Some news: After 25 years in newsrooms at @washingtonpost.com & @wsj.com, I’m helping launch a new research and testing institute to answer one of the most urgent tech questions of our time: What is AI doing to kids? It’s called the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media bit.ly/4tT6FOp

What is AI doing to our kids? I’m going to find out.

After 12 years as a tech columnist, I'm helping launch the new Youth AI Safety Institute to test the AI products shaping childhood.

geoffreyfowler.substack.com

Meta thinks now is a great time to launch facial recognition surveillance tech in their creepy glasses because EFF will be too distracted by fascism to notice. We noticed. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans

Meta’s analysis that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong.

eff.org

Wow: Meta has been working on plans to add facial recognition technology to its AI smart glasses. nyti.ms/3Os1oxf And this was the company’s cynical view on when, and how, to do it:

NEW by me: ChatGPT thinks the South has stupider people. It thinks sub-Saharan Africa has the worst-quality food on earth. And it thinks the whiter your neighborhood, the more attractive the people. New research lets you see ChatGPT's hidden biases about YOUR community. 🧵 bit.ly/4asLD0x

ChatGPT thinks your state is dumb. Or lazy. Or ugly. See for yourself.

Making ChatGPT’s bias visible — and personal — is powerful.

geoffreyfowler.substack.com

A must-read about the bait and switch of ads on ChatGPT from someone who quit OpenAI over them: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o... If you start seeing any ads in your chats, please take a screenshot and let me know.

Opinion | OpenAI Is Making the Mistakes Facebook Made. I Quit.

nytimes.com

For 8 years my stories had to include: "Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but I review all technology with the same critical eye." Not anymore. My first Substack is about what it was like covering Amazon while Bezos paid my salary—and why tech accountability matters more than ever bit.ly/4rAmcRn

The truth about covering tech at Bezos’s Washington Post

And why ‘We the users’ matters more than ever

bit.ly

After 8 years writing the tech column @washingtonpost.com, I am among folks who were laid off today. I’m grateful for the stories I got to tell and the impact we made on privacy, sustainability & AI. You can keep following my work on my new (free) Substack geoffreyafowler.substack.com

Geoffrey's Substack | Geoffrey Fowler | Substack

My personal Substack. Click to read Geoffrey's Substack, by Geoffrey Fowler, a Substack publication. Launched 16 hours ago.

geoffreyafowler.substack.com

You can now connect ChatGPT to an Apple Watch. So I imported 29 mil steps & 6 mil heartbeats into the new ChatGPT Health. It graded my heart health an F. ⁉️ Cardiologist @erictopol.bsky.social called it “baseless.” Any bot claiming to give health insights shouldn’t be this clueless. Even in beta. 🧵

The performance of the newly released ChatGPT Health, via a thorough assessment by @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social with his health data, is very disappointing gift link wapo.st/49GEASP

Column | I let ChatGPT analyze a decade of my Apple Watch data. Then I called my doctor.

I gave the new ChatGPT Health access to 29 million steps and 6 million heartbeat measurements. It drew questionable conclusions that changed each time I asked.

wapo.st

ChatGPT now has a Spotify Wrapped-style "Your Year with ChatGPT." Cute — until you realize it only works because OpenAI has been logging everything you've been chatting about all year. Could you imagine Google reminding you it knows everything you've searched for? wapo.st/44LNJXc

I partnered with @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social to test a bunch of AI editing tools, and something ~very interesting~ happened. We asked Gemini to generate a professional photo of an actor crying at the Oscars. It did — including a fake copyright notice from a real AP photographer.

🚀 We tested 5 leading AI image generators @washingtonpost.com to see which tool is truly the best at editing & creating visuals. From adding bangs to The Rock to removing people from photos — the results might surprise you 🧵👇

New: AI chatbots can change voters' minds, according to a pair of in-depth studies published just now in Science and Nature. How they do it is interesting — and concerning. Gift link: wapo.st/49RSstP

Voters’ minds are hard to change. AI chatbots are surprisingly good at it.

New research suggests AI chatbots can shift people’s political views more effectively than campaign ads on TV.

wapo.st

Uber charged me $77. Lyft charged $49. Same ride. Same minute. I ran 80 tests @washingtonpost.com to find out why—and discovered a few things that could save you hundreds of $$. Use this link to read it, or buy a Day Pass to The Post: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

The Post analyzed 47,000 public ChatGPT conversations. While 35% use it for info and 11% for coding, the most striking finding? The emotional intimacy. ChatGPT: "You're not crazy sweetheart — you're just early." Use this link to read it with a $4 day pass to @washingtonpost.com: bit.ly/47QOjUb

ChatGPT’s new Atlas browser doesn’t just see what you read — it remembers it. @eff.org’s Lena Cohen showed me it even logged “memories” of her looking for *abortion care* and her doctor’s name. Out-surveils even Chrome. My @washingtonpost.com column: wapo.st/49bOcVC

Column | ChatGPT just came out with its own web browser. Use it with caution.

OpenAI’s Atlas promises AI-powered convenience. The price? Letting ChatGPT track and store “memories” of what you do online.

wapo.st

Meta fired its fact-checkers, citing concerns of liberal bias, and replaced them with a version of X's "Community Notes." How's that going? Well, my coworker @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social proposed 65 fact-checks debunking false posts... and only 3 got approved. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Column | Zuckerberg fired the fact-checkers. We tested their replacement.

Our tech columnist drafted 65 community notes, Meta’s new crowdsourced system to fight falsehoods. It failed to make a dent.

washingtonpost.com

7 months since Zuck's vaunted moderation pivot, one of its core planks is still barely registering. @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social submitted 65 perfectly suitable community notes and only 3 got published -- presumably because not enough people rated the others. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Column | Zuckerberg fired the fact-checkers. We tested their replacement.

Our tech columnist drafted 65 community notes, Meta’s new crowdsourced system to fight falsehoods. It failed to make a dent.

washingtonpost.com

Mark Zuckerberg fired pro fact checkers after Trump got re-elected. So @washingtonpost.com I tested Zuck's replacement: crowdsourced "community notes." Over 4 months, I drafted 65—debunking lies ranging from Mr. Rogers to ICE. Spoiler alert: It failed to make a dent. Read 👉 wapo.st/3IZ1Al1

What happens when you show up for a Zoom meeting ... and the only other participants are AI note takers? It happened to my colleague: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

No one likes meetings. They’re sending their AI note takers instead.

Artificial intelligence apps that record and summarize meetings can tempt workers into skipping calls, leaving humans who join in the company of silent bots.

washingtonpost.com

Testing 5 A.I. bots head-to-head on their summary of medical research papers that I authored (and other domains) by @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social gift link www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Review | 5 AI bots took our tough reading test. One was smartest — and it wasn’t ChatGPT.

We challenged AI helpers to decode legal contracts, simplify medical research, speed-read a novel and make sense of Trump speeches. Some of the AI analysis was impressive — and some was downright dumb...

washingtonpost.com

AI is speedrunning the social media era by optimizing chatbots for engagement, user feedback, time spent. Evidence is mounting that this poses unintended risks, includ. chats from peer-reviewed research, OpenAI's "sycophancy" debacle, & Character ai lawsuits www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Your chatbot friend might be messing with your mind

OpenAI, Meta and others want people to spend more time with AI chatbots, but there is growing evidence that they can hook users or reinforce harmful ideas.

washingtonpost.com

Jony Ive & Sam Altman are right that the hardware interface between humans and the "external brain" of AI is ripe for development. I hope they heed the hard lessons about values that have to be baked in, like privacy, safety, interoperability & access. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

iPhone designer Jony Ive will join OpenAI to build AI-powered devices

Jony Ive, a famed former Apple designer, said he will work at OpenAI on new products that make it easier to use AI tools like ChatGPT.

washingtonpost.com

"the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen" um, ok! openai.com/sam-and-jony/

Sam and Jony introduce io

Building a family of AI products for everyone.

openai.com

Have you Deep Researched it? Try NotebookLM. It’s in Google Search with AI Overviews. It’s literally on AI Mode. Dude just ask Gemini. You can Lens it. There’s an AI Summary for you. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... via @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social

Column | Google is getting even more AI, changing how we search

Google announced a confusing array of new ways to use its AI to find information at its annual I/O event. Here’s a guide.

washingtonpost.com

At #googleio, the scheduled morning vibe lift is … vibe coding

PSA for parents: Instagram promised it would start protecting kids “by default” with special Teen Accounts. So a group of GenZ users @designitforus.bsky.social put it to the test. IG filled their feeds with shocking stuff—graphic samples below. I wrote about it @washingtonpost.com wapo.st/4kuae8G

Google’s AI Overviews will not only confirm that a gibberish idiom is a real saying, it will also tell you what it means and how it was derived -- often including reference links. www.wired.com/story/google...

‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw

Google’s AI Overviews feature credible-sounding explanations for completely made-up idioms.

wired.com

You may have seen a lot of headlines this morning about Meta's @oversightboard.bsky.social latest rulings but there was one officials there clearly didn't want you to read

donations to trump’s inauguration from corporations facing federal investigations/lawsuits: $50 million (one third of corporate inauguration donations) -public citizen