🧠 Is AI Making Us Less Productive?

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Wednesday top story We've all turned to AI for shortcuts - but what if it's quietly creating more mess than magic? In today's edition, explore how "workslop," Hollywood's AI war, and new career shifts reveal the real impact of artificial intelligence.

🤔 Is AI Making Us Worse at Work?

Brief Buzz: There's a new workplace buzzword — "workslop" — and it's not a compliment. Coined by researchers at BetterUp Labs and Stanford's Social Media Lab, the term refers to AI-generated work that looks polished but lacks real value, forcing coworkers to pick up the slack.

• 40% of U.S. workers say they’ve received "workslop" in the past month, losing nearly two hours per instance.
• Companies may be bleeding millions in productivity as poor AI outputs multiply.
• "Workslop" often looks impressive — slick slides, polished reports, even neat code — but misses crucial context or accuracy.
• Researchers warn this could explain why 95% of firms see little return on AI investments.
• The fix? Not banning AI — but setting clear standards for when and how to use it responsibly.

Why Should You Care?

AI can make your workday easier — or harder. Without clear boundaries, tools meant to save time might create more cleanup than value. Learning to spot and manage "workslop" could be the difference between AI as a helper or AI as extra work.

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🎬 Hollywood Pushes Back Against AI Video Tools

Brief Buzz: The battle for dominance in AI video generation is getting fierce — and messy. As new models push creative boundaries, they’re also sparking a major backlash from Hollywood over copyright and deepfake risks.

• OpenAI's Sora 2 and its new app are under fire as users quickly found ways to strip watermarks, fueling fears of fraud and misinformation.
• xAI's Imagine v0.9 launched with improved visuals, motion, and audio generation, while leaked details of Google's Veo 3.1 suggest major cinematic upgrades.
• Hollywood agencies including CAA, UTA, and WME have publicly opposed Sora, saying it "exposes our clients' intellectual property to significant risk."
• The Motion Picture Association is urging OpenAI to act decisively on copyright violations.

Why Should You Care?

AI video tools are becoming powerful enough to rival professional productions — but they’re also blurring the line between real and synthetic content. For creators and viewers alike, this means confronting new realities around authenticity, ownership, and trust in the digital age.

👉 Learn creative video editing courses built for innovators.

⚡️ 5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

👉 Coursera is an online learning platform that offers courses, certifications, and degree programs from leading universities and organizations around the world. It provides access to a wide range of subjects such as data science, business, computer science, and personal development.

Visit Coursera

👉 Xero AI-powered features streamline financial management by automating tasks like invoice processing and bank reconciliation. Its predictive analytics provide actionable insights, helping businesses forecast cash flow and make data-driven decisions effortlessly.

Visit Xero

👉 TriNet is an HR and payroll platform that now integrates AI-driven analytics to optimize workforce management. It uses AI insights to predict employee turnover and engagement trends. The tool also offers AI-powered compliance monitoring to automatically detect and flag potential HR risks.

Visit TriNet

👉 Bambee leverages AI to provide personalized HR guidance for small to mid-sized businesses. Its AI-driven features include automated compliance tracking, customized HR policy recommendations, and intelligent issue resolution support. The tool learns from user interactions to improve HR solutions over time.

Visit Bambee

👉 ActivTrak AI-powered workforce-analytics engine auto-classifies every app & website activity to reveal focus vs distraction trends and productivity baselines. Predictive coaching dashboards surface "nudges" for managers, using ML to flag at-risk teams and recommend schedule or workload tweaks.

Visit ActivTrak

📰 AI Pushes Young Workers Toward Blue-Collar Dreams

Brief Buzz: AI jitters are reshaping career plans. A new CBS News piece reports more Gen Zers are steering toward skilled trades as entry-level white-collar jobs feel less secure in the age of automation. College costs and a cooling grad job market are accelerating the shift.

• AI is "gobbling" entry-level roles, nudging young workers toward hands-on careers.
• In one survey, 77% of Gen Z want jobs that are hard to automate—think electrician, plumber, carpenter.
• Unemployment for recent college grads averages ~4.6% in 2025 vs 3.2% in 2019; non-college peers saw a smaller rise.
• Schools and employers report surging interest in welding/construction/field roles—because "AI can't go out in the field."

Why Should You Care?

This trend hints at where stable, well-paid work may grow next—and flags the need to upskill for human, physical, on-site tasks that automation can't easily replace.

🛠️ How to Craft Your Own Animated Miniatures

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to design a mini figurine of yourself - or a specific product - using Google Gemini’s Nano Banana tool, and then bring it to life with Luma Dream Machine to produce captivating videos for social media or marketing.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Google Gemini, click "Create images", and enable the Nano Banana tool. This activates the creative model used to build your figurine concept.
2. Use this prompt: "First ask me to upload an image, then create a 1/7th scale commercialized figurine of the characters in the picture in a realistic style in a real environment. The figurine is placed on a computer desk with a transparent acrylic base and a toy packaging box"
3. Upload your reference image when prompted, and let Gemini generate your figurine scene complete with a desk setup, monitor, and premium packaging. Review the result to ensure the figurine proportions and materials look accurate.
4. Take the generated image to Luma Labs, create a "New Board", and animate using prompts such as: "Front camera view of this figurine. He takes the phone, tosses it up like a serve, then smashes it toward the camera." Experiment with camera movements and character actions for more dynamic results.

💡 Pro Tip: To achieve professional-quality animations, be specific about camera angles (e.g., front view, close-up, dolly-in), subject motion (which hand moves, timing, speed), and tone (playful, cinematic, intense). The more detailed your instructions, the more lifelike and engaging your final video will be.

👉 Make your miniatures move with 3D design

💡 Mira Murati's Startup Launches Its First Product

Brief Buzz: Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and her team at Thinking Machines Lab have launched Tinker, a developer API designed to make fine-tuning large AI models simple and accessible — no massive infrastructure required.

• Tinker lets developers customize models like Meta’s Llama and Alibaba’s Qwen using both supervised and reinforcement learning methods.
• With just a few lines of code, users can tailor models for specialized domains such as math, chemistry, or scientific reasoning.
• Princeton, Stanford, and Berkeley are already using it for advanced research tasks.
• Early access is open now for free, with paid tiers coming soon.

Why Should You Care?

Building a new AI model from scratch costs millions and months — but Tinker flips that script. It means smaller teams, startups, or even researchers can create highlyspecialized AI systems quickly and affordably. This shift could spark a wave of customized, domain-specific AI, moving the industry from "one model fits all" to "AI for everything."

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✨ How to Design in Canva Using ChatGPT

1. Go to Canva and either create a new template or select an existing one that you want to customize.
2. Open ChatGPT, click '+' > Connectors, and then connect your Canva account.
3. Use a sample prompt like the following: "Open my [template name] in Canva. Create 4 personalized variations with custom messages for different occasions: John (promotion at work), Sara (graduation celebration), David (new home purchase), Emily (running her first marathon). Keep the design style consistent with the original template but update colors, text, and small elements to reflect each event’s mood."
4. ChatGPT will duplicate your template and automatically fill in personalized text for each variation.
5. Open your variations in Canva, review and polish the layouts. Feel free to tweak fonts, adjust colors, or make other minor refinements as needed. Once satisfied, download and share your finished designs.

💡 Pro Tip: For a smoother workflow, name your Canva templates clearly (e.g., “Birthday_Invite_Base”) so ChatGPT can find and modify them effortlessly when generating variations.

👉 Save time by pre-scheduling your Instagram content

📸 AI Generator Images: Games