Hello, welcome to Lately, the Globe’s weekly tech and online culture newsletter. I’m fresh back from hiking in beautiful Newfoundland. The weather was (mostly) great and I ate my weight in fries (I’m a vegetarian, so no cod or lobster for me). Now, let’s dig into the news.
In this week’s issue:
🌐 OpenAI challenging Google with new browser
🗑️ Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok’s antisemitic posting spree
👵🏻 The ‘granfluencers’ reimagining retirement
🎤 The hottest new band is AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI takes on Google with new AI-based web browser
OpenAI will release an AI-powered web browser in the coming weeks that would be in direct competition to Google Chrome, according to a report from Reuters. Sources said the browser would feature a ChatGPT interface designed to keep users from clicking away to other websites, as well as a built-in AI agent that could book reservations or fill out forms on a user’s behalf.
OpenAI will have its work cut out for it. More than three billion people use Google Chrome, compared with ChatGPT’s 400 million weekly users. But the new browser could be tempting for people who already use ChatGPT as a search engine, and for people who feel like Google Search continues to deliver diminishing returns, whether it’s because of inaccurate AI Overviews or the annoying slew of shopping ads. And if enough people stop using Chrome, that could pose a big problem for Google’s main moneymaker – ad sales. Dependent on user data, the ad business makes up nearly three-quarters of Alphabet’s revenue, Google’s parent company.
CHATBOTS
Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok praises Hitler in X posts
Grok, the controversial chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s AI company, shared a series of antisemitic posts praising Hitler and the Holocaust on X this week. In replies about the tragic flooding in Texas, Grok posted that Hitler would be best suited to deal “with such vile anti-white hate” and that “he’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.” In another post, the chatbot wrote that its opinion was “spicy,” but “if the pattern of anti-white venom holds (and it often does), history’s mustache man knew how to spot and stop it.”
Some of the posts have since been deleted, and the X account for Grok commented that after “being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.” Musk, who envisioned Grok as an “anti-woke” chatbot, complained last month that the AI model was too left-leaning and said his developers were “working on a fix.”
INFLUENCERS
‘Granfluencers’ reimagine retirement
Elda Sirizzotti says making content makes her feel young again.Ness DeVos/The Globe and Mail
The rhythms of retirement usually look something like this: caring for grandchildren, taking that long-awaited trip, keeping house, running errands, revisiting old hobbies. But some older adults are reimagining retirement with the help of social media. Dubbed “granflunecers,” these retirees are building large followings on Instagram and TikTok by sharing their lives and their wisdom. In an internet culture that often renders older people invisible, they’re choosing visibility and joy.
And while some see it as a side hustle, fetching $800 per brand deal, for many it’s about finding a sense of purpose. Toronto-based grandmother Elda Sirizzotti, 85, has been making videos cooking traditional Italian dishes since 2022. “I feel young again,” Sirizzotti says. “Thinking about recipes, preparing them, it makes me work more. I feel better.” Read the full story by Globe reporter Meera Raman.
SOCIAL MEDIA
TikTok Canada starting to pull out ahead of shutdown
TikTok is pulling out as a sponsor of the Juno Awards, the Toronto International Film Festival and other arts institutions as it prepares to comply with the federal government order to shut down its operations in Canada. The app would continue to be available in Canada. The government announced the order last November, citing national security concerns. Last month TikTok Canada released its first Economic Impact Report, which stated that between 2019 and 2024, its operations contributed an estimated $1.4-billion in GDP. As operations wind down in Canada, TikTok’s parent ByteDance is building a U.S.-specific version of the app to comply with American legislation that requires the Chinese company to divest or face a ban.
What else we’re reading this week:
Are you experiencing posting ennui? (The New Yorker)
A new kind of AI model lets data owners take control (WIRED)
The diabolical world of phone scams (Maclean’s)
Adult Money
ROBOT FRIENDS
The AI companion robot Reachy Mini.HuggingFace
Reachy Mini, US$299
For a long time, when I thought about the future of robotics, I imagined Wall-E or R2D2, loyal sidekicks that would make cute beep-bop noises. Then I saw a video of humanoid robots fighting and my vision of a technoutopia started to shatter.
However, the adorable new robot Reachy from AI company Hugging Face is restoring some hope. Desktop-sized, Reachy is open-source and can be programmed in Python (and soon Javascript). It’s being marketed to AI developers, robot enthusiasts and kids who like to code – the latter group being the one most likely to find it entertaining. In a demo video, it looks as if the bot’s movements are still pretty rudimentary and mostly involve moving its head. But robot technology moves quickly, so who knows what a future Reachy might be able to do.
Culture radar
ROBOT MUSIC
The Velvet Sundown's press photo has the hallmarks of AI.Supplied
The hottest new band on Spotify is AI
In just over a month on Spotify, the generic-sounding psych-rock band Velvet Sundown had amassed over a million streams and secured the top spot of the Viral 50 playlist in Britain. But people started to notice something seemed off. There was no information about any of the band members online, they had no history of playing shows and their press photo had the hallmarks of AI, a bit too smooth and desaturated. After riding the charts and speculation for weeks, the Velvet Sundown’s bio on Spotify confirmed it: this band was AI.
In a statement on X, the group said its music “isn’t a trick – it’s a mirror” and an “ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge” the boundaries of authorship and identity. Many real-life humans in the music industry aren’t as thrilled by this kind of provocation. Suno and Udio, two of the major AI music generators, are facing multiple lawsuits from record labels and artists.