The Girlboss-ification of AI w/ Kat Tenbarge
+ Bezos’s private retreat, Alex Cooper drama, new MrBeast lawsuit, the OpenAI apartment, China’s ‘dark factories', Pasta sauce surveillance, and why big tech’s ‘tobacco moment’ isn’t what it seems
In the past year, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta have launched an aggressive PR campaign to rebrand artificial intelligence for women, especially mothers and teen girls. Famous celebrity women like Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock are suddenly AI tools. Suddenly, AI isn’t an existential threat or a labor displacement machine, it’s simply a “lifestyle accessory,” a “creative tool,” and your new girly best friend.
Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News joins me on this week’s Power User episode to discuss the AI “Hot Girl Economy” and how tech giants are using aesthetic trends to Trojan-horse AI into our daily lives. We cover everything from viral Studio Ghibli filters and the AI puppy photo craze, to how startups like Higgsfield are targeting fashion influencers.
We also discuss what this “AI girly pop era” is designed to distract you from: extreme labor displacement, massive energy consumption, and the tech industry becoming increasingly intertwined with the US War Machine. [WATCH]