Shira Ovide
LightNews LightNews
shiraovide.bsky.social
Shira Ovide
@shiraovide.bsky.social
13K followers 1.6K following 430 posts
Washington Post technology writer. New Yorker. Bird watcher. Grumpy. Sign up for my (free) Tech Friend newsletter: https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/the-tech-friend/
Posts Replies Media Videos
shiraovide.bsky.social
We're going to need a new mythical beast if there's a nearly trillion-dollar unicorn. www.wsj.com/business/spa...
Exclusive | SpaceX in Talks for Share Sale That Would Boost Valuation to $800 Billion
The company’s CFO told investors about the transaction in recent days, say people familiar with the matter.
www.wsj.com
December 5, 2025 at 7:41 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
What if when Uber's app launched, you had to use VERY SPECIFIC WORDS to summon a car or else it might show up 4 streets over or drive you to Albania?

I suspect we would have given up. And yet:
www.theverge.com/tech/837287/...
I tried Comet’s “find important unanswered emails” prompt in the other AI browsers. They all highlighted other previously skipped, keyword-stuffed pitches. None flagged the two emails I was interested in. So I tried even harder: Find unanswered emails in which I had previously responded with interest or feature personalized requests/feedback. Then, evaluate which ones I should respond to based on timeliness and keywords such as “embargo” featuring dates in the next two weeks. Ignore emails with multiple follow-ups to which I have not responded. This went slightly better with Comet and Dia. Both surfaced multiple relevant email threads, but only one ultimately required a response. Copilot in Edge highlighted one relevant thread and five junk pitches. Gemini in Chrome was a dud: It surfaced only a Black Friday marketing email. In Atlas, ChatGPT merely replied, “It looks like Gmail successfully returned the unread message IDs, but the actual content for those messages didn’t come back — the batch read returned empty, which means the Gmail API didn’t provide the email bodies this round.” It proceeded to ask two long-winded follow-ups. At this point, my options were to refine my prompt further or give up. I gave up.
December 4, 2025 at 12:54 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
What if A.I. companies just didn't use human metaphors like "soul" and "confessions?"
Headline of an OpenAI blog post that reads: How confessions can keep language models honest The headline of a LessWrong post about Claude that reads: Claude 4.5 Opus' Soul Document
December 4, 2025 at 12:37 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
I'm just a girl. Again standing in front of a megacap tech company. Asking them to stop using the word "factory" for things that are not factories.

www.geekwire.com/2025/amazon-...
Amazon unveils ‘frontier agents,’ new chips and private ‘AI factories’ in AWS re:Invent rollout
LAS VEGAS — Amazon is pitching a future where AI works while humans sleep, announcing a collection of what it calls "frontier agents" capable of handling complex, multi-day projects without needing a ...
www.geekwire.com
December 2, 2025 at 5:16 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
The only way to kill ragebait marketing is to stop paying attention to ragebait marketing. If you can.

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
You might hate these companies’ ads. That’s the point.
Corporate marketers are embracing a strategy perfected by online influencers: Stoke rage and watch the attention roll in.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 2, 2025 at 12:31 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
The fed all the world's money and data into AI so it could suggest...a cozy bathrobe for mom, maybe from Victoria's Secret.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Bloomberg asked several AI bots — including Amazon’s Rufus, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Walmart Inc.’s Sparky — what to buy mom for Christmas. The top suggestion: a cozy bathrobe. Sparky recommended a pink hooded number emblazoned with “Mama Bear,” and ChatGPT suggested buying the robe from Victoria’s Secret. Perplexity Inc.’s AI bot proffered another option found on many gift guides: a $20 wooden photo frame from Etsy.
November 28, 2025 at 12:34 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
100% on board with dumping the terms "AI agents" and "agentic" (barf) with "AI assistants."

(Though I realize that could also describe Siri, Alexa etc)

..."Perplexity says its AI assistants, also called agents by other companies..." www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Perplexity says its AI personal shopper ‘puts you first’
Ask a friend, or ask AI?
www.theverge.com
November 26, 2025 at 12:51 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Aha, the legal response: The boy using ChatGPT to plan his suicide violated the terms of service

www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
The company cited several rules within its terms of use that Raine appeared to have violated: Users under 18 years old are prohibited from using ChatGPT without consent from a parent or guardian. Users are also forbidden from using ChatGPT for “suicide” or “self-harm,” and from bypassing any of ChatGPT’s protective measures or safety mitigations. When Raine shared his suicidal ideations with ChatGPT, the bot did issue multiple messages containing the suicide hotline number, according to his family’s lawsuit. But his parents said their son would easily bypass the warnings by supplying seemingly harmless reasons for his queries, including by pretending he was just “building a character.”
November 26, 2025 at 12:43 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
"In a Venn diagram of people deeply concerned about Michelin ratings and people deeply concerned about cheesesteaks, the overlap is not large."

Nope, sorry. That overlap is me and my entire personality. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/d...
Michelin Honored the Cheesesteak. Not All Philadelphians Cheered.
www.nytimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:45 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Just remembering that the sale of U.S. TikTok got announced two months ago. How's that going?
November 25, 2025 at 8:16 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
I talked to researchers about Character AI’s new ban (or “ban?”) on teen users.

I don’t know if it will work. But hardly anyone is happy with current approaches to teens and tech.

So bans (see also: school phone bans and Australia) are a new experiment. wapo.st/3M3CZgf
Still, we can’t ignore the undercurrent behind Character.AI’s ban: Hardly anyone is happy with teens’ use of smartphones, social media and AI, which relies on parents and technology companies deploying often underused or ineffective child protections. That makes Character.AI, and schools with phone bans, closely watched experiments in a novel approach for the United States: trying to stop kids from using a technology at all.
November 25, 2025 at 5:33 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
AI slop is ruining tamales now.

by @davey.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Earlier this month, she posted two AI-generated tamale photos: one with sauce poured over the husks, and another showing tamales lying flat in a steamer. Both, she wrote, were obvious mistakes. The husks aren’t meant to be eaten; you remove them before adding sauce. And tamales should steam upright so the masa cooks evenly. “Little details like this are big red flags,” she told readers. “When you search for recipes, make sure they come from trusted human cooks who actually test their food.”
November 25, 2025 at 5:16 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
I said an exasperated "oof" out loud after reading the end of this great @kashhill.bsky.social & @jenvalentino.bsky.social piece. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/t...
What OpenAI Did When ChatGPT Users Lost Touch With Reality
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 1:58 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Girl, you okay?
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...
A bar chart that shows the emojis most commonly used in ChatGPT messages. At least a quarter of the ChatGPT messages in a set of hundreds of thousands analyzed by the Washington Post contained the checkmark or brain emojis.
November 13, 2025 at 6:54 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
I know this may not FEEL surprising, but I still remember when pay TV subscriber numbers first started to go down just a bit (circa 2010?) and the fall happened very fast. www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-hou...
The cable TV industry is crossing a milestone: Only half of American households subscribe anymore.
For years, cable TV execs said they saw no evidence of cord-cutting. Not anymore.
www.businessinsider.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:11 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
This is sound public messaging to scam victims and future victims: www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
“The most important thing that we can tell someone who becomes victimized by this is, you know, don’t be disappointed in yourself,” she added. “Don’t be upset with yourself that you fell to this kind of scam, because these people are experts. In some cases, their livelihood depends upon how much money they bring in to the scam center.”
November 13, 2025 at 1:02 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Hi, I keep having to say that this is not a "factory" www.wsj.com/tech/ai/insi...
Exclusive | Inside Microsoft’s New AI ‘Super Factory’
The tech giant is building out huge data centers among the most advanced in the world as it rushes to meet demand for AI computing power.
www.wsj.com
November 12, 2025 at 9:51 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
"The Post found [ChatGPT] began responses with variations on 'yes' 10 times more often than with versions of 'no.'"

Fascinating insights from an analysis of 47,000 ChatGPT chats.

wapo.st/3LzQUL2
How people really use ChatGPT, according to 47,000 conversations shared online
What do people ask the popular chatbot? We analyzed thousands of chats to identify common topics discussed by users and patterns in ChatGPT’s responses.
wapo.st
November 12, 2025 at 1:22 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
I know that big numbers have lost all meaning in A.I., and this one is a forecast.

But truly:

"OpenAI forecasts its operating losses that year to swell to about $74 billion"

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
Anthropic Is on Track to Turn a Profit Much Faster Than OpenAI
Financial documents from both companies show the different approaches they are taking to the AI boom.
www.wsj.com
November 12, 2025 at 1:11 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
A good news/bad news situation for streaming-loving NFL fans.

For the first time this year, you can stream the 5 or more games on offer throughout the week without paying for cable.

But you might need six streaming subscriptions that cost a total of $90 a month. wapo.st/4nNzzLG
Analysis | You can stream all of the NFL now. It costs a small fortune.
The rising costs of sports in all our streaming bills is another way new “TV” is repeating the bad habits of cable.
wapo.st
November 11, 2025 at 9:32 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
This is definitely not investment advice.

But right now Nvidia has 44% free cash flow margins -- insanely profitable -- and OpenAI has ... negative infinity free cash flow margins.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/b...
SoftBank Sells $5.8 Billion Stake in Nvidia to Pay for OpenAI Deals
www.nytimes.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:23 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Language translation has been a holy grail for A.I. at least as far back as original "Star Trek." And yet:

www.theverge.com/column/81568...
Lost in AI translation
AI translation was no match for my extroverted in-laws.
www.theverge.com
November 10, 2025 at 1:26 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
“I was astonished that just with one photo you can become viral in a few days.”

Bless this kid. Stay weird. apnews.com/article/louv...
Fedora man unmasked: Meet the teen behind the Louvre mystery photo
Fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux has become an internet sensation after an Associated Press photo captured him outside the Louvre on the day of a crown jewels heist.
apnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 4:32 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Love this on the power of listening and being heard. Alyssa is one of the very best.

www.notus.org/perspectives...
The Washington Post Got 21,000 Emails After It Didn't Endorse. I Read Them All.
Reading and editing letters gave me a theory about what is wrong with America — and how it could be fixed.
www.notus.org
November 8, 2025 at 2:29 PM
shiraovide.bsky.social
Zuckerberg said this $600 billion figure to Trump in September.

So two months later Meta figured out how to get the math to $600 billion?

about.fb.com/news/2025/11...
Bullet points: We’re investing $600 billion in American infrastructure and jobs, including industry-leading AI data centers. By building in the US, we’re not only advancing AI technology and infrastructure, but also creating jobs, supporting local economies, and reinforcing America’s technological leadership. We’re strengthening the communities that host our data centers by building sustainably, investing in municipal infrastructure, and providing grants to local schools and nonprofits.
November 7, 2025 at 7:03 PM