Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday to defend his companys practices in a landmark trial that could determine whether social media companies can be held liable for alleged harms to children. But if the defendants lose, the implications could extend far beyond social media.
The case centers on Meta and Google, with plaintiffs alleging that services like Instagram and YouTube are intentionally designed to keep users, especially kids, engageda dynamic they say can lead to harmful mental health effects, including addiction. The trial is widely viewed as a test case for roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Meta and Google deny the charges, with Zuckerberg testifying on Wednesday that “I care about the well-being of teens and kids who are using our services.”
If Meta and Google lose this case, it could change how people interact with their platforms. But the consequences may not stop there: The outcome could also have implications for other tech giants, as well as companies far outside the technology sector.
More insurance claims for social media addiction?
Insurance companies, for example, could see a rise in claims for digital or social media addiction treatment. For now, social media addiction is not recognized as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), the authoritative guide used to diagnose mental health issues. That makes specialized coverage rare, though insurers do pay for underlying mental health conditions caused or worsened by social media, such as anxiety, depression, or behavioral disorders.
Still, the DSM-5-TR is published by the American Psychiatric Association, which has warned that “excessive, compulsive or out-of-control use of various types of technologies is an increasing area of concern.” Business experts say a legal victory by the plaintiffs could accelerate that shift, making digital addiction a more bigger factor for insurers and employers alike.
“I think, depending on the outcome of this court case, that may give more credibility to the notion of digital addiction,” says David Schweidel, a marketing professor and the chair of Business Technology at Emory Universitys Goizueta Business School. “In an extreme scenario, social media could get labeled as the next Big Tobacco.”
Insurance companies declined to comment on the trial and its implications, but some have already taken steps to shield their liability when it comes to social media clients. In 2024, Hartford Casualty and several other insurers filed suit in Delaware seeking declaratory relief that they were not legally required to cover Metas legal defense or any resulting settlements or damages in a consolidated California case alleging that social media platforms contribute to harmful behaviors in children. (That case is still pending.)
And insurance companies may not be the only businesses to feel the ripple effects. If the jury finds that programmed algorithms are not protected by Section 230, the federal law that shields social media companies from liability over content posted by their users, it could expose many tech companies outside the social media industry to new legal risks.
Streamers could feel the effects, too
Streaming services that rely on autoplay to encourage binge-watching, or mobile games that lure players back with dopamine-triggering lock-screen alerts, could also find themselves on shakier legal ground. (The European Union, meanwhile, has opened a formal investigation into online retailer Shein that includes scrutiny of its addictive design, specifically gamified programs that reward shoppers with points and other incentives.)
Even smartphone makers could be forced to make changes, such as giving users more control over notifications. Other companies across the business spectrum could feel the effects if a growing number of people begin seeking treatment for digital addiction.
“Employers could potentially affected by severity of addition as well,” says Schweidel. “As the idea of treatment for digital addiction or social media addiction becomes more socially acceptable, people will be taking more time off work to get that treatment.”
Can a headline-making squabble with a client actually be good for a brand? This weeks dispute between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, a high-profile player in the super-competitive field of artificial intelligence, may be just that.
The dispute involves whether the Pentagon, which has an agreement to use Anthropic technology, can apply it in a wider range of scenarios: all lawful use cases. Anthropic has resisted signing off on some potential scenarios, and the Pentagon has essentially accused it of being overly cautious. As it happens, that assessment basically aligns with Anthropics efforts (most recently via Super Bowl ads aimed squarely at prominent rival OpenAI) to burnish a reputation as a thoughtful and considered AI innovator. At a moment when the pros-vs.-cons implications and potential consequences of AI are more hotly debated than ever, Anthropics public image tries to straddle the divide.
Presumably Anthropic (best known to consumers for its AI chat tool Claude) would prefer to push that reputation without alienating a lucrative client. But the underlying feud concerns how the military can use Anthropics technology, with the company reportedly seeking limits on applications involving mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. A Pentagon spokesman told Fast Company that the militarys relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed, adding: Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. The department has reportedly threatened to label Anthropic a supply chain risk, lumping it in with supposedly woke tech companies, causing potential problems not just for Anthropic but for partners like Palintir.
So far Anthropics basic stance amounts to: This is a uniquely potent technology whose eventualities we dont fully comprehend, so there are limits to uses well currently permit. Put more bluntly: We are not reckless.
Not moving so fast that you break important thingslike user trust, or civilizationis a message thats of a piece with the official image Anthropic has sought to cultivate. The company was founded by OpenAI refugees who argued back in 2021 that the company was prioritizing monetization over safety. Its recent Super Bowl ads are the highest-profile example of this branding so far: directly mocking OpenAI for experimenting with advertising on its consumer-facing product ChatGPT, and presenting the results as a slop-dystopian mess.
The spots were, as Fast Companys Jeff Beer explained, a rare example of straight-up ire slung at a category competitor. They could arguably be the first salvo in a branding battle akin to Apple vs. Microsoft, with Anthropic seizing the role of righteous challenger. (OpenAIs initial response included belittling Anthropics business, which just lends to the latters underdog pose.)
As a brand image to shoot for, being the responsible AI player is an understandable goal. The technology has been divisive for years at this point, and lately thats reached a crescendo. Seen by many as a threat to privacy, a job-killer, an environmental menace, and a source of endless misinformation and slop, its simultaneously touted by Silicon Valley elites and their intellectual brethren as an unprecedented boon to humanity.
The only point of agreement is that the changes will be big and fast and pretty much unstoppable. And no matter how much you already believe that, there is some guy on X arguing that you still dont really get it. No wonder there seems to be room for an AI company with a cautious message.
Of course this is branding were talking about, and ultimately Anthropic is under the same marketplace pressures as its rivals. And its actual behavior hasnt always been pristine. Notably it agreed last year to pay a record $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging its models trained on some 500,000 copyrighted books.
Despite its Pentagon dispute, its technology is already intertwined with the American military, and was reportedly used in the recent U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. And of course it may yet acquiesce to Pentagon demands. (According to Axios, Anthropics annual revenue is around $14 billion, and its Department of Defense deal is pegged at $200 millionnot chump change, but not existential.)
Still, the squabble is an occasion for Anthropic to demonstrate that its rhetoric and actions line up. At the very least, that could be good for its flagship chat tool Claude: Consumers tempted by AI hype but worried about its potential downsides may see Anthropic as the fledgling technologys least-reckless major player. And given how divisive the AI category has become, that might count as a brand win.
“I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space,” Elon Musk said last week when he announced his plan to go to the moon. “It’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.” He’s right. I want to see it too, although probably we will both be dead before his vision is realized.
The lunar mass driveressentially a cannon that uses magnetic power to accelerate an objectis a key component to launch the million satellites Musk wants to put in orbit around the Earth. But Musk wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. Smarter people than him thought about this in the 1970s as the solution to a key problem for human exploration.
Launching spacecraft from Earth is extremely expensive. Every pound lifted from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit costs thousands of dollars in fuel, hardware, and operational complexity. The farther you want to go in space, the more massive and complex the rocket has to be, increasing costs. Chemical rockets must carry their own oxidizer and propellant, which means most of the vehicle’s mass is just fuel to lift more fuel. This tyranny of the rocket equation has strangled space development for seven decades, only slightly eased by the economics of reusable rockets like the Falcon 9.
A mass driver could break that stranglehold by using electricity instead of explosives, turning launches into a utility-scale operation rather than a high-wire act. On the Moon, where gravity is one-sixth of Earth’s and there’s no atmosphere to create drag, this technology could launch payloads at a fraction of the costa few dollars per pound in electricity. Compare that to the $1,200 per pound it currently costs to launch a payload on a reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
[Image: Xai]
An elegant design
American physicist Gerard O’Neill and MIT physicist Henry Kolm built the first prototype of a mass driver in 1976 with a $2,000 budget. The Mass Drive 1 could fire objects at 131 feet per second while experiencing 33 times Earth’s gravity. Their next version achieved 10 times greater acceleration with a comparable funding increase. University of Texas researchers subsequently priced a serious version at $47 million for a device capable of launching a 22-pound payload at 13,400 miles per hour.
A mass driver is basically a very long track stretching across the lunar surface, angled gently skyward at its far end. The track is lined from end to end with hundreds of electromagnetic coils, which are simply loops of wire that snap into powerful magnets the instant electricity runs through them. A payload sits inside a magnetizable carrier called a bucket.
To move the bucket, the coils fire in a precise sequence, one after another, each energizing at exactly the right moment as the bucket reaches it, grabbing it forward, then cutting off the instant it passes. The result is a cascade of invisible magnetic hands, each passing the bucket to the next. The bucket never makes mechanical contact with any surface: It is held aloft and guided entirely by the interplay of magnetic fields, which is why these systems have a theoretical operational lifespan of up to millions of launches with negligible wear.
Musk describes it as a large maglev train, the same levitation technology that holds high-speed trains above their rails in Japan or China. But the mass driver reaches much faster speeds than any train on Earth: about 1.5 miles per second, enough to escape the gravity pull of the Moon. To achieve that speed, the mass driver uses two distinct engineered stages. In the first, the coils sit at equal intervals and their electrical timing locks to the bucket’s exact positioneach successive push arrives at precisely the right instant, so the force compounds as velocity builds.
In the second stage, the interval between coils progressively widens, which paces the pushes further apart in distance and holds the rate of acceleration constant rather than letting it keep climbing so the increase in acceleration doesnt destroy the bucket or its cargo. At the terminal end of the track, the bucket releases its payloada xAI satellite according to Musk’s visioninto space at a minimum speed of 5,300 mph, enough escape the Moon’s gravity. The trajectory that the load follows depends on the position of the Moon at the moment of the launch, following the orientation of the mass driver relative to the space.
Then the bucket gets caught by a braking system, recovered, and sent back to the beginning for the next launch. No combustion. No exhaust. No rocket equation. No problems.
Its a beautiful solution. Its also doable, as ONeill and Kolm demonstrated practically. According to independent researcher and author Keith Sadlocha, a working lunar mass driver would require a track between 1,620 and 5,350 feet long, operating at accelerations between 30 and 400 times Earth’s gravity in standard operation.
At those forces, only rugged, non-human cargo survives the ridewhich is exactly what Musk is planning. Musk has his sights set on manufacturing AI computing satellites on the lunar surface. The system can fire one payload every 10 to 11 seconds. Scaled to Musk’s stated target of one million satellites in orbit, that cadence, sustained continuously, is what makes the economics viable in a way no rocket ever could.
But to accomplish this, you will need a lot of electricity. For Musk’s purposes, system requires 8.7 to 20 megawatts of continuous power, enough to run a small town. Delivering that on the lunar surface requires between 400,000 and 634,000 square feet of solar arrayssomewhere between seven and 11 NFL football fields’ worth of panels according to Sadlocha’s calculations and NASA’s estimates. That’s using solar panel’s with an efficieny of roughly 30%, the figure NASA uses for cells especially designed for space use.
Since the Moon endures two weeks of total darkness every month, this means the mass driver either sits idle for half of every lunar cycle or relies on supplemental power to keep firing through the night. NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy are developing a solution: The Fission Surface Power (FSP) project, which builds on the earlier Kilopower research program to produce compact nuclear fission reactors targeting 10 to 40 kilowatts of continuous output each, capable of running for a decade without refueling.
Each FSP reactor will produce enough electricity to power just a few homes. Bridging the full gap between those modest reactors and a mass driver that demands the output of a small power plant would require deploying them not one or two at a time, but in the hundreds. That is not a technology problem so much as a logistics oneevery reactor has to be launched from Earth, landed softly on the Moon, and connected to the grid before the mass driver fires its first payload. The program, however, is still in development and a lunar deployment is not expected before the late 2020s at the earliest. And thats extremely optimistic, given the constant delays of those nuclear projects and the Moon return plans.
[Image: Xai]
Unrealistic timeline
Scaling from the $47 million 22-pound-launch prototype that University of Texas researchers projected to a working lunar installation capable of launching huge satellites is where you begin to feel just how vast the distance is between a compelling idea and a functioning machine.
Sadlocha estimates that a full lunar mass driver system requires approximately 362 metric tons of hardware. Thats 24 heavy-lift rocket launches worth of components that must be manufactured on Earth, survive a 239,000-mile journey through the void, and be assembled by people wearing pressurized suits on a surface thatbathed by radiationis extremely hostile to humans.
That surface is coated in lunar dust too, ultra-fine abrasive shaped by billions of years of micrometeoroid impacts into particles with microscopic cutting edges that never dulled, because there has never been wind or rain or any erosive force on the Moon to round them off. It clings electrostatically to visors, suits, seals, and coil windings alike. The payload carriers themselves face thermal melting at extreme velocities, demanding materials that do not yet exist in proven lunar-rated form. You can argue that maybe Musks Optimus robots can avoid this, but his robots can barely function on Earth.
Musk’s stated plan is to mine lunar silicon and oxygen and manufacture the server hardware on the surfacea bootstrapping strategy that, if it works, would reduce Earth-launch dependency over time toward what he called a self-growing city capable of rapid expansion from local resources.
The Moon does contain silicon, oxygen, helium-3, and water ice at the poles. But the superconducting coils at the heart of the mass driver require precisely manufactured materials that the lunar industry will not be able to produce in decades. Every critical component rides to the Moon on Starship until that changes. We know that Starship is so behind schedule that it has pushed the first mission back to the Moon from 2027s NASA projected time to 2028.
Sadlocha rates the technology at readiness level 5 on NASA’s 1-to-9 scale components validated in laboratories, not yet tested in space. Realistic deployment, his study concludes, will take between 5 and 15 years from the moment serious investment begins. That can take the project into the 2040s, easily. Thats why Lluc Palerm, satellite research director at Analysys Mason, said to PC Magazine that Musk’s lunar server plan carries a magnitude of challenge equivalent to a Mars mission.
But like we already pointed out, Musk’s timeline is fantasy, or “aspirational” as he qualifies his predictions. The gap between his ambitious renderings and actual functioning hardware remains a dream measured in decades, not the 10 years he’s promising investors before his planned June 2026 initial public offering targeting a $1.5 trillion valuation. Musk is no JFK, and building factories and a mass driver on the Moon is orders of magnitude more complex than just putting boots on the Moon like the Apollo program did. It’s doable, yes. We’ll get the mass driver, eventually. Just not on Musk time.
The retail platform eBay is set to acquire fashion resale app Depop from Etsy in a $1.2 billion transaction. Ostensibly, the deal will help eBay to cultivate a new audience of Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers. But I think theres a deeper reason that eBay might want to lock Depop down: its simply the best looking resale interface out there right now.
The deal was announced on February 18 in a press release from Etsy. Its expected to close some time in the second quarter of 2026, and, per an email sent to Depops customers, after the merger Depop will remain a stand-alone brand within eBay and retain its name, brand, and platform.
For eBay, acquiring Depop makes a good measure of intuitive sense. Generally, resale is trending upward: Based on ThredUps 2025 Resale Report, the secondhand apparel market is expected to reach $367 billion by 2029, growing 2.7 times faster than the overall global apparel market. Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha shoppers are some of the strongest drivers of that trend, with 39% of younger generation shoppers having made a secondhand apparel purchase on a social commerce platform in the 12 months before the study was published.
Depop is one of the top platforms for young people looking to buy and sell clothes. In 2025, the brand achieved approximately $1 billion in sales, including nearly 60% year-over-year growth in the U.S. As of December 31, it had seven million active customers, nearly 90% of which were younger than 34. That user base will be a major boon for eBay, who says that millennial and Gen Z consumers have been two of the biggest drivers of active buyer growth in the past three years.
As a Gen Z vintage clothing enthusiast, Ive shopped on pretty much every resale site you can think of, from Poshmark and ThredUp to eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, and Etsy. Among all of these options, Depop is far and away the best resale site to look at and the easiest one to use. Thats not to say that Depop doesnt have any issuesa brief glance at the sites subreddit will reveal plenty of user grievances, not least of which is the tendency of certain Depop sellers to price a Brandy Melville baby tee at a cost that could put your checking account in the red.
But from a pure UX and design standpoint, Depop is far outperforming its competitors by taking its major design cues from popular social media apps. And for a digitally native generation thats used to doing most of their shopping online, that makes a big difference.
A social media-esque app experience
Depop knows that its customers are young, tech savvy, and probably spending most of their phone time on social media sites like TikTok and Instagramand it shows in the apps design.
Depop homepage [Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
When you open the Depop app, youre immediately greeted with a Suggested for you page that’s functionally similarly to TikToks Explore feature. Here, the Depop algorithm presents you with an endlessly scrollable page of items curated based on your searches, likes, and saveslike how TikTok or Instagram might serve you videos according to your interests.
In contrast, eBays app homepage looks more similar to a standard e-commerce webpage, directing users to its different goods categories and promoting whatever deals and sales are currently trending.
eBay homepage [Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
In terms of its layout, Depops app is simple and aesthetically pleasing. Its interface is almost identical to Pinterestwhere many customers are likely looking for outfit inspirationwith a subtle bar of categories at the bottom of the page and about four spotlighted items on view at a time.
The minimalist information density encourages you to keep scrolling to find more items, rather than overwhelming you with a sea of information. Other apps, like Poshmark, eBay, and ThredUp, seem to opt instead for presenting users with a wealth of options to choose from when they first log on, which, counterintuitively, can make scrolling feel less appealing.
While I tend to open my computer if I want to browse other retail sites, I almost always open Depop on my phone, and imagine it in a similar category to social media apps. Considering that the secondhand apparel market is becoming so popular among younger shoppers, other resale platforms might want to take note.
Simple selling UI
Over the past few months, Ive developed the niche hobby of restoring and selling vintage wedding dresses online (typically for a profit of about $10 apiece, but Im in it for the fun of the game). Having used both Depop and Etsy to sell my own products, I find Depops seler UX more intuitive and simple to follow.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
From an app standpoint, Etsy has two separate platforms: one app for selling, and one app for buying. On its website, sellers also have to navigate to a shop management platform to look at their listings. Depop, on the other hand, is consolidated into one app experience, where sellers can manage all of their listings and their purchases.
Creating an actual Depop listing feels akin to making a post on Instagram. Sellers navigate to a + at the bottom of the app (like Instagram), add a series of photos and a caption (also like Instagram), and include a few key tags for their item. Depop also handles shipping through a system that lets users provide an estimate of their items weight and then creates an appropriate label. Shipping on Etsy is more seller-directed. While some more experienced sellers might prefer Etsys approach, Depops feels more beginner-friendly.
A final refuge from AI listings
One of my biggest personal gripes with the current state of resale shopping is the absolute deluge of AI-generated product images that seem to have flooded certain sites over the past few months.
From top: Depop, eBay, Etsy. [Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
In my experience, eBay and Etsy are the biggest offenders of this trend. Searching for the term fantasy dress, on eBay and Etsy, for example, leads to at least one out of four top results with all the hallmarks of an AI image. The same search on Depop yields results that all seem to be real photographs. This example is just one small microcosm of the shopping experience on these sites: while AI photos are becoming increasingly common in resale, buying on Depop still largely feels like sifting through a strangers closet, which was the sites original charm.
Its unclear exactly why AI photos seem less prominent on Depop; though it may be related to the companys regulations against stock photos. In its guidelines, Depop instructs sellers to Only use photos taken by yourself. Depop didnt immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on its AI imagery policies.
Even if you barely use AI, pretty soon you’ll be paying the price for it.
Due to the demands of AI data centers, memory supplies are drying up for all kinds of devices, from phones and laptops to desktop PCs and game consoles. Three companies control nearly all the world’s DRAM productionMicron Technology, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynixand they’ve shifted production toward the type of RAM that those data centers run on. This comes at the expense of RAM for consumer electronics, resulting in a shortage that could last into 2028.
It’s early days for the fallout, but what sounded like an abstract concern in 2025 is quickly becoming real, as electronics makers raise prices, delay new devices, and cancel products that aren’t essential to their businesses.
To illustrate exactly how AI is sucking the life out of consumer electronics, here’s a running list of every device that’s being affected by the RAM crunch. I plan to update this list over time, so feel free to reach out via email or on Bluesky if you spot any more bad news.
Price hikes
Standalone RAM kits for desktop PCs were among the first products affected by the RAM crunch. For instance, a 32 GB RAM kit from Crucial that cost around $70 in July now sells for $324.
Framework has repeatedly raised RAM prices for its repairable laptops, so a laptop with 8 GB of RAM now costs $90 more than it did in September.
The Raspberry Pi 5 micro-computer with 16 GB of RAM now costs $205, up from $120 prior to December.
Valve has discontinued the LCD model of its Steam Deck gaming handheld, effectively raising the starting price from $399 to $549 for the version with an OLED screen.
Desktop PC maker CyberPower raised prices across all of its systems in December.
Chinese phone maker Xiaomi raised tablet prices by $14 to $42 in December, and raised the price of its flagship 17 Ultra phone by about $76 over the previous model.
PC makers such as Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and Asus have all confirmed 15% to 20% price hikes in the months ahead, according to IDC.
A Dell price list viewed by Business Insider showed price hikes for a range of laptops, including increases of $130 to $230 for Dell Pro and Pro Max laptops with 32 GB of RAM.
It’s still a rumor for now, but sources tell Bloomberg that Nintendo is considering a price hike for its Switch 2 console.
Delays
Valve has indefinitely delayed its Steam Machine desktop/gaming system and its Steam Frame VR system, and has held off on announcing prices for either.
Sources tell Bloomberg that Sony is considering a delay for its next PlayStation console until 2028 or even 2029.
Sources tell The Information that Nvidia won’t release new graphics cards in 2026. This would be its first year in three decades without new GPUs for gaming.
Disappearances
Valve says its Steam Deck OLED gaming handheld will be “intermittently” out of stock due to memory and storage shortages.
Intel reportedly scrapped its highly anticipated B770 graphics card, with memory shortages as a possible factor.
In the burgeoning “ChiFi” audio gear scene, HiBy Digital suspended pre-sales of its latest digital audio player in December.
Degradations
In December, the market research firm TrendForce said to expect laptops and phones with less memory than earlier models as an alternative to price hikes. This could result in low-end phones with just 4 GB of RAM, and laptops once again returning to 8 GB of RAM as a baseline.
What’s next?
The list of affected companies is still missing some big names, partly because those companies are in better position to ride out the RAM shortage. Apple, for instance, negotiates long-term supply contracts well in advance for products like the iPhone, so it’s potentially bought itself more time than competitors. Lenovo, meanwhile, confirmed that it’s been stockpiling RAM to minimize disruptions this year.
There’s also a chance that alternative suppliers could step in to blunt the impact. According to Jason England at Tom’s Guide, Acer is now looking into the smaller RAM providers that haven’t gone all-in on AI, and may see an opportunity to cater to consume electronics in particular.
But given that Samsung reportedly can’t even get extra RAM from itself for its forthcoming flagship phones, some adjustments seem inevitable even for the largest electronics makers.
Stacie Haller, a consultant for executives, recently had a meeting with a former business owner in his early 80s. Hed sold his business, started playing golf, and discovered something about himself: he found golf extremely boring.
And now, even though he doesnt need to be, hes back on the job market.
Im so vital, hed told Haller, Im still in the game.
Haller is a senior herself. She says could have stuck with retirement after getting furloughed from her recruiting job during the pandemic. Instead, she started independently consulting for senior executives and for Resume Builder. Now? Shes working part-time and earning as much as she did before.
I’m happier now in my career than I’ve ever been, she says.
According to recent survey of more than 3,500 U.S. seniors by Resume Builder, around one in eight have returned to work as of December 2025, or are planning to do so. Another 16% have never retired, and 4% were actively applying for jobs.
Another survey, by financial advice company The Motley Fool from October 2025, found that 54% of 2,000 Americans who get Social Security benefits have returned to work or considered going back because Social Security benefits are so low.
But, as in the case of Hallers former business owner, thats not the only factor driving what some call unretirement.
The number-one answer is usually related to money, but it’s not the clear winner,” says Robert Brokamp, senior retirement adviser at The Motley Fool. “There are many people who do go back to work because they got bored. They got lonely. They needed something to do.
When you are older, you actually have an opportunity to try something newor not have as much stress with your job, says Haller.
While these reasons keeping seniors working may have applied in the past, theyre arguably driving more of a trend now because of how work has changed since the pandemic: Flexible, hybrid, and remote work opportunities make it much easier for seniors, who may have health or mobility issues, to remain in the workforce.
Rising costs of living
Brokamp says that theres no question that people in their 60s through 80s are returning or continuing to work at increasing rates. With people living well into their 90s, theyve got a lot more time to budget for, especially in todays economy.
In Resume Builders survey, 54% of respondents attributed continuing or returning to work after an initial retirement to the high cost of living. I don’t know a person that doesn’t go to the supermarket and walk out and say, Are you kidding me? Haller says.
Such everyday costs also amplify concerns seniors have about Social Security and Medicare, which 26% and 19% in that survey, respectively, cited as their reasons for working. Though Social Security did undergo a recent 2.8% cost of living adjustment increase, 54% of recipients told The Motley Fool that wasnt high enough. With inflation at 2.7%, that increase might seem like enoughbut the problem, says Brokamp, is that inflation often plays out differently for working professionals than retirees.
The inflation rate for healthcare is over 3%, he saysa major cost for seniors, who not only may visit doctors more regularly, but also tend to spend more on prescription medications than their younger counterparts.
Other financial factors that drive seniors to return to work include not having saved enough for retirement, having to pay off debt (medical or otherwise), and needing to support their children, per Resume Builder.
This picture, of course, looks different across different wealth brackets. Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a research fellow at Boston Colleges Center for Retirement Research, has found that people whove earned less income during their careers, and therefore dont have as much emergency savings, can get drawn back into the labor market with a single health shock to them or a family member.
Unlike other surveys, Sanzenbachers research points to a low unretirement rate of 1.9%, which he says comes from looking at narrower timelines (as in, seniors working at the time of the survey, not within that year).
Right now, you have a perfect storm of reasons why the unretirement rate might be low, Sanzenbacher says. That includes a not-great job market (more people unretire in good job markets because they have more opportunities, he says) and a high stock market. So, retirees relying on 401Ks, for example, should be well in the black.
This, to him, suggests that people unretiring now must be doing it because they really need the cash.
Continued vitality, personal fulfillment
If seniors are reentering the workforce by choice post-retirement, theyre likely doing it to have some funand are perhaps more likely to be doing more independent work, like starting their own businesses, which doesnt rely on getting hired.
Haller mentions seniors whove emerged from retirement to start their own Etsy shops, and Sanzenbacher brings up the idea of a retired worker whos always wanted to be a tour guide finally fulfilling that dream. The desire to return to work to try something new, says Sanzenbacher, is very common among higher income or more educated workers. Typically, he adds, those post-career jobs relate to the former retirees original career.
They were a lawyer, and now they’re an arbitration judge who works one day a week on Zoom, suggests Sanzenbacher, or they were a teacher, and now they’re a tour guide. Sometimes, these reentries are part of long-term plans. Other times, says Sanzenbacher, it can be [from] the realization that retirement isn’t as fun as what people thought.
The evidence on whether retirement is good for us is very mixed, and it really depends on what you’re retiring from and what you’re retiring to, says Brokamp. Many people have boring, stressful, arduous jobs, and retirement is very good for them. On the other hand, many people had decent jobs that they actually somewhat enjoyed, and when they retire, they feel adrift.
This rings true for a lot of the seniors Haller speaks with about unretirement. After enjoying work, at 54%, Resume Builder survey respondents described non-financial factors like combatting boredom and to socialize as significant reasons to keep working or go back to work after retirement.
Mark Brodsky, 72, director of Field Associate Learning at Lowes, has barely even conceived of retirement, though people often ask him when hes going to do it. Usually, without missing a beat, I say, The day I have no further value to provide and or my value is not needed or wanted. This could mean never retiring.
Did Picasso stop painting? he asks. I spent 50 years developing my craft . . . Why should I put that on the shelf?
Flexible work, more options
Haller, for one, says she can work as much as she does because working remotely, or in hybrid positions, has become such a norm. Our bodies age, says Haller. Honestly, I’m not getting on a commuter train for two hours a day anymore.
The flexibilitythat often comes with remote or part-time work fits with what most seniors returning to work from retirement are looking for, anyway. I don’t know any 70- or 75-year-old who really wants that high-pressured, C-suite job if they’re going back to work, Haller says, and they should make this clear to employers if theyre looking for the kind of work that requires getting hired (instead of working independently like Haller).
Haller suggests seniors tell hiring managers that theyre looking for more relaxed positions than in their previous careers. Otherwise, hiring might assume seniors are looking for the same, high salaries they retired with, and not want to spend that much money on an employee whos likely not going to remain in the workforce for very long.
We have to overcome that objection, Haller says, by making it explicit to employers that salaries commensurate with past full-time jobs arent what unretirees are requesting. Make that known in cover letters or networking conversations, Haller suggests, and emphasize the pros youll bring to the office even if youre not necessarily in it for as long as younger workers.
Seniors coming out of retirement have probably seen every situation in the workforce already, Haller says, and can keep a cool head encountering problems while valuably mentoring younger colleagues.
Brodsky calls this scar tissue: Life provides you bumps and bruises, and scar tissue is actually an attribute . . . If I were hiring a senior executive for important work, I’d want to bring on somebody who had scar tissue.
Regardless of the reasons for returning to work, the overall message is clear.
We don’t go off into pasture when we turn 65 anymore, Haller says. We have choices now.
From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many executives think that bringing employees back to the office is the secret to restoring productivity. But theyre wrong. Thats not what’s happening in those newly populated offices.
Instead, your employees are more likely to be joining video calls from company desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones while doing work they could have done at home. Only now they’re paying $20 to commute and eating sad desk salads to get through the day.
The timing couldnt be more ironic. A new wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates arrive just as companies pour millions into AI initiatives designed to automate work, eliminate roles, and drive bottom-line efficiency.
Leaders advocate for AI as the engine of the future, one that can streamline and modernize how work gets done. So, why are they forcing people back into offices designed for workflows that AI is actively making obsolete?
Recent research shows what many employees have known all along: RTO mandates dont improve productivity, innovation, or team connection. But they do weaken morale and accelerate attrition.
If companies want better long-term performance, they might consider paying attention to the employee experience instead of treating it as a footnote to investor expectations. And they should also recognize that unpopular RTO policies reflect a deeper tensionone that AI is making increasingly clear.
The Quiet Part Out Loud
RTO mandates arent failing because the concept of in-person collaboration is flawed. Theyre failing because the justifications are.
Executives keep saying they want to rebuild culture, but the real motives often tell a different story: investor pressure, managements discomfort with remote autonomy, or the convenient use of office mandates as a cover for workforce reduction.
At a time when AI is openly positioned as a way to reduce labor costs, some companies appear to be using RTO as a secondary mechanism to achieve this, nudging employees to quit so severance costs stay low. Its a cost-saving strategy dressed up as culture building. When employees become line items, distrust becomes the default operating model.
Other companies are stuck in the past, clinging to the office as a symbol of managerial control. But if an employee underperforms remotely, geography isnt the issue. Leadership is.
At its core, the return-to-office push reflects a deeper tension: companies urgently investing in technologies that decentralize and automate work, while simultaneously doubling down on physical presence as proof of productivity. Its a contradiction that exposes a lack of coherent strategy for the future of work.
Two Transitions Collide: AI and the Office
As AI reshapes job responsibilities and absorbs repetitive tasks, two seismic organizational transitions are happening at once: shrinking the demand for human labor and shrinking the relevance of the physical office. Its not hard to see how these forces collide.
Some leaders seem to be using office presence to manage this uncertainty, both to subtly reduce headcount and to maintain control during a period when technology threatens traditional hierarchies.
But proximity isnt a proxy for performance and visibility wont stop AI from transforming work. If anything, it simply delays the hard strategic conversations leaders need to have.
What Actually Works
A more effective approach asks deeper questions about the work itself. Which activities genuinely benefit from real-time, in-person creativity? Which roles depend on deep focus? Where does mentorship thrive? And crucially, what does our data (not nostalgia) tell us?
At my firm, Orgvue, we took the time to analyze our own workflows end-to-end before deciding on an office working policy. And we found that our product teams saw real value from whiteboarding sessions in a physical space, while our customer success teams performed better with the flexibility to work from wherever made sense for their client base. A one-size-fits-all approach would have failed both groups.
To enhance these in-office interactions, we redesigned our workspaces to introduce collaboration hubs for teamwork, quiet areas for deep work, and a podcast studiobecause modern work demands modern tools. People come into the office when it makes sense, not because a memo told them to.
The Trust Test
When companies issue blanket RTO mandates, they send a very clear signal: “We don’t trust you.” Thats a dangerous message at a time when competitors are winning talent with flexibility and autonomy.
So, before you mandate a return to the office, it might be helpful to ask yourself the following questions:
Can we prove with data that office presence improves productivity for specific teams?
Have we designed an office people actually want to come to?
Are we solving productivity challenges or satisfying executive preference?
Skip these questions, and you may learn an expensive lesson: your best people have options, and they’re not afraid to use them.
The Bottom Line
U.S. businesses are at a crossroads. Those that demand five days in the office will be competing against those offering more flexible work arrangements. And when it comes to technology investment, the irony is clear. While companies invest heavily in AI to improve efficiency, agility, and independence, theyre simultaneously enforcing policies that undermine all three.
In short, the organizations that succeed will be the ones that align their work models with their technology strategies. That means embracing autonomy and data-driven insight rather than badge swipes.
Want higher productivity? Fix your management practices. Want better collaboration? Design better systems. Want more engaged employees? Trust them to do their jobs. Because if you need to see someone to believe they’re working, the problem isn’t remote work, and AI is about to make that painfully obvious.
Below, George Newman shares five key insights from his new book, How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success.
George is an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and he has spent his career trying to unravel the mysteries of what creativity is and where it comes from. His research has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, BBC, Scientific American, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Whats the big idea?
Most of us think great ideas are conjured from withinsome mysterious well of genius possessed by a special few. But if you listen closely to historys most celebrated creators, youll hear something completely different. They describe their greatest work not as something they conjured or invented, but as something they found. Not creation, but discovery.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by George himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. The five percent novelty rule
Theres a famous story about Post-It Notes. In 1968, a chemist named Spencer Silver was trying to create a super-strong adhesive that could be used to make airplanes. Instead, he wound up discovering pretty much the exact opposite: a glue that was barely strong enough to hold paper togetherthough it could be used again and again without losing its stickiness.
For years, Silver brainstormed different products. His first big idea was a sticky bulletin board. That went nowhere. The next idea, which came from his colleague Art Fry, was a reusable bookmark. That also flopped. Finally, after almost a decade of brainstorming, Silver landed on Post-It Notes, and the rest is history.
Silvers story is often told as one of grit and perseverance. And, no doubt, stick-to-itiveness is an important part of creativity. But when you think about it, the sticky bulletin board, reusable bookmarks, and Post-Its were essentially three different versions of the same basic idea: paper + Silvers adhesive. Yet, only one was a major hit.
Often, when we think about what makes certain ideas great, theres a tendency to focus on the differenceshow much a breakthrough idea towers above the rest. But rather than focusing on what differentiates great ideas, I want you to instead think about the similaritieshow close those breakthrough ideas are to many others just like them.
Just like in the story of Post-Its, for every great idea we can point to in history, there were dozens, maybe even hundreds of ideas that were just like itnearly identical versions of the same thing that failed to catch on because they lacked a small, but crucial element. For example, when John Lennon originally wrote the Beatles song Please, Please Me, it was a slow ballad. George Martin suggested the group try speeding it up. Would the Beatles not have been The Beatles without a small tempo change? It seems almost impossible to imagine, and yet, history is filled with examples that suggest exactly that. How many breakthrough ideas are sitting in someones drawer right now, just one small adjustment away from changing the world?
Great ideas arent about inventing something radically new. Theyre about finding the missing adjustment, tweak, or change that unlocks an idea and makes it your own. We often get this backward. In my own research on creativity, I have found that when people set out to do something creative they often focus too much on trying to be original and different from everyone else. In one study, we had home chefs create sandwiches for a food truck. We found that our chefs thought that the more original they made their recipe, the more attractive it would be to others. But when we presented those sandwiches to customers, we found the opposite: the more original the chefs tried to be, the less willing customers were to try their sandwiches. Those chefs had forgotten the most important ingredient of all: making their food taste good.
How many breakthrough ideas are sitting in someones drawer right now, just one small adjustment away from changing the world?
We also analyzed multiple seasons of the show Top Chef and found the same thing. When contestants explicitly said they were trying to be original and different from everyone else, they were more than twice as likely to have the worst-rated dish and get eliminated. So, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Just make it spin a little differently.
The recipe for a great idea is surprisingly simple: Make the main dish conventional, something familiar and known. Then add something speciala spice or twistmaking it new, exciting, and your own.
2. Be a problem finder
Okay, so you need to find that missing five percent. But how? One of my favorite studies on creativity comes from one of my favorite psychologists, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He spent years investigating what distinguished truly creative individuals, and he found that the most creative people werent just good at solving problems. They were exceptional at finding them.
In one study, Csikszentmihalyi and his colleague, Jacob Getzels, recruited a group of art students studying at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. One by one, each of the artists was led into a studio furnished with two tables. On one table was a collection of objects that artists might typically use to create a still life. On the other table were drawing supplies, including paper, pencils, and charcoal.
The instructions were straightforward: Choose some objects from the first table, arrange them in any manner you like, then create a drawing. The artists were free to take as much time as they wanted, start over if they needed, and to stop only when they were satisfied with the outcome.
Most of the artists quickly got to work. But some artists did something different. They spent time handling the objects, feeling their weight, studying them from different angles. Looking at the negative space that formed in between them. They were searching for somethinga problem worth solving, or a question worth asking.
Then Csikszentmihalyi waitedfor 18 years. When he followed up with the artists nearly two decades later, the ones who talked about drive or ambition were not the ones who were successful. Nor was it the ones who opined generally on the importance of seeking beauty, or order, or harmony. It wasnt the artists who seemed confident, nor was it the ones who had worked out a deep, philosophical approach to their artistic practice. Instead, it was the problem finders, the artists who approached the drawing task without any preconceived notions and allowed the shape and structure of their still life to emerge from the situation itself.
When we pay close attention to our surroundings, new opportunities and challenges begin to reveal themselves.
When it comes to finding the missing element that unlocks a breakthrough idea, it is essential to adopt the mindset of a problem finder. When we pay close attention to our surroundings, new opportunities and challenges begin to reveal themselves. Our task then is to learn to recognize these signalsto see that creativity isnt about forcing solutions but about uncovering what an idea needs.
Finding a great idea takes a ot of work, trial and error, and even a bit of luck. But theres also a lot that you can do to increase your chances of finding something great. Notice where there are problems, tensions, or places of resonance. Author Margaret Atwood doesnt just sit in a cabin waiting for inspiration. She digs through archives, historical records, and newspaper clippings to find the inspiration for her stories. Creativity isnt magic. Its about looking outward and remaining attentive to the world around you.
3. Push past the creative cliff
Once youve found your problem, its time to dig. And heres where most people sabotage themselves. Researchers Brian Lucas and Loran Nordgren asked people to brainstorm ideas for five minutesthings like how a charity could increase donations. Before starting, they asked participants to predict their productivity: How many ideas do you think youll come up with in the first minute? How many in the second minute? And so on.
People expected the first two minutes to be productive, followed by a sharp drop-off. Raffle, bake sale, door-to-door solicitationsreally, how many fundraising ideas could there be?
But when people actually brainstormed, something fascinating happened. The first minute was strong. The second minute was even better. But then, instead of falling off a cliff, participants just kept generating more and more ideas. The third minute was more productive than the second. The fourth and fifth were even more productive. And whats more, when other people rated the ideas, they scored the ideas from the latter half of the session as more promising than the early ideas.
We call this the creative cliff illusion. People think theyll run out of ideas, but the opposite is true. Just when you think youve exhausted every possibility, thats probably when your process is really starting to heat up.
Look at some of the most successful creators in history. Thomas Edison held more than a thousand patents, including duds like cement furniture and a creepy talking doll. James Dyson built over five thousand prototypes before finalizing his vacuum design. When Dua Lipa recorded Radical Optimism, she wrote 97 songsonly 11 made the final cut.
When you think youre done brainstorming, keep digging. Generate a hundred or 500 names for your business, not just ten. Schedule multiple brainstorming sessions over several days, not just one. When it comes to generating ideas, more is more.
4. Great ideas are worth waiting for
If youre generating hundreds of ideas, how do you know which ones are worth pursuing? Theres a wonderful anecdote about Albert Einstein that captures this perfectly.
Years after developing his theory of relativity, Einstein was discussing his creative process with his friend and psychologist Max Wertheimer. Einstein explained that before his big breakthrough, hed been bothered by something. Not confused, not stuckbothered. There was a tension he couldnt resolve, a gap between what he observed and what the current theories predicted. That discomfort, that sense of something not feeling right, was the spark that eventually led to one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history.
We become significantly better at evaluating our own ideas with a little time and space.
The research shows that we can be surprisingly bad at knowing when weve struck gold. One reason is that great ideasespecially when we first think of themcan feel abstract and even a bit uncomfortable. A second reason is that we can become overly attached to an idea simply because we were the one who thought of it. Ive found that people actually have a great deal of difficulty evaluating the quality of their own ideas, in part because of the sudden rush of excitement we get when thinking of a new idea.
One solution is simply to wait. We become significantly better at evaluating our own ideas with a little time and space. Another solution is to invite others inother people can provide a much more accurate assessment of an ideas promise precisely because they are less attached to it.
Great ideas are worth waiting for. Studies of entrepreneurs have shown that the very first kernel of an idea can predict a products success just as much as the final product itself. Ideas contain structure; they suggest what comes next. As Andrew Stanton from Pixar once said, Youre digging away, and you dont know what dinosaur youre uncovering. But once you start getting a glimpse of it, you know how better to dig.
So dont rush past discomfort. Lean into it. Bring others in. The ideas that bother you, that feel awkward or strangethose might be exactly what youre looking for.
5. Think about what you can take away
Now comes the hard part: deciding what to keep and what to discard. In 1984, Paul Simon was in a funk. His marriage to Carrie Fisher had ended, and his previous albums were commercial disappointments. Then a friend gave him an unmarked cassette of street music from South Africa. Simon listened to it nonstop. By summers end, he knew he had to go to Johannesburg.
Simon spent two weeks in South African recording studios, essentially jamming with local musicians, generating as much material as possible. Then he returned to the U.S. and spent an entire year editing. He selected engaging segments, pieced them together, overdubbed, and transformed those free-form sessions into songs. The editing was so extensive that Simon pioneered the use of digital audio workstations in studio recording. The result was Graceland, which many consider Paul Simons greatest work. But heres whats crucial: Simon wasnt looking for what he could add. He was looking for what he could take away.
This goes against our instincts. Psychologist Gabrielle Adams showed that when improving a piece of writing, rather than removing the redundancies, most people add more material. In another study with visual designs, people almost never removed elementsthey just kept adding.
Often, the biggest breakthroughs are revealed when we can strip away everything thats not needed.
Its easy think about creativity like building a tower. You want to stack everything youve done, showcase all your effort. But your audience isnt in the tower business. Theyre in the raft-inspection business. Theyre looking for holes, for weak spots that will sink the project.
So, when youre refining your idea, think about floating a raft. Remove anything that doesnt directly serve your core purpose. Often, the biggest breakthroughs are revealed when we can strip away everything thats not needed.
Creativity isnt a mysterious gift possessed by a chosen few. Its a process of discovery that anyone can learn. Stop waiting for genius to strike. Start exploring, imitating, and problem-finding. Push past the cliff when you want to quit. Trust the discomfort of promising ideas. Great ideas are often hiding in plain sightyou just need to know where to look and what to strip away. The tools of discovery are available to all of us. You just have to be willing to dig.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If thats the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression?
The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, youll be far more persuasive than youve ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives.
BRAIN RULES FOR THE WORKPLACE
The brain doesnt pay attention to boring things, says John Medina, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington and author of the bestseller Brain Rules. If the brain is bored with something, itll move on to something else. It has a lot of stuff to do, Medina told me.
According to Medina, our brains lock onto stimuli that evoke an emotion. Medina says this stimuli acts like a mental Post-it note, telling your listeners brain to pay attention to you and your ideas.
Imagine being able to identify the exact emotional triggers that will hold your listeners attention.
Well, thanks to scientific experiments in the lab, we now know what grabbed peoples attention when they lived in caves. It turns out the secret to effective communication isnt new. Its an ancient formula that can be traced back some 2,300 years to a really smart guy named Aristotle, the father of persuasion.
ARTISTOTLES FORMULA FOR PERSUASION
Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, said that a persuasive speech has three elements: ethos, logos, and pathos.
Ethos is credibility. These are the things that often precede you before you walk into the room to give a presentation. They are your résumé builders, your credentials, and your experience.
Logos is logic. These are the facts and figures you provide to support your argument.
Pathos. These are the emotional hooks that make people care.
Pathos is the tricky element, especially in todays workplace. How do you connect emotionally with your audience through PowerPoint, Zoom, or an online video? Once again, the ancients revealed the secret that makes people stars on the TED stage and TikTok.
STORYTELLING IS YOUR SUPERPOWER
Storytelling is not something we do. Storytellers are who we are.
Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and author of Sapiens, one of the bestselling nonfiction books in the world. When I interviewed Harari about communication skills, he shared a theory that completely changed the way I teach public speaking.
It all startsand endswith story.
According to Harari, Sapiensour speciesdominated the world because they could use language to tell stories. We are wired for stories because narratives were the key to convincing large groups of people to cooperate.
Great stories follow structures. The three-act structure is the most popular. Youll see it in nearly every Hollywood movie.
Act 1. Set-up: We meet the hero and experience the world they live in.
Act 2. Conflict: This is the middle hour of a film where the hero embarks on an adventure and encounters villains, hurdles, challenges, and near-death experiences.
Act 3. Resolution: During the final 30 minutes of most films, the hero resolves the conflict, slays the dragon, and returns with the treasure.
The three-act structure doesnt just work for movies. Its the foundation for great business presentations, too.
Steve Jobs followed the formula to launch the iPhone in 2007. In the first few minutes, he talked about Apples experience in designing great products. He then introduced the problem, or what he called the usual suspects. Jobs explained how existing smartphones were complicated and hard to use. The better path would be to get rid of the fixed keyboard and replace it with a giant screen customers would navigatenot with a stylusbut with their fingers.
The pattern is simple, and you can follow it for nearly any pitch or presentation: status quo, problem, solution. Describe the way the world works today for your customer. Explain the problem your customer might be facing in the current world. Reveal the solution to the customers problem.
Many content creators who find success on social media follow the structure, whether they know it or not.
Sahil Bloom, a former finance professional who now shares business advice to nearly 1 million Instagram followers, recommends following the three-act structure when pitching ideas.
Its very simple, really. First, paint a very clear, vivid picture of what the world looks like today. Then describe why the current world is bad, dark, and stormy. Finally, paint a very clear, vivid picture of what the world would look like in the future that you envision. Beautiful, sunny, clear skies. If you can take an investor on that journey, youll get all the money you need to raise.
Did you spot the pattern? Its no different from the three acts of a Hollywood movie. Its just condensed from two hours into a 20-minute presentation or a 20-second Instagram reel.
Persuasion, by definition, means combining words and ideas to move people to action. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you cannot convince other people to take action on that idea, you wont be nearly as successful as you could be.
Your ideas deserve to be heard. Sharpen your communication skills, avoid boring content, and keep your audience engaged, and youll transform both their world and your career.
At first glance, it could be the trailer for a new Hollywood blockbuster starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2, Irish filmmaker Ruairí Robinson clarifies in a caption on X of the 15-second clip, which shows two of the industrys biggest stars locked in a fistfight on a crumbling rooftop, complete with sweeping camera angles and crisp sound effects.
This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2. If the hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk. pic.twitter.com/dNTyLUIwAV— Ruairi Robinson (@RuairiRobinson) February 11, 2026
The viral AI-generated clip has garnered more than 1.8 million views since it was posted on X last week, triggering panic and backlash from Hollywood.
Deadpool screenwriter Rhett Reese reposted the video with the message, “I hate to say it. Its likely over for us.”
I hate to say it. Its likely over for us. https://t.co/248PmWnEgr— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) February 11, 2026
Much has been made of the threat AI poses to a range of industries, including Hollywood. From screenwriters to special effects teams, the dawning realization that the latest tools can now produce highly realistic likenesses alongside high-octane production has only deepened the anxiety among already beleaguered industry insiders.
Reese expanded on his stance in a follow-up X post: My glass-half-empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated. If you truly think the Pitt v Cruise video is unimpressive slop, youve got nothing to worry about. But Im shook.
The clip was created using Seedance 2.0, a new AI service from ByteDance, the Chinese company that also owns TikTok, which launched last Friday. Upon its release, X was quickly flooded with clips from others trying their hand at generating their own major motion pictures. An alternate ending to Game of Thrones went viral (it has since been taken down), as did riffs on Spider-Man, Shrek, and more.
New Spiderman trailer? Nope, just another scene created seamlessly with Seedance 2.0Incredible stuff pic.twitter.com/v5eJ4pZAo3— 0xMarioNawfal (@RoundtableSpace) February 9, 2026
ByteDance has since promised to tighten the rules governing its new AI tool following intense backlash from Hollywood over copyright concerns. We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users, the company told Deadline. (ByteDance did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment.)
Meanwhile, the studio backlash has been swift and severe. Charles Rivkin, the chairman and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association, which represents the major U.S. studiosNetflix, Paramount Pictures, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros. Discoverycalled on ByteDance to immediately cease its infringing activity.
By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs, he wrote in a statement last week.
The actors union SAG-AFTRA has also accused Seedance of blatant infringement, while the Human Artistry Campaign added that, Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft.
SAG-AFTRA Statement on Seedance 2.0. https://t.co/lbqj1m0AYt pic.twitter.com/Etl8bsj5tA— SAG-AFTRA (@sagaftra) February 13, 2026
Disney, which agreed in a $1 billion deal last year to bring its characters to Sora, the AI companys short-form video platform, also sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, according to Axios.
The letter accused the Chinese company of supplying Seedance with a pirated library of Disneys characters. “We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Disney attorney David Singer wrote, “which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.”
