If the football games, boxing matches, and comedy specials werent indication enough that Netflix is making a bold move for the live television market, heres another: Beginning in 2026, it will air live baseball for the first time.
Major League Baseball announced a new three-year media rights agreement on Wednesday with NBC, ESPN, and Netflix that could see baseball fans channel surfing to find their games.
The shakeups in the agreement mostly see NBC and its parent company, NBCUniversal, commanding a larger share of baseball coverage, picking up several key games and events previously aired by ESPN, including Sunday Night Baseball. And, for the first time in 26 years, NBC will once again air baseball games on its broadcast network.
ESPN, meanwhile, opted out of its $550 million rights to Sunday Night Baseball games earlier this year, which it has aired since 1990. But the sports network will continue a nearly-four decade partnership with MLB as it will instead receive rights to a national midweek game package, along with MLB.TV.
Finally, streaming giant Netflix is now up to bat with a limited number of special event games, including the T-Mobile Home Run Derby and an Opening Night exclusive.
Our new media rights agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Netflix provide us with a great opportunity to expand our reach to fans through three powerful destinations for live sports, entertainment, and marquee events, MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. said in a statement.
INSIDE BASEBALL
If all of this sounds like some inside baseball, it kind-of is: While diehard baseball fans arent likely to be so impacted, the new agreements may help the league expand its reach. But these rights do come at a price, according to reporting by CNBC: MLB is losing about $300 million for the rights to the same games previously paid for by ESPN.
Still, the league says that much of its national broadcast rights remain unchanged, as Fox, TBS, and Apple TV will continue to air other games. But the MLB is trying to raise TV revenue at the end of the 2028 season, when the rights agreements announced this week expire, according to CNBC.
Theres some optimism about keeping the momentum going in the wake of the World Series last month, which saw an average of 51 million viewers globally when the Los Angeles Dodgers ousted the Toronto Blue Jays, according to the league. And finding new ways to reach potential fans is key, especially as baseball is appealing to a younger demographic. The MLB saw double-digit increases in audiences this year among fans under the age of 17 and between the ages of 18 and 34, it reported..
For consumers who are heavy on savings and light on credit history, a new partnership in the world of credit scores could help them lock down a loan. FICO, the company basically synonymous with the credit score, is teaming up with Plaid to bring real-time data showing how much cash someone has on hand to lenders.
Plaid, a fintech company that links bank accounts with financial apps, has a lot of visibility into how its customers move cash between bank accounts, payments apps, investment platforms, and just about everything else. Plaids technology runs under the hood across a huge network of 12,000 financial institutions that partner with the fintech startup, which has grown into a key part of the webs financial infrastructure since its founding in 2013.
All of those connections make Plaid a no-brainer as a partner for Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO), creator of the gold standard credit score used by most lenders. By partnering with Plaid, FICO will be able to offer a historical picture of money flowing into and out of a consumer’s transaction accounts through Plaids network of finance data, which consumers opt in to through their accounts, the company said in a press release.
By bringing together FICOs trusted credit score intelligence with Plaids cash flow data, were creating the foundation for more comprehensive lending decisions, said Julie May, FICO vice president and general manager of B2B scores. This is the beginning of a new chapter in responsible and inclusive lending.
The credit score slog
Credit scores notoriously require consumers to build up a credit history and demonstrate that they can make timely loan paymentsfactors that outweigh other aspects of a persons financial health, like savings and income.
While the system is good business for companies that evaluate and track credit scores, it creates some weird incentives on the consumer side. Its not uncommon for credit score-conscious consumers, in order to build up a credit history, to open a credit card and regularly use it for payments even if they have more than enough cash to handle their expenses.
To capture a more complete financial picture for both borrowers and lenders, FICO has been building up an alternative to the traditional credit score for years now. That score, called an UltraFICO, was introduced in 2018. The company frames the UltraFICO score as a more inclusive approach that includes checking, savings, and money market accounts to help borrowers show lenders that they can afford a loan, even without a stellar credit history.
FICO describes the UltraFICO score as part of a layered strategy that can help borrowers secure a loan and lenders find new customers beyond the people who would normally qualify. Plaids data will slot naturally into that strategy, offering a broader picture of financial health. The new UltraFICO option will be available through Plaids consumer reporting agency, Plaid Check.
Last month, Plaid launched its own alternative credit score, LendScore, which also aims to paint a fuller financial picture for borrowers and lenders by leveraging cash flow insights, income patterns, and financial account connections to reveal a borrowers real-time financial story. Plaids LendScore system is in beta testing now and collecting names for its wait list.
High-quality cash flow data is becoming essential for lenders who want a more comprehensive view of a consumers financial picture, said Adam Yoxtheimer, Plaid’s head of partnerships. By combining Plaids real-time connectivity and intelligence with FICO in this next-generation credit score, we are helping lenders make more confident, inclusive credit decisions through a simple and scalable solution.
In our consumer-driven culture, when the cost of goods is soaring, one of the most radical things you can do is not to buy anything on Black Friday. That’s the message from “Mass Blackout,” a coalition of grassroots groups that are protesting the Trump administration’s policies and urging you not to participate in this year’s extended Black Friday sales.
The “blackout” will start on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26) and end the day after Cyber Monday (Tuesday, December 2).
This is not the only holiday protest, either: There’s also a second boycott underway targeting Amazon, Target, and Home Depot. It’s called “We Ain’t Buying It,” and it is happening around the same time.
In fact, it’s been a big year for boycotts, and some of them have been quite effective. For example, Target just reported another lackluster quarter and declining sales that are partially due to backlash and a boycott from customers after a rollback of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
And it’s not just the U.S. Many Canadians have started to forgo American products and are only buying “locally,” as the “Buy Canadian” movement has drawn record participation as a reaction to President Trump’s high tariffs on their country’s goods.
Here’s what to know about the upcoming “Mass Blackout” and “We Ain’t Buying It” boycotts.
What’s happening with the “Mass Blackout” protest?
The Mass Blackout, a nationwide economic action organized by a coalition of grassroots organizations, is calling Americans to:
Stop online or in-store shopping (except for small businesses)
Stop streaming, cancel subscriptions, and make no digital purchases
Stop work (if you can)
If you must spend: Support small, local businesses, and pay in cash
“No spending. No work. No surrender. The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designedfor the wealthy,” reads the movement’s website. “Were not targeting small businesses or communitieswere targeting the corporate systems that profit from injustice, fuel authoritarianism, and crush worker power.”
The boycott also includes avoiding nonessential travel, restaurants, and normal consumer behavior; staying off ad-driven platforms unless organizing; halting spending; logging off entertainment platforms; and donating to Feeding America to support those refusing to work.
What’s happening with the “We Ain’t Buying It” boycott?
The “We Aint Buying It campaign is made up of a coalition of progressive groups including the No Kings Alliance and Indivisible, which were behind other anti-Trump protests earlier this year. It targets three companies: Target, Home Depot, and Amazon.
It is asking Americans “to withhold their purchasing power from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday” (November 27 to December 1) to protest the three retailers who, they allege, are cooperating directly with the Trump administration in these ways:
Target, for its rollback on DEI
Home Depot, for working with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which has been arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants
Amazon, for allegedly funding the Trump administration to secure corporate tax cuts
When corporations align with cruelty and authoritarianism, they must understand that our purchasing power matters, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a member of the “We Aint Buying It” coalition, said in a statement. Economic noncooperation is a powerful, nonviolent tool for a free people, and we plan to use it to make America better for all of usnot just the wealthy few.
Why are these Black Friday boycotts happening now?
The boycotts come as the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is widening in an increasingly bifurcated economy.
They target billionaires and businesses supporting the Trump administration, which they argue is eroding civil rights; labor protections; diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and weakening the United States’ democratic institutions. In that sense, they are both political and economic boycotts.
Earlier this year Pepsi purchased probiotic drinker maker Poppi, and now the soda giant is introducing a new prebiotic cola drink in its quest to capture Gen Z drinkers: Pepsi Prebiotic Cola.
The drink drops on November 28 and will be available at Walmart, on Amazon, and TikTok shop, as well as in select markets on Kroger.com, DashMart, and GoPuff. The “Unbelievably Pepsi” drinks will be available in two flavors: Original and Cherry Vanilla and contain 30 calories and five grams of sugar. They also have three grams of prebiotic fiber.
Still, the drinks are highly marketable, given they’re a soda alternative, and appear to offer some health benefits. As many Americans have turned to weight loss drugs like Ozempic, options that fit into their new diets are more desirable. That may be especially true when it comes to drinks that contain protein, a trend which Pepsi has also jumped on given Americans are desperate to consume more protein. According to the brand, 71% tried to up their protein intake last year. In the wake of the protein craze, the brand introduced a ready-to-drink Starbucks protein coffee and a protein water by Propel.We want to redefine the protein conversation, Ram Krishnan, CEO of PepsiCos U.S. beverages business, previously said in an interview with Fast Company. Everybody in the country is talking about protein, but its actually crowded and confusing and the consumers really dont understand all of the science behind protein.
Previously, Pepsi has offered healthier alternatives. Back in 2016, the brand partnered with KeVita, which makes sparkling probiotic drinks and kombucha. At the time, the brand said it was “continuing to evolve” its “health and wellness offerings to meet consumers’ changing needs.”Of course, Pepsi isn’t the first brand to launch a “healthier” soda option. There’s been a surge of prebiotic and probiotic sodas appearing on shelves in recent years. In addition to Poppi, Culture Pop and Olipop are also well-known brands that claim to have gut-boosting benefits. But while prebiotic and probiotic sodas are typically lower in sugar content and have fewer calories than regular sodas, some critics have questioned how beneficial the sodas are, given they don’t have the same variety of good bacterias that fermented foods do. Here, youre only getting the type of prebiotic thats added in, while youd likely benefit more from the variety of prebiotics in fiber-rich foods, says Amy Keating, RD, a Consumer Reports (CR) nutritionist, per the outlet.
“At Pepsi, we are experts in great tasting cola and have been for decades. The launch of Pepsi Prebiotic Cola marks a significant moment in our brand’s history and the cola category,” Gustavo Reyna, VP of Marketing at Pepsi said in the release. “This breakthrough innovation upholds the iconic taste of Pepsi that people love, now with no artificial sweeteners, lower sugar and functional ingredients. It’s an inimitable taste designed to meet the demands of cola lovers, cola newcomers, and everyone in between.”
Pepsi’s new cola will drop on Black Friday and be around “until supplies last”. According to the release, you can check out the drink during Amazon Prime Video’s Black Friday Football game. It said, “the spot will bring bold flavor and feel-good refreshment to homes nationwide with the ability to shop it live, right from your TV screen.”
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Back in May, ResiClub teamed up with Stessa, an asset management and accounting software for real estate investors, to survey real estate investors about how they were navigating the rental market.
Over the past month, we teamed up with Stessa again to survey real estate investors about their market conditions, portfolio plans, and property management strategy.
Investors who own at least one single-family investment property were eligible to respond to the Stessa-ResiClub Real Estate Investor SurveyQ4 2025, fielded between October 24 and November 16. In total, 211 single-family investors/landlords completed the survey.
Here are our topline findings:
44% of U.S. real estate investors say they plan to grow their portfolios in the near-term, holding steady from the 45% of landlords that said they plan to grow in the near-term in Q2 2025.
Two-thirds of real estate investors (65%) say the most frustrating part of the buying process is finding deals that cash flowthat share is even higher among landlords based in the West (75%).
About six in ten real estate investors (59%) say they are not willing to buy a property unless the cap rate is at least 6.00%.
63% of surveyed real estate investors said theyd only accept a mortgage rate of 6.00% or lower on their next purchase.
51% of real estate investors say they self-manage their properties.
21% of real estate investors say they first look at off-market deal sources.
19% of real estate investors who currently self-manage say they would consider switching to professional property management in the next 12 months.
The big picture: Even as nearly half of investors say they want to grow their portfolios, todays buyers are disciplinedinsisting on strong cash flow, cap rates at or above 6.00%, and deals that pencil even with 6.00% mortgage rates. The result is an investor landscape thats still expansion-minded, but far more selective and operationally focused than in prior years.
Lets take a deeper look at the results:
U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, the highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The unemployment rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the labor marketeither working or looking for workin September and not all of them found jobs right away.
The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labor Department revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August instead of gaining 22,000 as originally reported. Altogether, revisions shaved 33,000 jobs off July and August payrolls.
The data, though late, was welcomed by businesses, investors, policymakers, and the Federal Reserve. During the 43-day shutdown, they’d been groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldnt collect the data.
The report comes at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high interest rates and uncertainty around Trumps erratic campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. But economic growth at midyear was resilient.
Healthcare and social assistance firms added more than 57,000 jobs in September, restaurants and bars 37,000, construction companies 19,000 and retailers almost 14,000. But factories shed 6,000 jobsthe fifth straight monthly drop. The federal government, targeted by Trump and billionaire Elon Musks DOGE cost cutters, lost 3,000 jobs, the eighth straight monthly decline..
Average hourly wages rose just 0.2% from August and 3.8% from a year earlier, edging closer to the 3.5% year-over-year increase that the Federal Reserve’s inflation fighters like to see.
The latest reading on jobs Thursday makes a rate cut by the Federal Reserve at their next meeting in December less likely. Many Fed officials were already leaning against a cut next month, according to minutes of their October meeting released Wednesday. Steady hiring suggests the economy doesnt need lower interest rates to expand.
The September jobs report will be the last one the Fed will see before its Dec. 9-10 meeting. Officials are split between those who see stubbornly high inflation as the main challenge they need to address by keeping rates elevated, and those who are more concerned that hiring is sluggish and needs to be supported by rate reductions.
Economists expected to see a continuation of what was happening in the spring and summer: weak hiring but few layoffs, an awkward pairing that means Americans who have work mostly enjoy job security but those who dont often struggle to find employment.
The job market has been strained this year by the lingering effects of high interest rates engineered to fight a 2021-2022 spike in inflation and uncertainty around Trumps campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and on specific productsfrom copper to foreign films.
Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported.
President Donald Trumps crackdown on illegal immigration is expected to reduce the number of people looking for work, which means that the economy can create fewer jobs without sending the unemployment rate higher.
With September numbers out, businesses, investors, policymakers and the Fed will have to wait awhile to get another good look at the numbers behind the American labor market.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that it wont won’t release a full jobs report for October because it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate during the government shutdown.
Instead, it will release some of the October jobs dataincluding the number of jobs that employers created last monthalong with the full November jobs report on Dec. 16, a couple of weeks late.
Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
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 gathering some informed opinions from people trying out Googles new Gemini 3 Pro AI model. I also look at another circular AI investment agreement.
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.
What smart people are saying about Google’s Gemini 3
The so-called generative AI boom is only about three years old. It has been characterized by some breakthrough moments, chief among them the release of OpenAIs ChatGPT in late 2022. A relatively small number of AI labs have been competing to release frontier models that beat all others. The top spots on the rankings of benchmark test scores seem to change names every six months or so. But the release of Googles new flagship Gemini 3 Pro model (in preview), along with its impressive benchmark test scores, seem like a moment well remember.
Now, peoplemany of them developerswho immediately began testing the new model are beginning to weigh in on how well Gemini 3 performs in real-world use. Here is a selection of their impressions.
Thumbs-up
Gemini 3 . . . shows significant gains in reasoning, reliability in multi-step agent workflows, and an ability to debug tough development tasks with high-quality fixes. In early evaluations, it improved Warps Terminal Bench state of the art score by 20%. Zach Lloyd, CEO of Warp
I simply asked Gemini 3 Pro to diagnose and fix its own code. It reasoned through the problem in exactly the way I would expect from a thoughtful junior engineer game developer Josh English on MediumBest creative and professional writing Ive seen. I dont code, so thats off my radar, but for me the vibes are excellent. Intelligence, nuance, flexibility, and originality are promising in that distinct way that excites and disturbs me. Havent had this feeling since 11/30/22. Brett Cooper on X
Gemini beat my own previously unbeaten personal test. The test involves a fairly long list of accurate to year information, ordered properly, many opportunities for hallucination and then used to achieve a goal. I need a new test, so yeah I think Geminis impressive. Richard Knoche on X
Its a great model, as far as LLMs go, topping most benchmarks, but its certainly not AGI. Its haunted by the same kind of problems that all earlier models have had. Hallucinations and unreliability persist. Visual and physical reasoning are still a mess. In short, scaling isnt getting us to AGI. AI skeptic Gary Marcus on Medium
I found the answer, and its actually terrifying (in a good way) The uptake of Gemini has been wild We are talking about a model that is delivering rich visuals, deeper interactivity, and agentic vibe coding. CodeToDeploy on Medium
[We] created the first open-source evaluation framework to test how leading AI models respond to self-harm and mental health crisis scenarios, and the results were alarming, said Sean Dadashi, cofounder of the AI journaling app company Rosebud. Gemini 3 [is] the safest AI model weve seen yet.
Thumbs-down
Thoroughly benchmaxxed (optimized to do well on benchmark tests), very mid model. Makes so much errors, I have strong doubts they are serving the model they ran the benchmarks on. Infrecursion on X
My experience with the Gemini [command line interface] has been dreadful. It craps out at least half of the time. When it works it is ridiculously fast so I keep trying it. But it has proven very inferior to the Claude code experience in my usage. Reddit user dinkleberg
Was much worse than GPT-5.1 for find me research on [x]-type queries. It kept trying to do my thinking (synthesis) for me, which is not what I want from it. It gave me individual research results if I explicitly asked but even then it seemed to go way less wide than GPT-5.1. Robert Mushkatblat on X
The free-for-all continues: Anthropic takes $15 billion from Microsoft, Nvidia, with strings
Someone on Twitter (X) said it best (Peter Wildeford): After the breakup, both Microsoft and OpenAI are seeing different people . . . also Nvidia is sleeping with everybody.In other words, after doubling down on its bet on OpenAI, Microsoft has begun investing in other AI model developers too. Anthropic is the most recent.
On Tuesday, Anthropic announced it would be taking a new $5 billion in investment money from Microsoft and $10 billion from Nvidia. As part of the deal, Anthropic will purchase about $30 billion of compute capacity from Microsofts Azure cloud service, which is powered by Nvidia chips. Anthropic says its now the first frontier model to be available within all three major cloud servicesMicrosoft Azure, Amazons AWS, and Google Cloud. Anthropic will work with Nvidia to optimize its models to run well on Nvidia chips. In September, Anthropic raised another $13 billion in funding, after which it was valued at $183 billion.So, as it has done with OpenAI, Microsoft becomes both an investor in, and a major supplier to, Anthropic. In a less direct way, so does Nvidia. Its the latest example of the kind of circular financial arrangements that have become commonplace in the world of big AI.
In September, Nvidia announced a $100-billion investment in OpenAI, which the chip supplier will pay in installments that are contingent on OpenAI buying a certain number of chips from Nvidia. So Nvidia gets guaranteed chip sales and a 2% share of OpenAI. These investments might be circular and raise related party concerns, as Nvidia may own shares in a customer that will likely use such funds to buy more Nvidia gear, Morningstar equity analyst Brian Colello wrote at the time.
OpenAI struck a similar deal with Nvidia rival AMD in early October. OpenAI agreed to buy large quantities of AMDs Instinct AI chips on a set schedule over the next decade. If it keep to the schedule, itll get the option of buying a 10% stake in AMD.
The group of companies pouring billions into the coming AI revolution isnt really getting any bigger, and many of the participants seem to be placing bets on each other. The big spenders are Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, Google, Amazon, and some big financiers like Softbank. A larger and more diverse set of players would give confidence that the burgeoning AI industry isnt just a big hype bubble.
Survey: Trust in AI is breaking along class divides
Edelman is out with a new survey report, titled Trust in AI report, AI Trust at a Crossroads, which finds that humans trust of AI isnt growing quickly, and that trust levels break along class lines. Edelman surveyed 5,000 people in the U.S., Brazil, China, Germany, and the U.K.
More than half of low-income respondents (54%) feel theyll be left out and left behind in the move toward AI, the survey finds. Thats compared to the 44% of middle-income, and the 31% of high-income people.
The study found a strong connection between higher trust in AI tools and higher usage of them. Low trust in AI stems from worries over how the systems will use and whether they will protect personal data. People, especially in developed countries, also worry about how they might be manipulated by AI.
At work, only a quarter of non-managers use AI tools weekly, versus 63% of managers. Tech (55%) and finance (43%) employees are most open to AI at work, while adoption is lowest in healthcare (28%), education (25%), food & beverage (23%), and transportation (20%).
Across all countries, 62% of younger people ages 18 to 34 say they generally trust AI, while 57% of people ages 3554, and 40% of people 55 and older say they trust it. Interestingly, only 40% of 18-to-34 year olds in the U.S. say they trust AI.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
Gemini 3 may be the moment Google pulls away in the AI arms race
Misinformation sites have an open-door policy for AI scrapers
AI browsers need the open web. So why are they trying to kill it?
A battle against the AI oligarchy is brewing in this wealthy New York district
Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, its not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December.
The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree thats delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot (4-meter) tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world.
This years tree is inspired by the museums new exhibition, Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs, which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago reshaped life on Earth.
Talo Kawasaki, the trees co-designer, said the trees theme is New Beginnings, in reference to the new world that followed the mass extinction.
Located off the museums Central Park West entrance, the artificial tree is topped with a golden, flaming asteroid.
Its branches and limbs are packed with origami works representing a variety of animals and insects, including foxes, cranes, turtles, bats, sharks, elephants, giraffes and monkeys. Dinosaur favorites such as the triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex are also depicted in the folded paper works of art.
We wanted to focus more not so much the demise of the dinosaurs, but the new life this created, which were the expansion and the evolution of mammals ultimately leading to humanity, Kawasaki explained on a recent visit.
The origami tree has been a highlight of the museums holiday season for more than 40 years.
Volunteers from all over the world are enlisted to make hundreds of new models. The intricate paper artworks are generally made from a single sheet of paper but can sometimes take days or even weeks to perfect.
The new origami pieces are bolstered by archived works stored from prior seasons, including a 40-year-old model of a pterosaur, an extinct flying reptile, that was folded for one of the museums first origami trees in the early 1970s.
Rosalind Joyce, the trees co-designer, estimates that anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 origami works are embedded in the tree.
This year theres a lot of stuff stuffed in there, she said. So I dont count.
Joseph B. Frederick and Philip Marcelo, Associated Press
A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday when it goes on sale by Sothebys in New York.
With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, El sueo (La cama) in English, The Dream (The Bed) may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sothebys in 2014 for Georgia OKeeffes Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.
The highest price at auction for a Kahlo work is $34.9 million, paid in 2021 for Diego and I, depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.
The painting up for auction depicts Kahlo asleep in a wooden colonial-style bed, wrapped in a golden blanket embroidered with crawling vines and leaves. Above her, seemingly levitating atop the bedposts, lies a full-sized skeleton.
In its catalog note, Sotheby’s said the painting offers a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death.
Last exhibited publicly in the late 1990s, the painting is the star of a sale of more than 100 surrealist works by artists including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. They are from a private collection whose owner has not been disclosed.
Kahlo vibrantly and unsparingly depicted herself and events from her life, which was upended by a bus accident at 18. She started to paint while bedridden, underwent a series of painful surgeries on her damaged spine and pelvis, then wore casts until her death in 1954 at age 47.
The suspended skeleton is often interpreted as a visualization of her anxiety about dying in her sleep, a fear all too plausible for an artist whose daily existence was shaped by chronic pain and past trauma, the catalog notes.
Theyre cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionshipbut artificial intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to childrens and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season.
These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2 years old, are generally powered by AI models that have already been shown to harm children and teenagers, such as OpenAIs ChatGPT, according to an advisory published Thursday by the childrens advocacy group Fairplay and signed by more than 150 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators.
The serious harms that AI chatbots have inflicted on children are well-documented, including fostering obsessive use, having explicit sexual conversations, and encouraging unsafe behaviors, violence against others, and self-harm, Fairplay said.
AI toys, made by companies such as Curio Interactive and Keyi Technologies, are often marketed as educational, but Fairplay says they can displace important creative and learning activities. They promise friendship but also disrupt childrens relationships and resilience, the group said.
Whats different about young children is that their brains are being wired for the first time and developmentally it is natural for them to be trustful, for them to seek relationships with kind and friendly characters, said Rachel Franz, director of Fairplays Young Children Thrive Offline Program. Because of this, she added, the amount of trust young children are putting in these toys can exacerbate the harms seen with older children.
Fairplay, a 25-year-old organization formerly known as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has been warning about AI toys for more than 10 years. They just werent as advanced as they are today. A decade ago, during an emerging fad of internet-connected toys and AI speech recognition, the group helped lead a backlash against Mattels talking Hello Barbie doll that it said was recording and analyzing childrens conversations.
Everything has been released with no regulation and no research, so it gives us extra pause when all of a sudden we see more and more manufacturers, including Mattel, who recently partnered with OpenAI, potentially putting out these products, Franz said.
Its the second big seasonal warning against AI toys since consumer advocates at U.S. PIRG last week called out the trend in its annual Trouble in Toyland report that typically looks at a range of product hazards, such as high-powered magnets and button-sized batteries that young children can swallow. This year, the organization tested four toys that use AI chatbots.
We found some of these toys will talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics, will offer advice on where a child can find matches or knives, act dismayed when you say you have to leave, and have limited or no parental controls, the report said. One of the toys, a teddy bear made by Singapore-based FoloToy, was later withdrawn, its CEO told CNN this week.
Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and social scientist who studies early brain development, said young children don’t have the conceptual tools to understand what an AI companion is. While kids have always bonded with toys through imaginative play, when they do this they use their imagination to create both sides of a pretend conversation, practicing creativity, language, and problem-solving, she said.
An AI toy collapses that work. It answers instantly, smoothly, and often better than a human would. We dont yet know the developmental consequences of outsourcing that imaginative labor to an artificial agentbut its very plausible that it undercuts the kind of creativity and executive function that traditional pretend play builds, Suskind said.
Beijing-based Keyi, maker of an AI petbot called Loona, didnt return requests for comment this week, but other AI toymakers sought to highlight their child safety protections.
California-based Curio Interactive makes stuffed toys, like Gabbo and rocket-shaped Grok, that have been promoted by the pop singer Grimes.
Curio said it has meticulously designed guardrails to protect children and the company encourages parents to monitor conversations, track insights, and choose the controls that work best for their family.
“After reviewing the U.S. PIRG Education Funds findings, we are actively working with our team to address any concerns, while continuously overseeing content and interactions to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for children.
Another company, Miko, based in Mumbai, India, said it uses its own conversational AI model rather than relying on general large language model systems such as ChatGPT in order to make its productan interactive AI robotsafe for children.
We are always expanding our internal testing, strengthening our filters, and introducing new capabilities that detect and block sensitive or unexpected topics,” said CEO Sneh Vaswani. These new features complement our existing controls that allow parents and caregivers to identify specific topics theyd like to restrict from conversation. We will continue to invest in setting the highest standards for safe, secure and responsible AI integration for Miko products.
Mikos products are sold by major retailers such as Walmart and Costco and have been promoted by the families of social media kidfluencers whose YouTube videos have millions of views. On its website, it markets its robots as Artificial Intelligence. Genuine friendship.
Ritvik Sharma, the company’s senior vice president of growth, said Miko actually encourages kids to interact more with their friends, to interact more with the peers, with the family members etc. Its not made for them to feel attached to the device only.
Still, Suskind and children’s advocates say analog toys are a better bet for the holidays.
“Kids need lots of real human interaction. Play should support that, not take its place. The biggest thing to consider isnt only what the toy does; its what it replaces. A simple block set or a teddy bear that doesnt talk back forces a child to invent stories, experiment, and work through problems. AI toys often do that thinking for them,” she said. Heres the brutal irony: when parents ask me how to prepare their child for an AI world, unlimited AI access is actually the worst preparation possible.
Barbara Ortutay and Matt O’Brien, AP technology writers
