On the way to work, you see a TikTok video of the president admitting to a crime. In the elevator, you hear your favorite band, but the song is completely unfamiliar. At your desk, you open an email from an executive in another department. It contains valid sales information and discusses a relevant legal issue, but the wording sounds oddly wooden. After lunch, the CEO sends all managers a link to a new app she had casually proposed just a few days earlier. Later, you interview a job candidate via Zoom, but the person looks different from his LinkedIn picture.
Any or all of these thingsthe video, the song, the email, the CEOs app, the candidatecould have been generated by AI tools or agents. But our epistemic defaults, I’d argue, are still set to assume these things are human-created unless available information proves otherwise. We have not yet entered a zero-trust paradigm where content is generated unless proven authentic.
Instead, we find ourselves in an anxious middle ground. The question now arises whenever we encounter a new image, video, or piece of information: Is this AI-generated? Increasingly, the answer will be yes. We are close enough to that zero-trust reality that we can see it approaching on the horizon.
Beyond deepfakes
Deepfakes were just the beginning. AI-generated video designed to mislead or incite was, not so long ago, seen as a novelty. Now its common in everything from revenge porn to politics. AI-generated music has gone mainstream. Last year, a fully generated country song called Walk My Walk by Breaking Rust reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart in the U.S. An AI-generated TV ad, made with Googles Veo 3, Gemini, and ChatGPT, ran during Game 3 of the NBA Finals last year.
According to a Gallup Q3 2025 report, 45% of U.S. employees now use AI at work. In a similar vein, the email deliverability firm ZeroBounce found in a September 2025 survey that one in four workers use AI daily to draft emails, and that number has likely increased. The same survey found that a quarter of workers suspect their performance review was written using AI.
By most accounts, the use of AI agents in corporate workflows is still in the early innings. But AI companies say were moving toward a future in which agents from different departments collaborate to complete back-office tasks, such as compensating suppliers, or to compile decision-support materials, like a business case for entering a new market or making an acquisition.
Its already likely that AI agents, including deep research or business intelligence tools, play some role in assembling reports managers receive at work. Amazons AWS says its customers have used AI agents to save more than 1 million hours of manual effort. McKinsey predicts that by 2030 the use of agents and robots could create about $2.9 trillion in value in the U.S. if organizations redesign their workflows for people, agents, and robots working together. (Of course, McKinsey wants to help them do that.)
Depending on her technical savvy, the CEO mentioned above may have mocked up a new app using Replit or Bolt. These so-called vibe-coding tools can generate a credible proof of concept in a weekend. She may then have handed it off to software engineering, whose developers might use Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor to turn the idea into a production-ready app that connects to company databases and third-party tools. A late-2025 Stack Overflow study claims that about 84% of developers now use, or plan to use, AI coding tools, with roughly half already using them daily.
When applying for remote jobs, more candidates are trying to improve their odds with AI tools that enhance their face or voice or generate answers in real time during interviews. The voice authentication firm Pindrop says that in its own video interviews it regularly encounters applicants using deepfake software and other generative AI tools to try to land a job. Gartner predicts that by 2028 a quarter of all remote applicants will be AI-generated.
Deepfakes once threatened to distort reality; now the distortion is structural, embedded in the systems that produce culture, manage companies, and decide who gets hired.
AI, weaponized
But the scammer may have a different goal in mind, and this points to scenarios where generative AI tools arent just used as timesavers, but as weapons. AI can help conceal the real identities of job applicants who are trying to extract sensitive company information or, worse, secure a role in order to install ransomware.
Scammers are also increasingly using advanced face- and voice-swapping tools for outright fraud. In 2024, a team of scammers posed as top executives of the engineering firm Arup during a video call using sophisticated AI tools. They tricked a finance employee into sending them $25 million.
We sense that our epistemic defaultsour AI slop detectors, if you willmay lag behind what technology can already do. And that suspicion is correct. The holy-shit moments accompanying new AI breakthroughs now arrive with striking regularity.
Recently, some users and journalists concluded that the OpenClaw agent platform had become sentient after watching agents complete tasks independently, deploy humans to finish assignments, and then gather in their own online forum to discuss it. At the same time, many ChatGPT users are grieving the forthcoming loss of GPT-4o because they developed a personal attachment to the model. New Chinese video generation systems such as ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0 are producing highly controllable video thats increasingly difficult to distinguish from footage captured by a camera.
The next tech wave
Social networks, in many ways, act as intermediariesproviding a wide-angle lens through which a person sees the world. To increase engagement and ad views, Facebook distorted that lens, to the detriment of both democracy and children. This week, Facebook-parent Meta is defending itself in a Los Angeles courtroom after years of deploying design features, including endless scroll, that critics say proved harmfuly addictive for younger users.
That was the last tech revolution, and it depended on user-made content. But with AI, the web can generate its own content on demand. This may put an immense amount of power in the hands of a few AI companies, perhaps even more so than was given to social media companies.
With so much money and influence at stake, the question is whether AI companies will do what firms like Meta did not and draw a clear line between human-created and machine-generated content. I seriously doubt it, especially with a billionaire class and a Trump administration doing everything possible to stifle legislation that might protect AI consumers.
If thats the case, then maybe taking a zero-trust approach to everything that appears on our screens is the only rational path forward.
At $600, Jamie Haller loafers arent an impulse buy, but theyve become one of those rare fashion items people evangelize anyway. The shoes, which resemble classic mens leather loafers, have quietly built a cult following thanks to a surprising claim: Fansfrom TikTokers to Wirecuttersay they mold to your feet the moment you step into them.
This didn’t happen by accident. The Los Angeles-based designer spent years seeking out a factory that would be willing to make her loafers using sacchetto construction, a labor-intensive Italian technique more often found in bespoke mens footwear. Take all of the hard bits of the loafer out, she remembers telling the cobbler in her Italian factory. Just make it skin on skin so that it fits your foot like a slipper.
Now Haller is betting that the same philosophycomfort engineered through old-world techniquecan translate into her next hero product. On February 12, Haller is launching sneakers. The new style is made in Italy and uses the same sacchetto construction that turned her loafers into bestsellers.
I wanted to create a beauty-forward everyday sneaker that has the same very, very special construction that the loafers have,” she says. The sneaker, inspired by climbing shoes and ballet slippers, is low-profile, flexible, and subtly sculptural. It feels like a hug, Haller says.
[Photo: courtesy Jamie Haller]
The New Class of Luxury Brands
The sneaker launch comes as Hallers business is accelerating quickly. She spent years designing for other labels, including Guess and Bebe. But in 2020weeks into the pandemicshe decided to launch her own brand. At first, the business was built around a single slipper-like shoe that was a precursor to the loafer. But by early 2023, the Jamie Haller label had grown enough that she felt ready to leave her day job. Since then, the business has taken off. Year-over-year growth was in double-digit multiples early on, and momentum has continued as the business scales.
Today, about 65% of sales are direct-to-consumer through her website and Montecito, California, store, with the rest coming from wholesale. The brand has expanded into ready-to-wear, bags, and now jewelry, and is entering more stores globally. Net-a-Porter picked up the shoe line and is adding ready-to-wear this springa major inflection point for international reach.
Hallers rise places her squarely within a broader shift in luxury, alongside other female designers like Nili Lotan and Trish Wescoat Pound, who design collections focused on quality and construction. Their clothes offer devoted customers a uniform they can wear repeatedly. I’m toeing the line between casual and polished, Haller says.
[Photo: courtesy Jamie Haller]
Making Menswear Work for Women
What makes Haller’s collections stand out is her deep affinity for vintage menswear. As a child, she loved her grandfather’s overcoats, well-worn briefcases, and shoes. She scours vintage markets to find classic men’s garments that might fit her but often doesnt like how they hang on her curves.
So she taught herself how to translate those garments to suit a womans figure, combining the hard edges of menswear with the sensuality of a woman’s body. It is this blending of masculine and feminine that is intriguing to her.
[Photo: courtesy Jamie Haller]
Haller says men’s trousers usually don’t fit her well because she has curvaceous hips. To maintain the straight, slung look of a mens trouser, she pulls seams forward and adds shape only where its needed, often in the back rise. The visual appearance is still very straight, she says, even though the pattern is doing more work underneath.
That same logic applies across categories. Her shirts are cut with straighter armholes and dropped shoulders, often in Japanese yarn-dyed cottons meant to mimic the feel of a perfectly worn vintage Oxford. Its always a balance of small and big, she saysrolling cuffs, opening collars, exposing just enough of the body to create contrast.
Jewelry, too, follows this masculine thread. Hallers debut jewelry collection, launched last fall, centers on chunky signet rings inspired by the rings youd see on an 80-year-old Sicilian man, she says. They arent precious everyday pieces, but styling elementsmeant to add contrast to an outfit built from polished basics. Its the styling layer you put on top of te button-down and the basic trouser, she explains.
[Photo: courtesy Jamie Haller]
At every stage, Haller designs for herself first. She fits everything on her own body and refuses to release pieces she doesnt love. That conviction seems to resonate with customers, many of whom return again and again. Im making clothes they can wear every day very comfortably, she says.
Haller’s success reveals a shift in what women want. Many are eschewing larger, flashier designers for independent labels, brands offering understated clothing that doesn’t overshadow the woman wearing them but rather makes her feel put-together thanks to a relentless focus on quality and fit. Haller’s designs borrow the best of mensweardurability, ease, comfortwithout losing sensuality. Now her customers will be able to swap their loafer for a sneaker to add a casual touch to their outfit.
I design to make myself happy,” Haller says. “If Im wearing something every single day, thats usually a good sign. And I never take these sneakers off.
You might think the most important amenities a hotel could provide would be a comfortable bed and a friendly concierge. For workers looking to shake up their WFH routine, though, a lightning-fast internet connection and electrical outlets aplenty may top that list.
The chicer cousin of the coworking space, a hotel lobby is no longer a place to simply check in or out: Its an often overlooked third space in major cities, where guests and remote workers alike can mingle, relax, and get work done.
Kayla Terzi is a recent convert. The hospitality real estate broker used to bounce around different cafés while working remotely in New York Citythat is, until she discovered the common area of the Soho Grand.
I started noticing hotels offer a quieter, more consistent environment, especially for long calls or focused work sessions, Terzi, 26, told Fast Company. At the same time, an energized, cool, social environment helps me stay inspired.
The concept of using hotels as coworking spaces is far from new, but as many companies increasingly opt for hybrid working arrangements, hotels are filling a growing gap between demand and supply when it comes to workspaces.
Nearly one in three workers say their company has cut office space since 2020, with 43% reporting that no replacement workspace was provided. Thats according to a November 2025 study conducted by Engine, a booking platform for business travel. Additionally, the rise of the gig economy means there are more freelancers and self-employed workers than ever before. According to the MBO Partners State of Independence in America Report, there were an estimated 72.9 million Americans freelancing in some capacity in 2025.
Those workers need space to work, with nearly one in five surveyed by Engine regularly going on space scavenger hunts for a change of scenery from their cramped apartments and desk-next-to-bed setups.
Instead of turning visitors away, hotels are increasingly opening their doors to take in stray workerseven if theyre not guests.
As long as I order a coffee or something to eat, they usually let me work and hang out for as long as I need, Terzi said. Of course, I make sure not to overstay my welcome.
For those who are looking for a little more privacy, services like Engine Spaces make it easy for workers and business travelers to make use of professional workspaces and meeting rooms from the platforms extensive hotel network, 82% of which otherwise sit empty most of the time, a December 2025 Engine survey found. People shouldnt need to call a hotel to get basic information about a meeting space, Elia Wallen, founder and CEO of Engine, told Fast Company. Its 2026, and this is one of the last corners of hospitality that needs to come online, fast.
Theres a gap in the market, apparently. Within the first month of Engines beta launch, more than 1,000 spaces were added to the marketplace by hotels, according to the company.
What Terzi looks for in a hotel lobby is reliable Wi-Fi, accessible power outlets, and comfortable seating. One of my favorite lessons is that nothing extraordinary happens in ordinary spaces, Terzi said.
Remember, even if youre not forking out hundreds or thousands of dollars a night for a room in a five-star hotel, in most cases you can still order a coffee and take advantage of the propertys common spaces.
Then, following a productive day of work, seamlessly make your way to the hotel lobby bar. Because why not?
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One of the clearest messages from KB Homes leadership during its last earnings call was that the homebuilderranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000is intentionally shifting away from elevated spec inventory and back toward more built-to-order (BTO)which will also help firm up its compressing margins given that BTO has higher margins than spec.
When the supply chain crashed [during the pandemic] and our build times significantly extended, it was very difficult to sell a built-to-order home to a buyer when it was going to take 10 or 11 months to build You cant lock the interest rate for that long, Mezger tells ResiClub. So they did more spec.
Thats over now.
Weve significantly compressed our build times Were back down to four months or less, which is our historical level, Mezger tells ResiClub. With shorter cycle times and shifted conditions, KB Home wants to move to less spec.
For years and years, [built-to-order] was 70% to 80% of our business, Mezger noted. In the fourth quarter, deliveries were around 50% BTO.In late January 2026, ResiClub interviewed KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger and COO Rob McGibney. Beginning March 1, 2026, McGibney will assume the CEO role, with Mezgerwho has served as CEO since 2006moving into the newly created position of executive chairman. Below are some main housing market takeaways from our recent conversation with KB Home.
KB Home says its Florida business is showing signs of stabilizationbut the story is hyper-local
Speaking on their September 2025 earnings call, KB Home executives said they had cut home prices across Floridalast years weakest pocket of the housing marketand were beginning to see signs of stabilization in the Sunshine State as a result.
Do they still stand behind that signs of stabilization statement?
Thats still largely accurate But it really remains very market specific, McGibney tells ResiClub. McGibney adds that some Florida communities have improved, allowing KB Home to lift prices a little this spring. Other Florida communities remain sluggish, requiring additional price adjustments even after earlier cuts.
We look at every community as its own business, McGibney explained. It can vary significantly within the same metroTampa, Orlando, Jacksonvilleyou name it.
As for magnitude, KB Home estimates most Florida home price adjustments since peak are modest. Even -10% would be on the extreme side, McGibney said, referring to price moves from peak levels. Most of what were talking about is in a -1% to -10% range.
The new-home supply pipeline is pulling back some in softer markets
Weve seen [housing] starts come down year-over-year in many [weaker] markets, Mezger tells ResiClub. Especially spec starts.
KB Home says the pullback is helping limit further inventory pressure in markets like Florida, Phoenix, and Denver where prices just ran up too much relative to incomes.
It’s good to see that there’s not a lot more inventory being injected into some of the softer markets, and I think that’s going to help places like Florida stabilize, Mezger says.
The new-vs-existing price gap is compressingand thats making new construction more attractive
According to the ResiClub New Home Premium Index, the median sales price of new single-family homes in October 2025 was -1.2% lower than the median sales price of existing single-family homes. This shift reflects how the affordability-strained housing market of the past three years has played out unevenly across segments. Many existing-home sellers have resisted downward price pressure, often at the expense of being able to transact. Homebuilders, by contrast, have been more willing to make affordability adjustmentsmost notably through price cuts, incentives, and a greater mix of smaller homesto avoid a sharper pullback in new-home sales.
While theres no question that the new-construction premium has fallen meaningfully from a few years ago, national median comparisons (i.., ResiClubs index) likely overstate the magnitude of the decline somewhat due to mix-shift effects. KB Home says its premium has compressed; however, it still exists.
There’s a lot of [existing] sellers that have stuck to pricing that’s very high, and they haven’t moved off the pricing so it doesn’t trade. And historically, we’ve always, over time, been able to support a 10% premium to resaleand above 15% when there was no resale inventory. The premiums for the industry gapped well above that [during the Pandemic Housing Boom], and you have seen them compress. But in our case, we try to target our product when we open a community to be within that 10% to 15% range. And when we do that, we’ve [still] seen a buyer that will absolutely take new over used, Mezger tells ResiClub.
For many Black tech founders, raising venture capital is often positioned as the ultimate milestone. It signals that your idea is validated, your business is taken seriously, and opportunities begin to take shape. As the managing partner of an early stage VC firm, and a 3X Black tech founder that speaks and meets with thousands of founders a year, I can tell you the truth is far more nuanced. Venture capital can be powerful, but its not for everyone.
Before chasing your first check, founders need clarity, preparation, and strategy. Fundraising is not just about storytelling or networking; its about understanding the system youre stepping into and deciding whether raising venture capital truly aligns with your long-term vision.
Venture Capital Is a Business Model, Not a Badge of Honor
It’s important for first time founders to understand the venture business model. Investors are not simply backing good ideas”; we are seeking outsized returns within a defined time horizon. That means VCs are looking for companies that can scale rapidly, dominate large markets, and potentially return 10x, 50x, or even 100x their investment.
For founders, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, this distinction matters. Too often, VC is treated as a symbol of success rather than a strategic tool. Before you fundraise, ask yourself these tough questions: Is your business designed to scale quickly? Does it address a large enough market? Can it grow aggressively without breaking what makes it special?
If the answer is no, that doesnt mean your business isnt valuable, it just simply means venture capital may not be the right fuel for it. And thats okay.
VC Readiness Starts Long Before the Pitch Deck
Many first-time founders assume fundraising begins when the pitch deck is finished. In reality, thats often the final step. True VC readiness starts months earlier. It takes time to develop your story. Even at the earliest stages, founders should be able to clearly articulate who their customer is, what problem theyre solving, and why their solution is meaningfully different from competitors who are already in market. Part of that story are performance metrics, why your team, and why is this the right time.
Equally important is team readiness. VCs invest in people as much as products, especially first-time founders. Youre almost betting on the person more than you are the business concept. Founders with complementary skill sets, operational discipline, and the ability to execute consistently tend to inspire confidence with VCs. For solo founders, this often means building a roster of strong advisers, impressive early hires, and/or strategic partners who help de-risk the business. The more prepared you are, the better leverage youll have throughout the fundraising process.
Holding Your Power in VC Rooms
Venture capital, like most industries, doesnt hold Black founders in mind, and that reality shows up in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. From biased pattern matching to lowered expectations, founders will encounter dynamics that challenge their confidence.
Thats why entering investor conversations with the right mindset is critical. You are not lucky to be in the room; you earned your place there. I see founders make this mistake often. Investors are evaluating an opportunity, but you need to remember that youre also evaluating them. Not every VC is the right fit for your business. Alignment, values, and long-term partnership matter just as much as check size and valuation.
Holding your power means controlling the narrative around your business, being clear about your vision. It also means taking a collaborative approach to conversation as opposed to a subordinate one. You are supposed to answer questions to VCs but youre not in a job interview. Confidence (not desperation), when backed by preparation and performance, can shift the entire dynamic of a fundraising conversation.
Knowing When Venture Capital Is Or Isnt The Right Move
Its important to remember that not every successful company needs venture capital. Bootstrapping, revenue-based financing, grants, and strategic partnerships can often provide growth capital without sacrificing equity or control. This is more possible than ever in the era of agentic AI.
Founders need to be sure that they have a massive market, directional customer demand that validates the market, and the right team at the earliest stages. Even better is true confidence in scaling the offering to $100M+ revenue in 57 years, given ideal conditions.
VCs are looking to accelerate something thats already working, not serve as a lifeline. Raising money out of desperation only leads to two possible outcomes: a bad deal from a predatory partner or no deal at all. Extraordinary people with amazing opportunities know their worth in a room.
Its also important to consider, the larger the raise, in most cases the deeper the partnership with your investors. This is why setting up the correct relationships up front is key. You want to be in position to work with your board, not for your board.
Take the time to evaluate whether a VC truly fits your business model, personal goals, and tolerance for risk.
The Real Work Starts After the Check Clears
Fundraising is often glamorized, but the real work begins after the money is in the bank. Scaling a team, managing burn, hitting milestones, and navigating investor expectations can be more challenging than raising the round itself. Post-funding success requires operational maturity, strong communication, and the ability to grow as an individual. Youll quickly find that what you did to get to level one does not work to get you to level two. This is where clarity of values matters. Founders who raise with intention and choose investors who understand and respect their vision are better positioned to grow without losing themselves
Raising venture capital is a strategic decision. Understand how VC works, prepare deeply, know how to manage your power dynamic with investors, and choose the right path to build your company (not theirs).
If you decide that venture capital is the right path for you, the goal isnt just to get funded. Its to build something meaningful, scalable, and sustainable on your own terms.
Every TV and movie critic is loving to hate on Darren Aronofsky these days. The Academy Award-nominated filmmakercreator of lyrical, surreal, and deeply human movies like Black Swan, The Whale, Mother!, and Pihas released an AI-generated series called On This Day . . . 1776 to commemorate the semiquincentennial anniversary of the American Revolution. Though the series has garnered millions of views, commentators everywhere call it “a horror,” slamming Aronofsky’s work for how stiff the faces look, how everything morphs unrealistically. Although calling it “requiem for a filmmaker” seems excessive, they are not wrong about these faults.
The series, created using real human voice-overs and Google’s generative video AI, does suffer from uncanny valley syndrome (our brains can very easily detect what’s off with faces, and we don’t buy it as real, feeling an automatic repulsion). But this month, two new generative AI models from China have closed the valley’s gap: Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0. For the first time, AI is generating video content that is truly indistinguishable from film, with the time and subject coherence that will make the 2020s “It’s AI slop!” crybabies disappear like their predecessors in the aughts (“It’s CGI!”) and the 1990s (“It’s Photoshop!”).
Seedance 2.0, developed by TikTok parent company ByteDance, released in beta on February 9exclusively in China for now. Its widely considered the first “director’s tool.” Unlike previous models that gave the feeling you were pulling a slot machine lever and hoping for a coherent result, Seedance allows for what analysts at Chinese investment firm Kaiyuan Securities call director-level control.
It achieves this through a breakthrough multimodal input system. ByteDance has redesigned its model to accept images, videos, audio, and text simultaneously as inputs, rather than relying on text prompts alone. A creator can upload up to a dozen reference filesmixing character sheets, specific camera movement demos, and audio tracksand the AI will synthesize them into a scene that follows cinematic logic.
The results have been startling. “With its reality enhancements, I feel its very hard to tell whether a video is generated by AI,” says Wang Lei, a programmer in Guangdong who tested the model to generate a 10-second history of humanity. He described the output as “smooth in storytelling with cinematic grandeur.” One of the tricks is that ByteDance trained it on the vast video dataset of Douyin (Chinas TikTok). This gave the model the capacity to understand human nuance, which shows in the everyday shots it produces in addition to the Hollywood-level cinematic shots it can create.
[Image: Kuaishou]
And then there’s Kling
If Seedance is the visionary director, Kling 3.0 is the rigorous cinematographer. Launched February 5 by Kuaishou Technology, Kling 3.0 has earned the moniker “Motion Engine.” While other models struggle with the basic laws of physicscars floating, people walking through wallsKling 3.0 respects gravity and light.
[Image: Kuaishou]
“The physics simulation finally lets you art direct motion instead of hoping for it,” Bilawal Sidhu, a former Google product manager and AI strategist, said on LinkedIn. This makes it uniquely suited to be integrated into commercial work where a product must look and behave like a real object. Commenters on Reddit were in awe of the models new abilities, especially for long takes and multishot.
[Image: Kuaishou]
Klings major breakthrough is its Elements feature, which allows users to upload reference videos to lock in character consistency. Before, generative video AI would change the characters’ faces at random, like in Aronofsky’s series. With Kling, they always look exactly the same in any shot it generatesa holy grail feature for filmmakers who need actors to look like the same person from shot to shot. It doesn’t just generate pixels; it understands narrative pacing, cutting, and continuity.
The level of realism is so high that Kaiyuan Securities believes the new model is positioned to be widely adopted first in AI manga and short drama areas, bringing down costs and improving efficiency to benefit companies with large holdings of intellectual property or traffic.
The markets agreed. The release of these models immediately sent shockwaves through the Chinese tech sector. Digital content company house COL Group skyrocketed in the anticipation it will use these models. Shares in studio giant Huace Media and game developer Perfect World rallied 7% and 10% respectively. Investors arent betting on a toy; theyre betting on the total replacement of traditional production pipelines in gming, film, and publishing.
An industrial revolution for the visual arts
For many professionals in the trenches, generative AI tools are not toys; they are the new standard. Julian Muller, an award-winning director and creative producer, told me the shift is already visible to everyone. “Just from what I saw in the Super Bowl commercials on Sunday, many incorporated AI elements to achieve creative results. We are definitely at the beginning of a shift in what is possible under tighter timelines and leaner production investments, Muller says.
I’d say these models [Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0] clearly can produce stunning visual results, Muller tells me, noting, however, that theyre not perfect. They are very close to being indistinguishable from real production footage, yet I think there is still a detectable artificial quality to it.
Muller does believe that we have passed the point of no return. “Directors and producers who don’t use AI tools to enhance their projects will soon become the exception and not the rule,” he says. “This is te future, and we’re definitely not going back.”
This sentiment is echoed by Tim Simmons, a 17-year Hollywood veteran who analyzes the industry on YouTubes channel Theoretically Media. He told me that while big studios are paralyzed by their own infrastructure, indie creators are adapting.
“Adoption at the large studios will remain slower because of the rigid postproduction specs that necessitate building customized AI workflows,” he says. “The challenge is the time required to build such a workflow versus the speed at which AI models are evolving.” Basically, by the time the studios have finished constructing your bridge, the river has moved 150 miles to the north, he points out.
Setting aside the complex discussions regarding unions and talent for a moment, its safe to say that through 2026, you’ll see tentative steps from larger studios, Simmons says. But for indie studios and international production houses working outside the traditional Hollywood system? Utilization will rise rapidly.
A demo video from the Kling 3.0 announcement [Image: Kuaishou]
No soul in the machine
Not everyone is ready to embrace the algorithm, of course. While the technology has nearly conquered the visual uncanny valley, a deeper, emotional chasm remains. “I dont think weve ever been amazed and saddened like we are today,” Peter Quinn, a VFX artist and director known for his surreal, handcrafted effects, told me via email. “Spectacular art has just become so dull,” he says.
Quinn argues that we value art not just for the final image, but for the human struggle behind itthe painter mixing colors, the stop-motion artist moving a puppet millimeter by millimeter. “Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0, while spectacular, are 2026s latest shiny AI toys . . . capable of generating soulless marvels, birthed in a data center somewhere,” he says. “Its interesting how the wow fades when we hear its AI.”
In fact, Quinn is in the process of creating a TV docuseries about the anti-AI. Titled The Creators, it intentionally features dozens of “real” artists whove found interesting ways to express creativity by leaning heavily into showing the process, time, and effort it takes to make something.
We see a painter mixing and painstakingly applying paint to a canvas over days, stop-motion artists timelapse of weeks of tiny well-considered adjustments, a dancer getting it wrong, a collage artist cutting hundreds of pieces by hand, an artist who can create photo-real pencil sketches, a sculptor who knows the nuance of clay, or a photographer who sees something nobody else does, he tells me. It just feels like its time. [The] time it takes is what makes it valuable and worthy of looking at or hanging on a wall.
Titans of the industry share his skepticism. Guillermo del Toro has famously dismissed AI art as “an insult to life itself,” while Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan says he wont use tools that remove the human element from storytelling. In Pluribuss credits there is a line that says that humans proudly made it. Maybe TV and cinema will bifurcate between a minority of human-only-made art for the galleries and the purists, and algorithmic content for the masses. Just like there are fanatics of real film, like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, who refuse using digital cameras like everyone else in the industry.
A demo video from the Kling 3.0 announcement [Image: Kuaishou]
The new impressionism
I understand Quinn, Del Toro, Nolan, and every purist out there. But, from a historical perspective, it really doesnt make a lot of sense. Despite the existential angstand leaving aside the huge problem that this will cause in terms of jobs and copyright issues, a topic for another articlethere is reason for deep optimism.
We are standing at a moment in history that mirrors the state of art in the late 19th century. Before the industrial revolution brought us the collapsible paint tube and pre-stretched factory-made canvas, painting was an expensive, studio-bound endeavor reserved for the elite who had the patrons that would pay them enough for them to grind their own pigments. The industrial revolution in paint manufacturing liberated every artist. It allowed Monet and Renoir to leave the studio, go outside, and paint the light. It birthed Impressionism.
Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0 may be the paint tubes of cinema and TV, which has seen its cost go down with the analog and video revolutions, but its still reserved for a very few. Those modelsand the ones that will come next from Google and otherstruly open the gates for true AI-generated stories that will feel as real as the ones produced with real people, whether the purists like it or not.
Simmons believes “there is a ‘new media’ coming that isn’t ‘just movies but cheaper.’ It will be interactive, generative, and personalized in ways we can’t fully articulate yet, he says. I dont think we have the language for it yet. Right now, we are looking at the internet in 1990 and asking, ‘How will this change the fax machine?’ The answer wasn’t a better fax machine.”
I believe that he is right. By lowering the barrier to entry to zero, Seedance and Kling are inviting billions of people who have never held a camera to tell their stories. With the uncanny valley closed, the gatekeepers are gone. The only thing left is to see what humanity decides to paint with this terrifying, wonderful new brush.
When my business went through a difficult season, I turned to my friend, ChatGPT. I asked the Large Language Model (LLM) for insights and advice on how to leverage my strengths and pivot my business as budgets for womens leadership programs shifted downward. When the well-framed answers started pouring in, I didnt pause to check in with myself and ask if my opinion diverged from ChatGPT or whether this advice aligned with my values and mission. In fact, I didnt even think to ask ChatGPT what might work in my favor if I just stayed the course.I was a LLeMming: a term Lila Shroff uses to describe compulsive AI users in The Atlantic. Lila Shroff shares that just as the adoption of writing reduced our memory and calculators devalued basic arithmetic skills, AI could be atrophying our critical thinking skills.
A MODERN LEADERSHIP BLIND SPOT
In my TEDx talk, I share that we are all susceptible to a cognitive bias called authority bias, which means we are heavily influenced by the opinions and judgments of perceived authority figures. This could be accepting your bosss input without critical evaluation, or it could be blind trust that ChatGPT always provides the right answers.
Large Language Models offer us 24/7 access to advice and guidance. Its easy to fall into an authority bias toward LLMs because not only do tools like ChatGPT answer all questions with an astonishingly confident tone, but outsourcing our decision-making is convenient. Also known as Cognitive Offloading, the outsourcing of cognition helps people manage mental load, memory demands, and decision burden. There is also discomfort and effort involved in turning inward (and checking in is not quick, nor are the answers obvious).
Given the fact that LLMs are not well-rounded, critical-minded people, this can be dangerous.
LLMs have been known to hallucinate by making up data or resources, reduce cognitive problem-solving skills, and hinder spontaneous creativity. It also has a bias for positivity, which means it can validate or support even the worst of ideas. This bias can be especially powerful in making you drift off track as a leader.
Heres what to do when you realize youre outsourcing your thinking (whether to an LLM or to a person).
GET CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR MOTIVATIONS
When I sought out ChatGPT to help me make some business pivots at the beginning of 2025, it seemed like a safe place to go to express my concerns and get advice without judgment. What I was really seeking was a sense of certainty in an uncertain time. Its tempting to default to our favorite LLM when uncertainty hits. One of my clients, a founder in the events industry, was feeling stuck in a creative strategy. She wanted to offload some of the uncertainty she was feeling around her marketing strategy, and so she asked ChatGPT to give her feedback. It gave her a host of strategies to try. When she asked my opinion, I asked her: Does the strategy align with your values? Does it move you and your team closer to your goals and objectives? Most importantly, does this recommendation energize you, or does it drain you?If you are wondering whether or not to use a strategy or idea suggested by AI, you can ask yourself these same questions. You can also start to take track of your own tendencies, like how frequently you turn to your favorite LLM to solve a problem, or even validate your choices and beliefs. Are you: Trying to eliminate uncertainty? Seeking validation? Craving alternatives? Or looking for novel ideas?
When you notice why you turn to your favorite LLM for advice, it becomes easier to slow down and ensure you are using it for the right reasons.
TRUST YOURSELF FIRST
For over three months, I’ve stopped asking ChatGPT (my preferred LLM) for advice on business challenges after I realized I was drifting off course. While building a skill set around AI and LLM is critical as a leader, this exercise helped me rebuild self-trust. I feel better in my physical and mental health, my creativity has returned, and I feel back in alignment with my business, my decisions, and my future. I made some hard decisions to quit things that weren’t working for me (that were very well supported by ChatGPT).
One of my clients realized that she was trusting Claude, her preferred LLM, too much for leadership advice. To combat this, she started to read the advice in a toddlers voice. It helped her remember that the recommendations, while sounding smart, generally offer no more experience and education than a toddler. Its often guessing at best.
Sow down enough to assess whether this advice aligns with your value system, feels aligned, or even whether its advice youd entertain if a younger coworker suggested it.
DONT OUTSOURCE YOUR LEADERSHIP POWER
A client of mine remembers the precise day she started looking for a new job. It was the day she shared her annual marketing strategy with her CEO. As CMO, she had spent months gathering enough data and research to craft this careful plan. Her CEO took her plan, put it in ChatGPT, and told her they would be moving forward with one of ChatGPTs strategies, instead of her custom-crafted plan. She felt her intelligence was undermined as the CEO swapped her decades of marketing knowledge for a tool that has been known to guess.
As modern leaders, we should be both proficient in using AI tools and also cognizant of when not to use them. We have to trust that we can bring all of our five senses to real business issues, and AI cannot. Delegating our approach and decisions to AI leads to a sea of sameness, and in my clients situation, employee disengagement. In my own experience, defaulting to LLMs for the answer made it harder to think creatively and on the fly for solutions.
Remember, your experience, insights, and senses are unique and valuable. They are your competitive advantage. No AI tool can replace this.
Romance scams used to feel like a cliché. Everyone pictured an email from an overseas “prince” that was poorly written and full of typos and pleas for cash. Now, that cliché is dead.
Todays romance scams are industrial-scale operations. Attackers use artificial intelligence to clone voices, create deepfake video calls, and write scripts with large language models (LLMs).
In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission reported that financial losses to romance scams skyrocketed, with victims losing $1.14 billion. The real number, hidden by shame and silence, is likely triple that.
Romance scams arent just a tragedy for the victims. A successful scam is a massive risk for businesses, too. When an employee with access to sensitive data or funds is compromised, the “heartbreak hack” can harm an entire organization.
What Today’s Romance Scams Look Like
Phase 1: Contact. Romance scams often start on dating appsbut theyre also prevalent on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedInwith a seemingly innocent message. These scams arent necessarily about love; theyre about establishing trust.
For example: Is this Alex? We met at the conference last week, or Sorry, wrong number, but your profile photo is lovely.
The goal is to continue the conversation on an encrypted app, such as Telegram or WhatsApp, where traditional security measures cant monitor conversations. Once contact is established, the manipulation becomes emotional.
Phase 2: Love bomb. Over weeks or months, the scammer builds intimacy. Theyll share mundane details, such as photos of their dog or personal struggles.
But with todays AI upgrade, LLMs can craft empathetic responses that mimic shared information to gain trust. Eventually, the relationship is leveraged for financial gain.
Phase 3: Pivot. Once trust is established, the conversation pivots. The scammer doesnt ask for a plane ticket or emergency money. They talk about success.
They might say, My uncle has an exclusive crypto trading algorithm. They’ll agree to teach the victim how to invest, showing massive (yet fake) returns on a legitimate-looking app. Then, the victim invests large sums of money.
What makes these scams especially dangerous is that old warning signs no longer apply.
When the Bot Flirts Back
We used to say, If they wont video call you, its a scam. That advice is now obsolete.
In deepfake video calls, for example, scammers use real-time face-swapping technology. On your screen, the person moves, blinks, and smiles, wearing the face of the stolen identity. While the tech is good, its not perfect. Tip: Look for blurring around the neck and hairline or glitches when they pass a hand in front of their face.
In voice cloning, scammers send voice notes that sound exactly like the person in the photos. Free AI tools now require less than 10 seconds of audio to clone a voice with 85% accuracy, enabling voicemails that reinforce the persona’s reality.
Organizations Need to Pay Attention
You might be thinking, Why is it a CISOs problem?
Take the now-former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank, who fell victim to such a scam. Convinced he was investing in a crypto opportunity for his “friend,” he embezzled $47 million of the banks funds, leading to the banks total collapse and a 24-year prison sentence. Had the bank’s chief information security officer known what was going on, the situation might have been identified earlier and nipped in the bud.
Here are three forms of the corporate blast radius.
Embezzlement: Employees with access to payroll or wire transfers may “borrow” company funds, believing theyll pay it back once their “investment” clears.
Sextortion and blackmail: Scammers typically encourage victims to share intimate images. Once they have this, it becomes leverage.
BYOD malware: The “trading app” the victim installs is often sophisticated malware that gives the attacker backdoor entry. If that device connects to your corporate network, the attacker is inside.
How to Stop a Romance Scam
Defending against romance scams requires recognizing patterns in infrastructure and the psychology of influence. Here are three tips to avoid falling victim to a fraudster.
Watch for the vibe shift: If a romantic interest mentions cryptocurrency, foreign exchanges (forex), or nodes within the first few weeks, its a 100% positive indicator of a scamno exceptions. If theyve been patient for months, but suddenly an opportunity is closing quickly, this is manufactured urgency designed to bypass critical thinking.
The “specific action” test: Try to hop on a video call, and take two actions. First, ask the person to turn their head all the way around. Deepfake models often struggle with extreme movements or facial expressions, and the face can glitch. Second, ask the person to wave a hand in front of or behind their head. AI often gets confused about which object is in front, leading to face distortion.
Move beyond awareness training: Social engineering defense used to be treated as a training problem, measured by click rates and phishing simulations. But modern attacks go beyond inboxes, and they dont wait for employee mistakes.
Todays most damaging campaigns leverage impersonation tactics across email, messaging platforms, and social media, often targeting trusted relationships. Defense requires moving beyond reactive training toward early detection of impersonation and coordinated disruption, supported by human rsk management practices that help employees recognize how attacks like romance scams begin and escalate.
Trust, But Verify
Theres now little distinction between personal life and corporate risk. When an employee or executive is emotionally compromised, so is the organization. Human intuition cant win a fight against AI-powered psychological warfare.
The heart will always be a vulnerability, and in the age of AI, its also an attack vector. Romance scams prove that attackers dont need to break a firewall; they just need to break a heart, and its time to defend with rigor.
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During an earnings call in June 2025, KB Homes McGibneywhose company prefers outright home price cuts over incentives when adjustments are neededsaid that some buyers turning to competitors are effectively overpaying for new builds to obtain mortgage rate buydowns. If those buyers need to sell in the near term, he warned, they could find themselves underwater and unable to recoup the artificially high base prices.
“I believe that there are [builder] customers that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive… They may potentially be upside down when they try to sell that home, McGibney said back in June.
In January 2026, ResiClub interviewed KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger and COO Rob McGibneybeginning March 1, 2026, McGibney will assume the CEO role. During that conversation, ResiClub asked KB Home about that upside-down comment.
Mezger and McGibney reaffirmed their stance, saying theyll continue to lean into transparent pricing over incentives.
We believe in price transparency, Mezger tells ResiClub. Our biggest competitor is resaleand [resale] sellers dont offer incentive packages.
In the view of KB Home executives, leaning too hard into incentive-driven strategieswhen affordability adjustments or net effective price cuts are needed to meet the marketcan translate into inflated base prices, larger loan balances, and greater near-term resale risk if a buyer needs to move sooner than expected.Our buyers tell us they like the clarity, McGibney tells ResiClub. They [our buyers] know exactly what theyre paying for I think [transparent pricing] really lowers that risk of [the buyer] overpaying for a home and potentially being upside down.
Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022 and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, many large homebuilders began offering sizable mortgage rate buydowns. Some have gone as far as shelling out $40,000, $50,000, or even $60,000 toward forward commitments that can get a borrowers mortgage rate below 4.99%or even 3.99%. Through an economic lens, the homebuyer is still ultimately paying for those buydowns if the headline price isnt coming down.
According to AEI Housing Center, 64% of new single-family home sales in June 2025 by the 21 largest U.S. homebuilders included a permanent buydowncompared with 13% for all other new-home sales. Many large homebuilders do this because arbitrage in the bond market allows them to achieve a marginally larger reduction in a buyers monthly payment for each dollar spent on mortgage rate buydowns than for each dollar spent on outright price cuts.
Here’s what Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the AEI Housing Center, wrote in a report published in November 2025:
Why dont [more] builders just cut prices instead? The main reason is that permanent buydowns are far more cost-effective lowering the rate [via forward commitments for buydowns] by 100 bps costs the builder roughly 3.2% of the sale price. To achieve the same monthly payment through a direct price cut, the builder would need to cut the price by 10%. Furthermore, once a builder cuts the price on one home, buyers would expect similar discounts for the entire subdivision. But there is another factor at work. Permanent buydowns funded through bulk forward commitments are excluded from the seller concession limits, which cap how much a seller can contribute toward the borrowers closing costs. For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller concessions are generally limited to 3-6% and for FHA the limit is generally 6%. Over 40% of sales by large builders have a combination of seller concessions plus permanent buydown cost in excess of 6%.”
Start in a low-level position and work your way upward. Does that even apply anymore? In fact, the career ladder doesnt work for everyone anymore. Right now, as technology disrupts the work rules, there are no clear paths forward.
The linear career path changed somewhere between the rise of the gig economy and the rise of artificial intelligence. Companies are restructuring. Some industries may collapse entirely in the next five years. Ive gone from studying law to studying software entrepreneurship to being a self-improvement essayist. My career is still an experiment in progress. The world of work is changing. And Im changing with it.
The people who make it are not those with impressive titles, but those who are willing to adjust to the new 21st-century workplace. Thats why these ideas matter right now. I hope they help you rethink your work life.
1. Build skills, not titles
If the promotion is not coming, dont dwell on it. Or obsess over the next one. Focus on what you can do to take control of your skills. The title may look great on LinkedIn, but you will want more than that. Do more for your present skills. Can you get good at other skills beyond your current expertise? Can you interpret data? Manage difficult conversations? Build better relationships with the people on your team?
These skills travel with you. Titles dont. Titles change, while your values and skills evolve. You are either ahead of change or being left behind. Dont focus too much on reaching the final level of management. Stack indispensable skills you can take anywhere.
That means take that weird project nobody wants. Youll learn something. Say yes to the cross-functional teameven if its more work. Learn the skill that scares you a little. You will probably be terrified in the process. But you will learn a thing or two. That new skill will open more doors than any title ever could.
2. Think in networks, not hierarchies
The org chart lies to you. It tells you theres one path up. It tells you your bosss boss is more important than the engineer in another department. Or to keep your head down and wait your turn. You are better than that. Ignore it. The most valuable people I know have spider-web abilities. They know people across industries, across functions, across companies.
When opportunity knocks, it usually comes through someone you helped three years ago, not through your annual review. I worked with the Microsoft small-business team a few years ago because someone saw my work on a blog. If you can help a former colleague troubleshoot something, try to find a pocket of time to help. You never know how you could cross paths again. Be curious about what others doeven when you are out for a chat.
Start small. Message someone whose work you admire. Just say you admire it. Introduce two people who should know each other. Share what youre learning. Publicly. Even if it feels scary. Make yourself useful to people you respectnot just to your boss. Useful to humans doing interesting work.
3. Experiment like your career depends on it
Sometimes it does. Whats risky is betting your entire future on one carefully planned path. Diversify. Its easier said than done, but do what you must within what works for you. It will become the foundation for a career you didnt even plan for. Be ready for what could happen.
You could be sabotaging your work life if you are waiting for the right time or the perfect plan. Your experiments dont need to change your entire work life. Youre not quitting your job (unless you are, in which case, have fun). Youre just testing things. You could spend a few months learning something unrelated to your job after work.
Youll gain skills youd never get at work. Start a personal side project with no clear return on investmentjust because it interests you. Follow your curiosities. Experiment your way into new skills. Those that fail teach you what you dont want. The ones that succeed show you possibilities.
4. Redefine what “success” means for you
Ask yourself: Whose definition of career success am I pursuing? I ask myself that question all the time. I spent my twenties trying to impress people. I wanted to work for a prestigious company, and have an impressive title. I got the offer. It didnt feel right. I turned it down. Ive never looked back. Your success may not be the pursuit of a career ladder. It may be living a life that fits you.
Maybe success is the flexibility to pick up your kids from school. Or working on problems that matter. Maybe its having time to train for something youve always wanted to do. Maybe its all three, in different seasons of your life. My point is, you get to decide. And you get to change your mind. Find answers to these questions: What does a good day look like for me? What am I optimizing for right now? Money? Learning? Growth? Time? What would I do if I wasn’t trying to impress anyone? Your answers will change over time. Thats fine. You are evolving.
The 21st-century career right now is not linear. But you have more choices. More opportunities to find your zone of genius. The uncertainty is the opportunity. Every unexpected change in your career. Every time the path disappears. Thats where you get to choose who you become. Youre not climbing a ladder anymore. Youre exploring what could be. Thats more interesting, I think. You get to build something wider and more uniquely yours. So stack those skills. Grow your network. Run your experiments. Define success on your terms. The career you build wont look like anyone elses. Its yours now and in the future.
