In this issue: OpenAI’s messy GPT-5 launch strips away the magic. The jumping bunnies are fake, and so is everything else in our feeds. Questions for you, the reader. Plus: I vibecoded a Strava data exporter and compared four AI models as marathon coaches.
Hi, I'm Ole Reissmann, a journalist who builds things. I'm the first Director of AI at SPIEGEL. Before that: podcasts, news product development, platform strategy. I write about AI and journalism and send a newsletter you might enjoy.
How Hearst’s DevHub is Building AI Tools That Work for Local News (Ulrike Langer, News Machines)
The publishers’ guide to being gaslit by tech platforms (the AI edition) (Seb Joseph, Sara Guaglione, DigiDay)
21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work (Larry Buchanan, Francesca Paris, New York Times). Previously: 18 journalists and news executives share how they use AI
Signs of AI writing: How Wikipedia tries to identify synthetic content.
No emotions, no praise, no mind: Extremism-scholar J.M. Berger’s three laws of chatbotics (Bluesky)
Brainstorm with a Bot: These days, we’re in an uneasy middle ground, caught between shaping a new technology and being reshaped by it. (Dan Rockmore, The New Yorker)
It’s the return of the shoe-leather reporter, empowered by an AI partner: David Cohn’s take on the Death of the Article debate.
I tried ChatGPT Agent and Perplexity Comet to actually get things done
I've been playing with ChatGPT Agent and Perplexity Comet—and I'm not sure if I'm witnessing the future of productivity or just an elaborate way to make simple tasks more complicated. The premise sounds great: tell an AI what you want, and it'll just… do it. Book your train tickets, find that obscure book, curate a...
“Transparency” and “disclosure” are buzzwords in the AI and journalism space – this report looks at the state of global research. (Center for News, Technology & Innovation)
What I Learned from Making a ‘Liquid Content’ Machine (Clare Spencer, Generative AI in the Newsroom)
From an overview how newsrooms tackle bias in large language models: Humans and AI bots have biases. But the machine won’t be offended when you call it out. (Ramaa Sharma, Reuters Institute)
$200+ monthly fees: Welcome to the two-tier AI landscape favoring the well-off. (Reece Rogers, Wired)
