The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trumps trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates.
First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department’s third and final estimate.
The January-March drop in gross domestic product the nations output of goods and services reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points.
Consumer spending also slowed sharply, expanding just 0.5%, down from a robust 4% in the fourth-quarter of last year. It is a significant downgrade from the Commerce Department’s previous estimate.
Consumers have turned jittery since Trump started plastering big taxes on imports, anticipating that the tariffs will impact their finances directly.
And the Conference Board reported this week that Americans view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence in April to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index slid to 93 in June, down 5.4 points from 98.4 last month. A measure of Americans short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell 4.6 points to 69. Thats well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead.
Former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm said the downward revision to consumer spending today is a potential red flag.” Sahm, now chief economist at New Century Advisors, noted that Commerce downgraded spending on recreation services and foreign travel which could have reflect great consumer pessimism and uncertainty.”
A category within the GDP data that measures the economys underlying strength rose at a 1.9% annual rate from January through March. It’s a decent number, but down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and from the Commerce Department’s previous estimate of 2.5% January-March growth.
This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.
And federal government spending fell at a 4.6% annual pace, the biggest drop since 2022.
In another sign that Trump’s policies are disrupting trade,
Trade deficits reduce GDP. But thats just a matter of mathematics. GDP is supposed to count only whats produced domestically, not stuff that comes in from abroad. So imports which show up in the GDP report as consumer spending or business investment have to be subtracted out to keep them from artificially inflating domestic production.
The first-quarter import influx likely wont be repeated in the April-June quarter and therefore shouldnt weigh on GDP. In fact, economists expect second-quarter growth to bounce back to 3% in the second quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
The first look at April-June GDP growth is due July 30.
____
This story has been corrected to show that the drop in federal spending was the biggest since 2022, not 1986.
Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
As Venice readies for Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos’s multi-day wedding extravaganza, it’s no longer just gondolas floating around the city’s famous waterwaysit’s creepy Bezos mannequins as well.
The long-awaited nuptials of the Amazon founder and the journalist is bringing flocks of celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Ivanka Trump, and the Kardashians to the small city, booking most of the city’s elite water taxis, gondolas, and docks.
While Venice has hosted star-studded weddings in the pastincluding that of Amal and George Clooneynone have drawn as much criticism, due in part to the event’s extravagant nature. For instance, just days before the wedding, the couple celebrated a foam party aboard their $500 million super yacht.
Locals and internet activists have been rallying in protest of not just the wedding, but of Amazon’s labor practices, its founder’s mass accumulation of wealth, overtourism, and the disruption of daily lives for locals. As a result, organized efforts are giving the wedding party a not-so-warm welcome along the way.
To keep up with the chaos, Fast Company rounded up some of the pre-wedding protests, breaking down some of the strange yet somewhat successful efforts.
“No Space for Bezos”
A nod to Bezos and Sánchez’s now infamous space-travel pursuits, “No Space for Bezos” is the unifying movement for activists opposing the local government’s alleged prioritization of tourism above local residents.
The movement gained traction following a now viral stunt, draping St. Mark’s Square with a large banner reading “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.” Below the text was a large image of Bezos laughing.
[Photo: Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images]
Since then, grassroots efforts have plastered the city with banners across famous sites, and have gained the support of larger organizations like Greenpeace and U.K. group Everyone Hates Elon.
Floating mannequins
On the stranger end of protests, several mannequins resembling Bezos and Sánchez have been spotted around the Floating City’s canals.
In one, the figures are dressed in wedding attire aboard a gondola, with a cardboard sign featuring Amazon’s logo. “The live versions are creepier,” one user commented on the TikTok video.
Another viral video features a man throwing a mannequin held onto an Amazon package box into Venice’s grand canal. The mannequin appears to be wearing a blue suit resembling the one used on the infamous space mission, and is holding fake dollar bills.
Online mockery
Beyond the more organized protests, countless people have taken social media to mock the event, particularly a now leaked image of the wedding’s invitation.
While the invitation asks guests not to bring giftsbut rather provide donations to Venice-related causes, including UNESCO Venice, CORILA, and Venice International Universityit gained attention due to its kitschy design.
On the r/CrappyDesign subreddit, a now-deleted post of the invite drew ridicule and criticism, with one user commenting, “Youve got all the money in the world and you do an invite that looks like it was designed by a 10-year-old on MS Paint.”
Another user on TikTok commented on the invitation, making a video saying, “You are shitting money every two seconds, I was expecting some Ambani-level shit, I was expecting opulence.” She added, “I need rich people to rich right.”
What have the wedding planners said about the backlash?
Reached for comment by Fast Company earlier this week, the events team that is organizing the wedding said it has aimed to minimize disruptions. It also emphasized that it has overwhelmingly hired locals to staff the event.
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin said on Thursday tariffs are very likely to push inflation up over coming months, in remarks that said U.S. central bank policy is where it needs to be to deal with what lies ahead.
I do believe we will see pressure on prices, Barkin told a gathering of the New York Association for Business Economics.
When it comes to tariffs and their impact on price pressures, to date, these increases have had only modest effects on measured inflation, but I anticipate more pressure is coming, amid comments from businesses that they expect to pass at least some of the rise in import taxes imposed by President Donald Trump.
That said, I dont expect the impact on inflation to be anywhere near as significant as what we just experienced during the pandemic and there are signs that consumers will try to move away from tariffed goods, which could limit some of the upsides for higher inflation.
Last week, the Feds most recent gathering of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee saw officials leave their overnight target rate unchanged at between 4.25% and 4.5%. Uncertainty over the outlook is keeping the central bank on the sidelines amid expectations the tariffs will push up inflation this year while depressing growth and hiring.
In his remarks, Barkin noted the Fed is facing risks on both its job and inflation mandates. Citing the uncertainty of the outlook, Barkin declined to say where monetary policy is heading, while cautioning there are a number of scenarios in play for the central bank’s interest rate target and the exact timing of a rate move matter much less than many expect.
While most Fed officials are in a wait-and-see mode and Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated that message this week in testimony before Congress, some officials on the Board of Governors have said they view tariffs as a one-time price increase and are open to cutting short-term interest rates at the late July FOMC meeting.
Futures markets believe the Fed will cut rates at the September FOMC meeting. Barkin told reporters after his speech that policymakers should never take any action off the table, while adding he’s still seeking data to know what to do with interest rate policy.
“Given the strength in todays economy, we have time to track developments patiently and allow the visibility to improve, Barkin said, adding, when it does, we are well positioned to address whatever the economy will require.
Barkin also said that given inflation had been on a cooling trend at the onset of the tariff regime, hiking rates to contain price pressures “doesn’t seem like the topic of the day.”
Barkin said that as the economy now stands things look pretty good and recent inflation data was encouraging. He said job growth has been healthy.
Michael S. Derby, Reuters
States can block the countrys biggest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid money for health services such as contraception and cancer screenings without facing lawsuits from patients, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
The 6-3 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by the rest of the courts conservatives was not directly about abortion, but it comes as Republicans back a wider push across the country to defund the organization. It closes off Planned Parenthood’s primary court path to keeping Medicaid funding in place: patient lawsuits.
The justices found that while Medicaid law allows people to choose their own provider, that does not make it a right enforceable in court. The court split along ideological lines, with the three liberals dissenting in the case from South Carolina.
Public health care money generally cannot be used to pay for abortions, but Medicaid patients go to Planned Parenthood for other needs in part because it can be difficult to find a doctor who takes the publicly funded insurance, the organization has said.
Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) said Planned Parenthood should not get any taxpayer money. The budget bill backed by President Donald Trump in Congress would also cut Medicaid money for the group. That could force the closure of about 200 centers, most of them in states where abortion is legal, Planned Parenthood has said.
McMaster first moved to cut off the Medicaid funding in 2018, but he was blocked in court after a lawsuit from a patient, Julie Edwards, who wanted to keep going to Planned Parenthood for birth control because her diabetes makes pregnancy potentially dangerous. She sued over a provision in Medicaid law that allows patients to choose their own qualified provider.
South Carolina argued that patients should not be able to file such lawsuits. The state pointed to lower courts that have been swayed by similar arguments and allowed states such as Texas to act against Planned Parenthood.
The high court majority agreed.
Deciding whether to permit private enforcement poses delicate policy questions involving competing costs and benefitsdecisions for elected representatives, not judges, Gorsuch wrote. He pointed out that patients can appeal through other administrative processes if coverage is denied.
McMaster, in a statement, said his state had taken a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolinas authority and valuesand today, we are finally victorious.
In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the ruling is likely to result in tangible harm to real people.
It will strip those South Caroliniansand countless other Medicaid recipients around the countryof a deeply personal freedom: the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable,'” she wrote.
Planned Parenthood officials said the decision will hamper access to care such as preventive screenings for 1 million Medicaid recipients in South Carolina and that other conservative states will likely take similar steps.
Instead of patients now deciding where to get care, that now lies with the state, said Katherine Farris, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. If they fall on hard financial times, as many are right now, they are fundamentally less free.”
She said South Carolina did not say Planned Parenthood provided inadequate care, describing it as political decision.
Other conservative states are expected to follow South Carolina’s lead with funding cuts, potentially creating a backdoor abortion ban, said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Medicaid patients make up 3.5% of the organizations South Carolina patients who come for services unrelated to abortion or gender-affirming care, officials said. Because South Carolina has not expanded its Medicaid program, reimbursements do not cover its preventive care costs, spokesperson Molly Rivera said.
Public health groups like the American Cancer Society have said in court papers that lawsuits are the only real way that Medicaid patients have been able to enforce their ability to choose their own doctor. Losing that ability is expected to reduce access to healthcare for people on the program, which is estimated to include one-quarter of everyone in the country. Rural areas could be especially affected, advocates said in court papers.
In South Carolina, $90,000 in Medicaid funding goes to Planned Parenthood every year, a tiny fraction of the states total Medicaid spending. The state banned abortion at about six weeks gestation after the Supreme Court overturned it as a nationwide right in 2022. The state says other providers can fill a healthcare void left by Planned Parenthood’s removal from Medicaid.
By Lindsay Whitehurst, Associated Press
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.
Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff said the company now relies on artificial intelligence for 30% to 50% of its entire workload.
The software giant, like many other tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Microsoft and Google, is going all in on the AI boom.
All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work, Benioff told Bloomberg, including positions like software engineering and customer service. “It’s these agents, these digital laborers, digital employees who are out there doing this work servicing the customers, selling to the customer, marketing to the customer, partnering with me to do the analytics, do the marketing, the branding.”
Benioff said he even writes his yearly business plan with an AI partner, along with a “human” Salesforce executive, adding the company was on track to have one billion of these “agents” before the end of the year. (65% of companies are now experimenting with AI agents, according to an April KPMG survey.)
Benioff also estimated that Salesforce has reached 93% accuracy with the AI product it’s selling to customers, including Walt Disney Co., which was developed to carry out tasks such as customer service without human supervision, according to Bloomberg. Benioff added that it’s not “realistic” to reach 100% accuracy, and that other companies are at “much lower levels because they don’t have as much data and metadata.”
The software giant was ranked the No. 1 customer relationship management (CRM) software provider in 2025 for the 12th consecutive year; its clients include Apple, Boeing, Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald’s, to name a few.
According to Bloomberg, AI is ushering in a new era of “the tiny team.” Gone are the days when Silicon Valley companies rapidly hire as they scale; now tech companies are in a race to the bottom, competing to see who can manage the lowest headcount in an effort to cut costs and increase efficiencies.
The AI boom comes at a time when many tech companies are slashing jobs, in part to keep up with inflation and increased economic uncertainty, spurred on by the Trump administration’s tariffs and conflict with Iran.
Salesforce by the numbers
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was trading up less than 1% on Thursday at the time of this writing in midday trading.
In the company’s latest round of earnings for the first quarter, which ended April 30, the company reported revenue of $9.8 billion, up nearly 8% year-over-year, beating analyst expectations, and raised guidance “by $400 million to $41.3 billion at the high end of the range.” Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $2.58, topping estimates of $2.55.
Benioff said Salesforce has “built a deeply unified enterprise AI platformwith agents, data, apps, and a metadata platform . . . with Agentforce, Data Cloud, our Customer 360 apps, Tableau, and Slack all built on one trusted, unified foundation, [so] companies of every size can build a digital labor forceboosting productivity, reducing costs, and accelerating growth.”
The company had a market capitalization of $257 billion at the time of this writing. Its next earnings report is scheduled for late August.
The Senate parliamentarian has advised that a Medicaid provider tax overhaul central to President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill does not adhere to the chamber’s procedural rules, delivering a crucial blow as Republicans rush to finish the package this week.
Guidance from the parliamentarian is rarely ignored, and Republican leaders are now forced to consider difficult options. Republicans were counting on big cuts to Medicaid and other programs to offset trillions of dollars in Trump tax breaks, their top priority. Additionally, the Senate’s chief arbiter of its often complicated rules had advised against various GOP provisions barring certain immigrants from health care programs.
Republicans scrambled Thursday to respond, with some calling for challenging, or firing, the nonpartisan parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who has been on the job since 2012. Democrats said the decisions would devastate GOP plans.
We have contingency plans,” said Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.
He did not say whether Friday’s votes were on track, but he insisted that were plowing forward.
But Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the Republican proposals would have meant $250 billion less for the healthcare program, massive Medicaid cuts that hurt kids, seniors, Americans with disabilities, and working families.
Trump wants action on the bill
The outcome is a setback as Senate Republicans hoped to get votes underway by week’s end to meet Trumps Fourth of July deadline for passage. Trump is expected to host an event later Thursday in the White House East Room, joined by truck drivers, firefighters, tipped workers, ranchers, and others that the administration says will benefit from the bill as he urges Congress to pass it, according to a White House official.
GOP leaders were already struggling to rally support for Medicaid changes that some senators said went too far and would have left millions without coverage. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said over 10.9 million more people would not have healthcare under the House-passed bill; Senate Republicans were proposing deeper cuts.
Republican leaders are relying on the Medicaid provider tax change along with other healthcare restrictions to save billions of dollars and offset the cost of trillions of dollars in tax cuts. Those tax breaks from Trump’s first term would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, meaning a tax increase for Americans.
GOP torn over Medicaid cuts
Several GOP senators said cutting the Medicaid provider tax change in particular would hurt rural hospitals that depend on the money. Hospital organizations have warned that it could lead to hospital closures.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), among those fighting the change, said he had spoken to Trump late Wednesday and that the president told him to revert back to an earlier proposal from the House.
I think it just confirms that we werent ready for a vote yet, said Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC), who also had raised concerns about the provider tax cuts.
States impose the taxes as a way to help fund Medicaid, largely by boosting the reimbursements they receive from the federal government. Critics say the system is a type of laundering, but almost every state except Alaska uses it to help provide healthcare coverage.
More than 80 million people in the United States use the Medicaid program, alongside the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Republicans want to scale Medicaid back to what they say is its original mission: providing care mainly to women and children, rather than a much larger group of people.
The House-passed bill would freeze the provider taxes at current levels. The Senate proposal goes deeper by reducing the tax that some states are able to impose.
Tough choices ahead
Senate GOP leaders can strip or revise the provisions that are in violation of the chamber’s rules. But if they move ahead, those measures could be challenged in a floor vote, requiring a 60-vote threshold to overcome objections. That would be a tall order in a Senate divided 53-47 and with Democrats unified against Trump’s bill.
It’s pretty frustrating, said Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who wants even steeper reductions.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stopped short of calls against the parliamentarian. I have no intention of overruling her, he said.
To help defray lost revenues to the hospitals, one plan Republicans had been considering would have created a rural hospital fund with $15 billion as backup. Some GOP senators said that was too much; others, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, wanted at least $100 billion.
The parliamentarian has worked around the clock since late last week to assess the legislation before votes that were expected as soon as Friday.
Overnight Wednesday, the parliamentarian advised against GOP student loan repayment plans, and Thursday advised against provisions that would have blocked access for immigrants who are not citizens to Medicaid, Medicare, and other healthcare programs, including one that would have cut money to states that allow some migrants into Medicaid.
Earlier, proposals to cut food stamps were ruled in violation of Senate rules, as was a plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
By Lisa Mascaro, AP congressional correspondent
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Leah Askarinam, Joey Cappelletti and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has previously made statements skeptical of vaccines, is now recommending the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for infants.On Thursday, RFK’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend clesrovimab, a new RSV antibody shot made by Merck, for infants 8 months and younger who don’t have protection from a maternal vaccine (a vaccine received in pregnancy).
A broader vaccine review is underway
The decision comes after the panel announced on Wednesday it would be reviewing the current childhood immunization schedule. The committee is set to vote on recommendations for the influenza vaccine, as well.
The RSV shot was approved for use in infants earlier this month by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ENFLONSIA provides an important new preventive option to help protect healthy and at-risk infants born during or entering their first RSV season with the same dose regardless of weight, said Dr. Dean Y. Li, president, Merck Research Laboratories, said at the time.Li continued, We are committed to ensuring availability of ENFLONSIA in the U.S. before the start of the upcoming RSV season to help reduce the significant burden of this widespread seasonal infection on families and health care systems.
According to the CDC, RSV infects nearly everyone by age 2, causing cold symptoms, and sometimes, breathing struggles. In the U.S., around 300 infant deaths are caused by RSV each year.
The vote, which passed with five for the vaccine and two against, is the first decision from RFK’s committee, made up of members whom RFK handpicked after dismissing the previous panel of 17 members in its entirety. The current panel includes some vaccine skeptics. Retsef Levi, an operations management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Vicki Pebsworth, the research director of a group focused on preventing vaccine injuries and deaths, were the two members who voted against the shot.
Kennedys history of vaccine misinformation
Trump’s controversial pick for HHS Secretary has frequently made false claims on the topic of vaccines. In regard to COVID, Kennedy once falsely claimed that some race groups have natural immunity to the virus. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately, Kennedy said. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
RFKs critics feel that having a vaccine skeptic at the helm of the HHS is already cause for concern after the CDC began postponing meetings on national vaccine recommendations in February.
After the committee also announced that it would start a renewed review of all recommended pediatric vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) put out a video titled, AAP Steps up on Vaccine Recommendations,” which warned that immunization policy through ACIP is “no longer a credible process” under RFK’s leadership. The AAP added that it will continue to publish its own recommendations on vaccines for children.
Uncertainty at the CDC’s helm
Thursdays recommendation from RFKs panel still has to be endorsed by the CDC. However, there is major confusion surrounding who is currently in charge of the organization, as it doesn’t seem to have a clear leader. Kennedy, and others, have recently sidestepped questions about the matter.
Then, last week, RFK gave the name Matt Buzzelli, who he described as a public health expert” when Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester pressed him on who the current acting director was. The CDCs leadership page has Matthew Buzzelli, a trial lawyer with no health-related experience, listed fourth as the agencys chief of staff. Following the exchange, the Senator sent RFK a letter, expressing grave concern.
Big Lots has been through a wild ride since the home discount retail chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last September.
In December 2024, the company announced that it would hold going-out-of-business sales at its remaining store locations. The following month, however, Big Lots announced that Variety Wholesalersa retail company based in North Carolinawould acquire and operate hundreds of existing Big Lots stores.
After a period of remodeling and restocking, Variety Wholesalers has since reopened 219 Big Lots stores in a handful of states. The openings took place in four waves, starting in April and ending in June. The final reopening phase concluded with the reopening of 78 Big Lots stores on June 5.
While return of Big Lots is good news for fans of the brand, it may be exposing some unsuspecting bargain hunters to scamsparticularly, for shoppers who prefer to buy things online.
Big Lots warns of online scams
Earlier this month, Big Lots took to social media to alert customers about the presence of online scams, explaining that its current website has no e-commerce component.
“BIG LOTS! no longer operates any ecommerce website,” the retailer wrote on its Facebook page. “These are scam websites using our name and logo. Any purchases made through these websites should be IMMEDIATELY reported to your bank or credit card company. Our official website is biglots.com.
The post attracted hundreds of comments, with some commenters saying they’d fallen victim to the bogus offers.
Scammers have been targeting consumers with online ads impersonating Big Lots. Links within these ads direct hopeful shoppers to fake websites that are not affiliated with the official retailer. Be aware that any advertisements promoting online Big Lots deals are not legitimate.
Some products are still listed on the official Big Lots website
A section of the retailer’s official website highlights products that Big Lots stores actually sell. Although there are no capabilities to make a purchase through the official Big Lots website, product listings include photos, descriptions, and prices.
Jeff King, vice president of sales and marketing for Variety Wholesalers, told Fast Company that the products listed on the Big Lots website are meant to illustrate the deals available in-store.
“We do have products listed on our website to show the great values on the large variety of products we carry in our stores,” he said. “We do this to encourage customers to visit our stores and see what deals they can find.”
Bottom line: It’s essential to be vigilant against online shopping scams. If you’re hoping to shop at Big Lots, you’ll need to visit a physical store.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.
Bringing AI to the doctors appointment
AI in healthcare is top of mind this week, thanks to a viral story on Reddit about a man who said ChatGPT saved his wifes life. She had undergone a cyst removal and wasnt feeling well, but was on an antibiotic and decided to wait it out. After the man described her symptoms to ChatGPT, the chatbot advised him to take his wife to the ER. He didand likely saved her life. Doctors diagnosed her with sepsis.
Stories like these arent new. Over the past year, weve seen a number of ChatGPT-saved-my-life anecdotes popping up online. Meanwhile, two-thirds of doctors now reportedly use ChatGPT to help them home in on a diagnosis, often with good results.
The models powering ChatGPT are trained on medical textbooks, research journal articles, medical guidelines, and health websites such as WebMD. That training gives them broad knowledge of anatomy, diseases, symptoms, treatment options, and drug interactions. OpenAI also fine-tuned the models by using feedback from health professionals. While AI modelseven highly specialized onescant yet replace human doctors, researchers are working hard to improve their accuracy and reliability.
AI is also having an immediate impact in clinical documentationan area thats long been a pain point for doctors. Many physiciansespecially primary care doctorsspend an extra 90 minutes to three hours per day completing patient records. Combined with the pressure to see more patients, this contributes heavily to burnout.
Increasingly, health systems are deploying AI scribes to ease this burden. Such tools can record a patient encounter and generate summaries for the electronic medical record (EMR). The Cleveland Clinic, for example, implements a clinical documentation and point-of-care coding solution from San Francisco-based Ambience. Using Ambiences app (which itself is powered by OpenAI models), the clinician records a patient visit, reviews an AI-generated summary of everything discussed in the meeting (including the billing codes), then approves the notes for inclusion in the EMR.
According to Cleveland Clinics chief digital officer Rohit Chandra, 4,000 of the organizations physicians are already using the tool. It makes their jobs a ton easier, and it makes the patient interactions a lot better because now patients actually engage with the doctor, he says.
Looking ahead, AI scribes could go far beyond basic documentation. Future versions may be able to document a medical exam with full contextual knowledge of the patients history (past problems and conditions, treatments, tests, and medications). We believe that with some work and attention, AI will become smart enough to understand the fullness of a patient’s health journey, as opposed to just a discreet encounter, Chandra says.
For example, if a new condition arises during an exam, the AI might flag connections to prior complaints or lab results. It could help a physician prescribe new medications and guard against bad interactions in patients who may already be taking multiple drugs. The AI can also prepare a pre-read for the clinician: a summary of a patients current complaintin the context of the individuals past historythat a physician (who may have already seen 10 patients that day) can read outside the door of the exam room.
I’m hoping that we can keep building on the success that weve had so far to literally drive the documentation burden to zero, Chandra says. If we do that well, we should eliminate a huge handicap that currently sits around our doctors, and we can bring the joy back to caregivingthats a literal quote from a doctor.
And with so much promise for easing physician burnout and improving patient care, investors are taking note. Ambience raised a $70 millionB round in February 2024, co-led by KleinerPerkins and OpenAIs Startup Fund, reportedly putting its valuation at $1 billion.
Ambience competes with Abridge, which performs a similar function of transcribing physician-patient conversations. Like Ambience, it has an integration with the popular Epic electronic medical records platform. Abridge recently raised $300 million in a SeriesE funding at a $5.3billion valuation.
Health AI may have a breakout star in OpenEvidence
The healthcare industry moves very slowly, until it doesnt. A company called OpenEvidence is tackling clinical decision supportone of the most challenging areas in medicineand appears so far to be winning over doctors at an impressive pace. In February, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company reported that 250,000 U.S. doctors were already using its product, and by mid-June the number had climbed to 350,000. Some industry observers say its the fastest-growing platform for physicians in history. OpenEvidence recently closed a $75 million A round led by Sequoia Capital that pushed its valuation to $1 billion.
The product functions a bit like Perplexity, but for healthcare. Its an AI-powered search tool, along with a chatbot, that lets doctors keep asking questions until they get what they need. Specifically, the tool locates evidence-based medical information from peer-reviewed journals, then summarizes it to answer a given question. The platform searches across 35 million medical publications, and recently announced a strategic partnership with The New England Journal of Medicine, giving it access to decades of premium medical content. OpenEvidence also recently signed a multiyear deal with the JAMA Network that provides its AI tool with access to content from the networks 13 medical journals.
Unlike other platforms, OpenEvidence doesnt rely on random health information found on the open web. The outputs are grounded in trusted medical literature, and if the literature is inconclusive, OpenEvidence simply doesnt attempt an answer.
One of the hardest things about being a doctor . . . is that theyre expected to keep up with a fire hose of medical information, said OpenEvidence CEO Daniel Nadler in a recent podcast. So this is really not appreciated by people who are not doctors, but there are two new medical papers published every minute, 24 hours per day.
Hume AIs emotionally intelligent models are finding new applications in eldercare and mental health
Theres growing evidence that, for many people using AI chatbots, one of the main attractions is companionshipoften even a shoulder to cry on. For this to work well, a chatbot must have a easonable amount of common sense (to help users keep their problems in perspective), but also strong emotional intelligence, especially empathy. New York-based Hume AI specializes in emotionally intelligent AI voice models. CEO Alan Cowen told me that these models enable a chatbot to detect the users emotional state and respond appropriately. The models can also speak and listen simultaneously, allowing the AI to fully process what the user is sayingand know when to stop talking and simply listen.
One of the most compelling applications of Hume AIs emotionally intelligent AI voices is a smartphone app called EverFriends, which provides conversation and companionship to seniors struggling with isolation and loneliness. Grand Rapids-based EverFriends.ai, the apps developer, believes its critical that the app can detect a users mood and adapt its tone and responses accordingly. For users with dementia, the app can slow down its speech and repeat its outputs when needed. Along with companionship, EverFriends can help older users remember to take medications, attend appointments, and do home health routines such as balance exercises. And the app can automatically send out an emergency alert to caregivers or family if something goes wrong.
Hume also supplies the EQ AI behind a platform called Hpy, which is used by therapists. The platform serves as a scribe by listening in on therapy sessions and generating comprehensive session notes, which cuts down on the time therapists must spend on documentation. While creating the notes, Hpy also draws on Humes Expression Measurement API to detect emotional cues in the clients wordsinsights that may shape the therapists approach. Finally, Hpy uses Humes Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) to give clients an AI companion to talk to between sessions with the human therapist. Clients can have guided sessions with the AI voice to work on specific therapeutic goals, or just have an open conversation with the AI. The AI, in turn, is able to maintain a meaningful dialogue, thanks to its awareness of the clients needs from earlier sessions.
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As you scroll through your FYP, a sweet elderly man or woman appears, asking for a moment of your attention to help save their struggling animal shelter.
Please stay 8 seconds so I dont have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into, the text on screen reads. You stay and watch. After all, its only eight seconds. Maybe you even buy the slippers theyre selling to raise additional funds.
Its a scam.
The man in the video is real, but he doesnt run an animal shelter. He owns a menswear and tailoring shop in Canton, Ohio.
One night I was scrolling on TikTok watching videos and I see my dads face pop up, saying Stay for a few seconds and help my husband or grandpas cat shelter, And Im like, What? Daisy Yelicheck told WMBF News. Then Im getting text messages from family members across the country, saying, Do you know your dads being used in these videos?
Daisys father, George Tsaftarides, 84, does post on TikTok, where he teaches his 41,000 followers how to sew. Now, bad actors have taken his content, edited it, and used it for their own gain.
@georgethemastertailor
Tsaftarides isnt the only target. Charles Ray, an 85-year-old retiree in Michigan, has also had videos from his TikTok account repurposed without his permission. In one instance, scammers used a clip of him rubbing his eye, making it look as if he was crying, he told The Guardian.
TikTok, in a statement to the Guardian, said its community guidelines prohibit impersonation accounts and content that violates intellectual property rights. Still, both Tsaftarides and Ray have had difficulty getting the stolen videos removed, even after reporting them.
Beyond stolen content, the Better Business Bureau has received reports of AI-generated scams designed to solicit fake donations. According to an FBI report, American consumers lost $12.5 billion to cybercrime last year, a 25% increase from the year before.
Now, some TikTok users are stepping in to raise awareness, warning others not to fall for every cat shelter or cow farm asking for donations. The sob story, after all, is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
@sesagraham wtf is going on and shame on you @MilkStep @KittyBags @LINK IN BIO TO SUPPORT #scammer #fakepages #help #scam #scammers original sound – Sesa
