14 May 2026
Trump’s Tech Posse in China, Who’s Winning in Musk v. Altman, and Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories
Today on “Uncanny Valley,” we discuss how Donald Trump’s visit to China could influence conversations between world leaders at a moment when the economic and foreign policy stakes couldn’t be higher.
14 May 2026
AI Promised the Audemars Piguet x Swatch Wristwatch. China Will Deliver It
For a week now, Instagram’s watch fans have been losing their minds over what looked like leaked product images. Vivid plastic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak wristwatches in bright colors: navy and orange, pink, yellow, and green. Captions guessed about prices and launch queues. Comment sections argued over colors. None of it was real. Every image was AI-generated.
12 May 2026
Googlebook Is Google’s New AI-Powered Laptop Platform Built on Android
Almost exactly 15 years since Google introduced Chromebooks and ChromeOS —which ushered in a wave of cheap, functional, web-based laptops that would come to dominate the US education market—the company has announced a new laptop platform called Googlebook. It's built around artificial intelligence and Android, and while it isn't replacing Chromebooks, it could give the company a more meaningful…
07 May 2026
ChatGPT Has 'Goblin' Mania in the US. In China It Will 'Catch You Steadily'
Are you even online in 2026 if you haven’t experienced the verbal tics of ChatGPT? It loves goblins, em dashes, and “it’s not A; it’s B” sentence constructions. But what you might not know is that the chatbot also has plenty of strange phrases it loves to say in Chinese, and they are driving Chinese users crazy.
06 May 2026
A Kid With a Fake Mustache Tricked an Online Age-Verification Tool
Meta is beefing up its age-verification mechanisms with an AI system that analyzes images and videos on Instagram and Facebook for “visual cues,” such as height and bone structure, to identify and delete accounts of users under the age of 13.
04 May 2026
This Company Has Figured Out a Way to Make Face ID Invisible
We're all too familiar with the notch—the unsightly cut-in that graced many smartphones for years, like the iPhone X or the LG G7.
