into building a new way of using the internet in the coming months and years. Lets hope the end result is something that helps users more than exploits them. Stanfords Landay: AI labs need to invest more in product design Lots of people are using AI chatbots now, but the vast majority are free-tier users who employ the tools most basic features. They might be comfortable chatting with the AI about some personal matter, but less likely to use it to build a website. At work, they might be apt to look up a policy document, but less comfortable working with the tool to build a report or spreadsheet. The big challenge of designers within AI labs like OpenAI or Google is to build the user interface of AI tools in a way that invites people to use those deeper features, which can offer far greater rewards than the basic ones. But designing software products with UX thats approachable and easy to use may not be the forte of AI labs, says James Landay, a Stanford computer science and engineering professor who co-directs the universitys Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Landay, who specializes in human-computer interaction, consults for a number of tech companies in the Bay Area. A user interface could mean a piece of computer hardware or a software experience that mediates a humans interaction with an AI. Landay says one of the big challenges of building interfaces for tech products has been that its very hard to anticipate the broad set of use cases that people may have, and the user interfaces people might prefer for each of them. Even on the Zoom call I had with Landay, several interface otions are availablehe may prefer audio-only on a phone, while I may prefer a half-screen mode on my laptop. As for AI apps, a small chat window might be fine for some use cases, while others might call for voice interaction. Still others may need a UX built for viewing images or video. Landay says with AI, its unlikely that a dominant form of interface will emerge to muscle out other modes. People will likely want to interact with the technology in a variety of different wayssome old and some new. A slice of the consumer market may decide that the best way to use AI is within the lenses and earpieces of augmented reality glasses. Some may like the idea of an ambient AI in the home, always ready to offer intelligence at the sound of their name (HAL . . .). Landay says the big AI labs havent yet moved very far away from the chatbot interface. He says these companies employ people who are primarily interested in natural language AI, so they naturally favor a text-based interface. The AI companies have so far focused most of their energy on improving the models themselves, and relatively little on developing productive ways for humans to interact with the AI. OpenAIs engagement with the design guru Jony Ive is a sign that the company is at least aware of the need to develop a practical human interface for AI, and willing to invest in possible solutions, Landay says. Ive has indeed invented captivating entry points to mobile computing technology (iPhones and Apple Watches), but AI is another paradigm, and one that might not lend itself easily to an ideal piece of hardware or software UX. The David SacksReid Hoffman skirmish on X was mainly about Anthropic David Sacks, the former VC who now works as the AI czar in the Trump administration, and Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and big-time Democratic donor, got into a skirmish on X this week. It revealed some things about the politics of AI. On October 20, Hoffman started a thread: I want to state plainly: In all industries, especially in AI, its important to back the good guys. Anthropic is one of the good guys. Further down, Hoffman points out that othersincluding Microsoft, Google, and OpenAIare trying to deploy AI in a way that balances innovation and safety, and is enormously beneficial for society. He adds that some AI labs (he doesnt name names) are making decisions that disregard societal considerations, including some whose bots sometimes go full fascist. (Elon Musks Grok chatbot reportedly has praised Hitler, dabbled in Holocaust denialism, and ranted about white genocide in South Africa.)Whether it was the part about Anthropic or the dig on fascist bots is unclearbut Sacks was triggered. He clapped back: The leading funder of lawfare and dirty tricks against President Trump wants you to know that Anthropic is one of the good guys. Hoffman responded, charging that Sacks didnt read his full post, adding that its particularly rich that someone in the Trump administration would accuse someone else of lawfare and dirty tricks. The MAGA-fied Sacks naturally has no love for Hoffman, a major Democratic donor. But he also sees Anthropic as a political enemy. His response: The real issue is not research but rather Anthropics agenda to backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California. Anthropic supported Californias Senate Bill 53 (aka the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act), which Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law. Sacks seems to suggest, without citing evidence, that Anthropic is working to get similar laws passed in other states. Sacks also says that Anthropic opposed Trumps Big Beautiful [spending] Bill, the original version of which contained a 10-year moratorium on any new state-level AI regulationslanguage that was decisively voted out of the bill in the Senate before passage. More AI coverage from Fast Company: This is the worlds first vertical take-off AI-piloted fighter jet Ukraine reveals powerful sea drone with AI capabilities in the Black Sea Prince Harry, Meghan join open letter calling to ban the development of AI superintelligence Anthropics relationship with the U.S. government is getting complicated Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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Transparency comes up a lot with respect to the use of AI in journalism. There are obvious reasons for thisjournalism is all about bringing transparency to what happens in the world, after alland AI is a new thing that many people (rightly) view with skepticism. But that desire for transparency brings an opportunity to improve audience trust, something that’s in short supply lately. In fact, a recent report on the use of AI in news media from the Reuters Institute showed a pretty clear pattern of audiences’ trust declining the more AI was used in the journalistic process. Only 12% of people were comfortable with fully AI-generated content, increasing to 21% for mostly AI, 43% for mostly human, and a respectable (but, notably, not amazing) 62% for fully human content. The data points to a fairly obvious takeaway that, if trust is your goal (which in journalism, it certainly is), you should use less AI, not more. But we’re actually seeing precisely the opposite trend: Newsrooms worldwide are ramping up AI operations, with most major outlets, including The New York Times, using it in their process. Still others are using it to assist in creating content. ESPN, Fortune, and CoinDesk are just three examples of major, respected outlets leveraging AI to help write their articles. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} Flipping the skepticism of AI What’s going on? Sure, there are industry pressures to incorporate AI, but the data suggests that you might sacrifice trust with your audience. That’s a difficult problem, but it can be mitigated by prioritizing transparency. The data from the Reuters report creates a clear trend line, but it’s important to keep in mind the question was generic, asking about comfort levels regarding “AI- and human-led news,” and not about a specific use case. That’s why it’s important to provide a fuller understanding of what AI’s actually doingsay, sorting through hundreds of video transcripts to zero in on specific topics, or writing a first draft of “just the facts” that the reporter then scrutinizes and adds torather than just putting “AI-assisted” labels on things. That can mitigate the risk of losing trust somewhat, and this kind of transparency, done right, might even buttress it. I thought about this when I recently built an AI project around my work. I host a podcast for The Media Copilot where I interview leaders in media, tech, and journalism every week. However, once I publish a podcast, it fades quickly. A new one comes along the following week, and although I capture specific insights in short clips and articles, those also don’t last long, and then that conversationwhich is likely still relevantis trapped in the past. So I took every single podcast I’ve done and put them all in a single folder in Google NotebookLM. That tool applies AI to the folder’s contents so anyone can extract insights from it. If you have questions about the use of AI in media and journalism, just ask, and you’ll be able to hear what people like The Atlantic‘s Nicholas Thompson, Reuters’ Jane Barrett, and the AP’s Troy Thibodeaux think about it. And because it’s grounded in only the podcast transcripts (and not all the junk on the internet), the chance of the notebook making something up is very low. The craft table of journalism You can apply this idea to journalism more broadly. If you break down what a journalist does when creating a story, they typically gather things like research, interviews, specific documents, and the history of their reporting on a topic. In the process of writing, they curate the most important parts of that information, then apply their judgmentinformed by experience and their target audienceto craft a story. You might call that last part the reporter’s lens. But it’s really just one lens among many that someone could look through at the material. A person with a different background, priorities, and knowledge of the subject might want to apply a different lens. You can think of this as a variation of the idea of “content remixing,” except that idea is usually concerned with format. This is remixing for audience. A podcast about all the latest news in AI, for example, might focus on the most popular headlines for a general audience, the biggest market-moving events for investors, or the most noteworthy technical advancements for developers. They might even focus on the same stories, just with different details called out and expanded on. Beyond the audience opportunity, though, is one of trust. Many news consumers distrust what they see in the media today. If you drill down on many of the complaints, which are often about political bias, the issue is rarely about the underlying facts and more about the lens the reporter has put them through. This is where AI tools like NotebookLM can serve as a kind of window into how journalists curate their information. By allowing a glimpse into the raw materialthe interviews, the research, the unfiltered factsreaders might better understand how journalists arrive at their conclusions. It could demystify some of the process, making it less about just trust us and more about heres how we got here. Of course, not every story could or should get this kind of treatment. Journalists are often entrusted with confidential material and sources that requie anonymity, so an open-door approach to the “raw material” of the story simply wouldn’t be possible. Redaction is an option, but that would likely sow even more doubt in the conspiracy-minded. Making journalism interactive But for some stories, AI could help create a new, more transparent kind of journalismone thats more interactive. Imagine if readers could use AI to navigate the same corpus of information and draw their own conclusions or even generate their own version of the story. Certainly, few readers will want to dive this deep, but for that curious minority, it could be a fascinating new layer. In a sense, it turns the journalist into a kind of information curator, where the reader gets to apply their own lens. That feedback loop could have trust benefits for the journalist, too. By deconstructing the process this way, they might have a better understanding of their own lens: where they’re applying it, how it affects the story being told, and how other lenses change the picture. That perspective would inform how different audiences interpret their stories, which will hopefully lead to stronger stories. In the end, we wont know if this approach is helpful for trust until we try it. Its an experiment in making journalism not just something you consume, but something you can interact with. And whether its an academic exercise or a new genre, its at least a step toward understanding how we shape the lenses that shape our news. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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Seth Todd was wearing an inflatable frog costume while protesting outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Building in Portland, Oregon, when a federal officer unleashed a torrent of chemical spray directly into the costume’s air vent.Video of the incident on Oct. 2 has spread, and puffed-out costumes hippos in tutus, Mr. Potato Heads, dinosaurs have quickly become a feature of protests against President Donald Trump’s administration, including the massive “No Kings” marches across the U.S. last weekend.Todd, 24, said that while the attention has been overwhelming, he is nonetheless “honored to have inspired a movement like this.”“It’s helping to combat that specific narrative that we are violent and we are agitating,” he said. Countering Trump, in costume For protesters like Todd, the costumes are a way of fighting absurdity with absurdity: a playful counter to Trump’s portrayal of Portland as “war ravaged,” “burning down” and “like living in hell.”The Trump administration’s efforts to deploy the National Guard there for the stated purpose of protecting federal property are still blocked by the courts for now.Portland’s ICE building outside downtown has been the site of nightly protests that peaked in June when police declared one demonstration a riot. Smaller clashes have also occurred since then, and federal officers have fired tear gas to clear crowds, which at times have included counter-protesters and live-streamers.Nighttime protesters, frequently numbering just a couple dozen in the weeks before Trump called up the Guard, have used bullhorns to shout obscenities. They have also sought to block vehicles from entering and leaving the facility. Federal officials argue that they have impeded law enforcement operations. ‘Keep Portland Weird’ The inflatable costumes are a testament to the city’s quirky protest culture which also recently included a naked bike ride and its unofficial motto, “Keep Portland Weird.”“Portland has always prided itself on this spirit of protest,” said Marc Rodriguez, a Portland State University professor of history and expert in social justice movements.The costumes also play well on social media, showing the protesters as nonviolent, he added. Frogs and more trend beyond Portland Some groups have started giving out the costumes to encourage more demonstrators to wear them. In Austin, Texas, college student Natalie McCabe got a free inflatable bald eagle costume. At the recent No Kings rally, she hung out with a unicorn and a frog.“Seeing people happy and having a good time and doing something different, like a distraction, it’s just how it should be,” she said.At the No Kings march in Chicago, Kristen Vandawalker dressed up as an inflatable “pegacorn” part Pegasus, part unicorn and posed for photos with the city’s Trump tower in the background, as bubbles from a bubble machine floated by.“I think everybody just got the memo after Portland that this is something that we can do, and it’s something that the right doesn’t know what to make of,” said Vandawalker, the political action director for Indivisible Chicago Northwest. “Certainly, like the ICE agents don’t seem to know what to make of people in costumes. It’s hard to look threatening when there’s a fan blowing you up.”The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the inflatable costumes at protests. Operation Inflation In recent weeks, Portland residents have launched groups such as the Portland Frog Brigade, whose members sport inflatable frog costumes, and Operation Inflation, which hands out inflatable costumes to protesters for free.On Tuesday, Operation Inflation co-founders Brooks Brown and Jordy Lybeck dropped off about 10 costumes among them a mushroom, Frankenstein and panda outside Portland’s ICE building. They placed some on a costume rack and helped demonstrators put them on.The group has seen donations pour in and plans to expand to other U.S. cities, Brown said.“It feels really light-hearted and it feels that we’re showing these guys that we are not scared of them,” said protester Briana Nathanielsz, who opted for one of the Frankenstein costumes. “We’re going to keep having fun and keep Portland weird and safe.” Claire Rush and Jonathan Mattise, Associated Press
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