For many of us at Engadget, a big part of our jobs is testing out new tech on a regular basis. Our desks are cluttered with new smartphones, power banks, gaming accessories and more pretty much all the time, and there are plenty of winners and losers amongst them. Similarly, there are winners and losers in the things we buy for ourselves throughout the year, and we like to sing their praises just as much as we do for the best new tech that (professionally) comes across our desks. These are the best things Engadget staffers purchased in 2025 that will continue to get lots of use in the new year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-things-engadget-editors-bought-in-2025-130000576.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken’s decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have the decorative angular features and was the default in Microsoft products.

A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces.
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the cable said. “This formatting standard aligns with the President’s One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations directive, underscoring the Department’s responsibility to present a unified, professional voice in all communications,” it added.

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There’s plenty of chatter and research surrounding the so-called “laws” of productivity, but even the laws we use to govern other areas of our lives can be applicable when there are things that need to get done. Newton’s Laws of Motion can be adapted to productivity, especially the first one.

What’s Newton’s first law all about?

Newton’s first law of motion is this: “An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”

Obviously, he was talking about physics here, but in productivity spaces around the web, people who spend their time thinking about more efficient ways to get things done have started applying his wisdom to people. It makes sense: When you’re on a roll, say, cleaning your house, you kind of get into the zone and keep going. When you’re sitting on the couch dreading and putting off starting to work, it’s really easy to stay there and do nothing. 

The thinking reminds me of the productivity approach I fall back on most often, which I call the “one more” trick. Using it, you don’t schedule out how long you’ll work on a given task so much as you commit to getting started, then continually ask yourself, “Could I do one more?” with the “one” being any individual part of the overall task. The more you get done, the more motivated you are, and the more likely the answer to that question will be “yes.” After years of failed attempts to follow other approaches, this is what I use when I’m cleaning, but it works for a variety of things, from doing reps at the gym to responding to emails.

How can Newton’s law be applied to productivity? 

Research has looked into how adapting a mindset of getting into and staying in motion can help you be more productive. One review of its use by healthcare workers in a nuclear medicine department found it “novel,” but also able to “have a positive impact on productivity,” for instance. 

The trick isn’t staying in motion, but getting into it, so here’s where you should start. Try adhering to the two-minute rule, or the practice of immediately doing something if it will take two minutes or less. I use this in conjunction with the “one more” trick constantly, trying to do something the moment I think of it, or as soon as motivation or inspiration strikes. If an email comes in, respond to it right away. If you need to take the trash out, do it the minute you notice. If you have to cancel an appointment, call that second. Getting in the habit of doing smaller tasks immediately can help you build momentum. When I do pre-plan what I have to work on, I capitalize on the two-minute rule by frontloading my to-do list with simple tasks instead of opting for the “eat the frog” approach, which calls on you to do your biggest, most demanding duties first.

One day when I was first starting to use this trick, for instance, I had to confirm a ticket order, fill out a W9, order my graduation attire, clean out my entire clothing rack, and do a 12-page paper. By doing the three smaller things first, I built up some positivity and momentum, which helped push me to do the more daunting stuff later in the day. It’s rewarding to see checkmarks fill up your to-do list, so knock out whatever you can in the moment to get that rush and make you want to secure the checkmarks on the bigger items. (I quite literally jot my to-dos down in my notes app and check them off as I get them done, just for the boost.) If you’re using a 1-3-5 to-do list (and you should be!) try flipping your day so you tackle the five small tasks before the three medium-sized ones and large one so you can harness the power of Newton’s law yourself. 

A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.

“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.”

If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

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It’s once again that special time of year when we give you a chance to do well by doing good. That’s right—it’s the 2025 edition of our annual Charity Drive!

Every year since 2007, we’ve encouraged readers to give to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, which provides toys and games to kids being treated in hospitals around the world. In recent years, we’ve added the Electronic Frontier Foundation to our charity push, aiding in their efforts to defend Internet freedom. This year, as always, we’re providing some extra incentive for those donations by offering donors a chance to win pieces of our big pile of vendor-provided swag. We can’t keep it, and we don’t want it clogging up our offices, so it’s now yours to win.

This year’s swag pile is full of high-value geek goodies. We have over a dozen prizes valued at nearly $5,000 total, including gaming hardware and collectibles, apparel, and more. In 2023, Ars readers raised nearly $40,000 for charity, contributing to a total haul of more than $542,000 since 2007. We want to raise even more this year, and we can do it if readers dig deep.

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alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga’s new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach.

The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional ‘detection/recognition’ model to what Fujinaga calls a ‘harvest-ease estimation.’ “This moves beyond simply asking ‘can a robot pick a tomato?’ to thinking about ‘how likely is a successful pick?’, which is more meaningful for real-world farming,” he explained. When tested, Fujinaga’s new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. “This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate,” said Fujinaga. “Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits.”

The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

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The Game Awards 2025 edition of the Day of the Devs digital showcase goes live on Wednesday, December 10 at 1PM ET on Twitch and YouTube. That’s more than 30 hours before The Game Awards itself kicks off, which makes perfect sense. It is called Day of the Devs, after all, and if we’re judging by past appearances, the event absolutely deserves its own full 24 hours in the spotlight.

This year, the Day of the Devs: The Game Awards Digital Showcase will feature 22 indie titles, including three release date announcements and six world premieres. That’s a packed show, even by Day of the Devs standards. Expect to see projects from developers including 17-BIT, BONE Assembly, Capybara Games, Deconstructeam and Panic Stations, and publishers Annapurna Interactive, Devolver and Blumhouse Games, among others.

Each Day of the Devs showcase lasts about an hour and highlights a batch of extremely rad-looking independent games across a wide range of genres, complete with commentary from creators. The featured games are curated by industry veterans at Day of the Devs, and past shows have offered early looks at future hits like Animal Well, Blue Prince, Cocoon, Despelote, Crow Country, Phoenix Springs, Skate Story, UFO 50, Eternights, Sorry We’re Closed and many others.

Day of the Devs is a non-profit operation that provides a platform for select independent creators to showcase their games to large audiences for free, founded by folks at Double Fine Productions and iam8bit. On top of accepting donations, it receives support from various industry players, including Xbox, PlayStation and Summer Game Fest.

The Game Awards 2025 begins on Thursday, December 11 at 7:30PM ET, with a half-hour pre-show up first. The whole thing will certainly last longer than one hour, but we’ll find out together whether it’ll have more game reveals than Day of the Devs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/watch-the-day-of-the-devs-game-awards-2025-edition-right-here-at-1pm-et-060000319.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5 billion of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report. Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required “before collapse becomes inevitable,” the experts said. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report, which is produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Program, said the climate crisis, destruction of nature and pollution could no longer be seen as simply environmental crises. “They are all undermining our economy, food security, water security, human health and they are also [national] security issues, leading to conflict in many parts of the world,” said Prof Robert Watson, the co-chair of the assessment. […]

The GEO report is comprehensive — 1,100 pages this year — and is usually accompanied by a summary for policymakers, which is agreed by all the world’s countries. However, strong objections by countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Argentina to references to fossil fuels, plastics, reduced meat in diets and other issues meant no agreement was reached this time. […] The GEO report emphasized that the costs of action were much less than the costs of inaction in the long term, and estimated the benefits from climate action alone would be worth $20 trillion a year by 2070 and $100 trillion by 2100. “We need visionary countries and private sector [companies] to recognize they will make more profit by addressing these issues rather than ignoring them,” Watson said. […]

One of the biggest issues was the $45 trillion a year in environmental damage caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, and the pollution and destruction of nature caused by industrial agriculture, the report said. The food system carried the largest costs, at $20 trillion, with transport at $13 trillion and fossil-fuel powered electricity at $12 trillion. These costs — called externalities by economists — must be priced into energy and food to reflect their real price and shift consumers towards greener choices, Watson said: “So we need social safety nets. We need to make sure that the poorest in society are not harmed by an increase in costs.” The report suggests measures such as a universal basic income, taxes on meat and subsidies for healthy, plant-based foods.

There were also about $1.5 trillion in environmentally harmful subsidies to fossil fuels, food and mining, the report said. These needed to be removed or repurposed, it added. Watson noted that wind and solar energy was cheaper in many places but held back by vested interests in fossil fuel. The climate crisis may be even worse than thought, he said: “We are likely to be underestimating the magnitude of climate change,” with global heating probably at the high end of the projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Removing fossil fuel subsidies could cut emissions by a third, the report said.

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OpenAI, alongside Anthropic and Block, have launched the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, describing it as a neutral home for standards as agentic systems move into real production. It may sound well-meaning, but Slashdot reader and NERDS.xyz founder BrianFagioli isn’t buying the narrative. In a report for NERDS.xyz, Fagioli writes: Instead of opening models, training data, or anything that would meaningfully shift power toward the community, the companies involved are donating lightweight artifacts like AGENTS.md, MCP, and goose. They’re useful, but they’re also the safest, least threatening pieces of their ecosystem to “open.” From where I sit, it looks like a strategic attempt to lock in influence over emerging standards before truly open projects get a chance to define the space. I see the entire move as smoke and mirrors.

With regulators paying closer attention and developer trust slipping, creating a Linux Foundation directed fund gives these companies convenient cover to say they’re being transparent and collaborative. But nothing about this structure forces them to share anything substantial, and nothing about it changes the closed nature of their core technology. To me, it looks like Big Tech trying to set the rules of the game early, using the language of openness without actually embracing it. Slashdot readers have seen this pattern before, and this one feels no different.

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Netflix’s $72 billion bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery has triggered a consumer class action claiming the merger would crush competition, erase HBO Max as a rival, and hand Netflix control over major franchises. Reuters reports: The proposed class action (PDF) was filed on Monday by a subscriber to Warner Bros-owned HBO Max who said the proposed deal threatened to reduce competition in the U.S. subscription video-on-demand market. “Netflix has demonstrated repeated willingness to raise subscription prices even while facing competition from full-scale rivals such as WBD,” the lawsuit said. […] The lawsuit said the Warner Bros deal would eliminate one of Netflix’s closest rivals, HBO Max, and give Netflix control over Warner Bros marquee franchises including Harry Potter, DC Comics and Game of Thrones. On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a $108 billion hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery with an all-cash, $30-per-share offer.

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Longtime Slashdot reader Randseed writes: With the likes of Google Nest, Ring, and others cooperating with law enforcement, I started to look for affordable wireless IP security cameras that I can put around my house. Unfortunately, it looks like almost every thing now incorporates some kind of cloud-based slop. All I really want is to put up some cameras, hook them up to my LAN, and install something like ZoneMinder. What are the most economical, wireless IP security cameras that I can set up with my server?

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: More and more people are turning to GoFundMe for help covering the cost of housing, food, and other basic needs. The for-profit crowdfunding platform’s annual “Year in Help” report, released Tuesday, underscored ongoing concerns around affordability. The number of fundraisers started to help cover essential expenses such as rent, utilities, and groceries jumped 20%, according to the company’s 2025 review, after already quadrupling last year. “Monthly bills” were the second fastest-growing category behind individual support for nonprofits.

The number of “essentials” fundraisers has increased over the last three years in all of the company’s major English-speaking markets, according to GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan. That includes the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. In the United States, the self-published report comes at the end of a year that has seen weakened wage growth for lower-income workers, sluggish hiring, a rise in the unemployment rate and low consumer confidence in the economy. […] Among campaigns aimed at addressing broader community needs, food banks were the most common recipient on GoFundMe this year. The platform experienced a nearly sixfold spike in food-related fundraisers between the end of October and first weeks of November, according to Cadogan, as many Americans’ monthly SNAP benefits got suddenly cut off during the government shutdown.

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We love a little nostalgia mixed in with our cozy gaming, and ReStory looks like a perfect blend of those two. In this upcoming indie game, you play the owner of a Tokyo electronics repair shop in the mid 2000s. The trailer that dropped today shows you tinkering with some very familiar gadgets from the era, such as renamed riffs on a Tamagotchi, a Nokia brick phone, a PSP and a Walkman. You clean and repair these devices for customers, and it looks like your conversations with them might have as much impact on their lives as your official work does. 

The whole thing looks exceedingly charming and chill. It’s nice to see a game like ReStory as a counterpart to something with a similar premise but wildly different tone like Kaizen, which was a highlight during the Steam Automation Fest over the summer. ReStory is being developed by Mandragora, and it is currently playtesting ahead of a planned 2026 release.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/repair-iconic-2000s-era-gadgets-in-upcoming-indie-game-restory-233445848.html?src=rss

Congress quietly removed provisions that would have let the U.S. military fix its own equipment without relying on contractors, despite bipartisan and Pentagon support. The Register reports: The House and Senate versions of the NDAA passed earlier both included provisions that would have extended common right-to-repair rules to US military branches, requiring defense contractors to provide access to technical data, information, and components that enabled military customers to quickly repair essential equipment. Both of those provisions were stripped from the final joint-chamber reconciled version of the bill, published Monday, right-to-repair advocates at the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) pointed out in a press release. […]

According to PIRG’s press release on the matter, elected officials have been targeted by an “intensive lobbying push” in recent weeks against the provisions. House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) and ranking Democrat Adam Smith (D-WA), responsible for much of the final version of the bill, have received significant contributions from defense contractors in recent years, and while correlation doesn’t equal causation, it sure looks fishy. [Isaac Bowers, PIRG’s federal legislative director] did tell us that he was glad that the defense sector’s preferred solution to the military right to repair fight — a “data as a service” solution — was also excluded, so the 2026 NDAA isn’t a total loss for the repairability fight. “That provision would have mandated the Pentagon access repair data through separate vendor contracts rather than receiving it upfront at the time of procurement, maintaining the defense industry’s near monopoly over essential repair information and keeping troops waiting for repairs they could do quicker and cheaper themselves,” Bowers said in an email.

An aide to the Democratic side of the Committee told The Register the House and Senate committees did negotiate a degree of right-to-repair permissions in the NDAA. According to the aide and a review of the final version of the bill, measures were included that require the Defense Department to identify any instances where a lack of technical data hinders operation or maintenance of weapon systems, as well as aviation systems. The bill also includes a provision that would establish a “technical data system” that would “track, manage, and enable the assessment” of data related to system maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, the technical data system portion of the NDAA mentions “authorized repair contractors” as the parties carrying out repair work, and there’s also no mention of parts availability or other repairability provisions in the sections the staffer flagged — just access to technical data. That means the provisions are unlikely to move the armed forces toward a new repairability paradigm.

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Australia’s world-first ban blocking under-16s from major social platforms has come into effect. The BBC is live reporting the reactions “both from within Australia and outside it.” From the report: I’ve been speaking to 12-year-old Paloma, who lives in Sydney and says she is “sad” about the ban. She spends between 30 minutes and two hours a day on social media. “I’m upset… because I am part of several communities on Snapchat and TikTok,” she tells me. “I’ve developed good friendships on the apps, with people in the US and New Zealand, who have common interests like gaming, and it makes me feel more connected to the world.”

Paloma says she regularly talks about the ups and downs of her life with a boy of the same age in New Jersey, in the US, who she knows through gaming and TikTok. “I feel like I can explore my creativity when I am in a community online with people of similar ages,” she says. Everyone Paloma knows is “a bit annoyed” about the ban. By stopping them from using social media, she says “the government is taking away a part of ourselves.”

Two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, backed by a rights group, are arguing at Australia’s highest court that the legislation robs them of their right to free communication. The Digital Freedom Project (DFP) announced the case had been filed in the High Court late last month. After news of the case broke, Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells told parliament the government would not be swayed. “We will not be intimidated by threats. We will not be intimidated by legal challenges. We will not be intimidated by big tech. On behalf of Australian parents, we will stand firm,” she said.

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A measles outbreak that began in South Carolina at the start of October is showing no signs of slowing as officials on Tuesday reported 27 new cases since Friday. Those cases bring the outbreak total to 111.

The southern state’s outbreak now rivals outbreaks ongoing in Utah and Arizona, which have tallied 115 and 176 cases, respectively. The outbreaks are threatening to cost the country its measles elimination status, which was earned in 2020 after vaccination efforts stopped the virus from spreading continuously. If the current transmission of the virus isn’t halted by January, the virus will have circulated for 12 consecutive months, marking it once again as an endemic disease in the US.

In an update on Tuesday, South Carolina’s health department suggested the spread is far from over. Of the state’s 27 new cases, 16 were linked to exposure at a church, the Way of Truth Church in Inman. And amid the new cases, new exposures were identified at Inman Intermediate School. That’s on top of exposures announced Friday at four other schools in the region, which led to well over 100 students being quarantined.

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Uber is rolling out kiosks for travelers to book rideshares without using the mobile app. The company is pitching the service as a convenience for international travelers who may not have a data plan, but it could also be a lifesaver if your phone runs out of juice and you don’t have a way to recharge it. A passenger can use the kiosk to enter their destination and desired ride type, then will receive a printed receipt with the details about their booked ride. The first kiosk will debut in Terminal C at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, but Uber said it would have additional locations in airports, hotels and ports over the coming months. 

In airport situations, these kiosks make Uber even more of a direct competitor to traditional taxis. With the removal of the app, the kiosk can essentially stand is as the dispatcher and a passenger can decide how to travel based on their preferences (or on wait times) for a rideshare versus a yellow cab.

Uber also used LaGuardia as the starting point for its shuttle bus service in New York, with $18 rides between the airport and Manhattan transit hubs in October 2024; it later rolled out the shuttles to John F. Kennedy Airport in March 2025. Today, Uber said it is bringing the shuttle bus option to Newark Liberty International Airport, so all major NYC airports now have access to the service.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/uber-is-installing-kiosks-for-booking-rides-without-the-mobile-app-220904106.html?src=rss

OpenAI has announced that Denise Dresser, the current CEO of Slack, will be the company’s new Chief Revenue Officer. Dresser will oversee the company’s revenue strategy “across enterprise and customer success,” according to OpenAI’s announcement, and will presumably play a key role in leading the company towards profitability now that it’s reorganized as a public benefit corporation.

“We’re on a path to put AI tools into the hands of millions of workers, across every industry,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Products said in the announcement. “Denise has led that kind of shift before, and her experience will help us make AI useful, reliable, and accessible for businesses everywhere.”

Simo joined OpenAI in May of this year, after serving as CEO of Instacart, and before that, the head of Facebook at Meta. Hiring Simo and Dresser could be a good indication of how OpenAI plans to approach ChatGPT going forward. Which is to say, the company is taking a very Silicon Valley approach to growing its chatbot business and focusing on scale and monetizing as many AI interactions as possible. It’s not a mistake that Simo helped establish Meta’s ads business and OpenAI is reportedly planning to introduce ads into chats with its AI models.

Even with the possibility of ad revenue, Dresser will still have to overcome what OpenAI continues to spend to offer its various AI products. OpenAI pays for multiple partnerships for data center access and has commitments to both buy and build server components for those data centers. Add in the cost of just processing a ChatGPT query itself, and growing the company’s revenue seems like a tall order.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/slacks-ceo-is-joining-openai-to-find-the-money-to-pay-for-all-those-data-centers-220411962.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Shares of Apple were battered earlier this year as the iPhone maker faced repeated complaints about its lack of an artificial intelligence strategy. But as the AI trade faces increasing scrutiny, that hesitance has gone from a weakness to a strength — and it’s showing up in the stock market. Through the first six months of 2025, Apple was the second-worst performer among the Magnificent Seven tech giants, as its shares tumbled 18% through the end of June. That has reversed since then, with the stock soaring 35%, while AI darlings like Meta Platforms and Microsoft slid into the red and even Nvidia underperformed. The S&P 500 Index rose 10% in that time, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index gained 13%. […] As a result, Apple now has a $4.1 trillion market capitalization and the second biggest weight in the S&P 500, leaping over Microsoft and closing in on Nvidia. The shift reflects the market’s questioning of the hundreds of billions of dollars Big Tech firms are throwing at AI development, as well as Apple’s positioning to eventually benefit when the technology is ready for mass use. “It is remarkable how they have kept their heads and are in control of spending, when all of their peers have gone the other direction,” said John Barr, portfolio manager of the Needham Aggressive Growth Fund.

Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust Company, added: “While they most certainly will incorporate more AI into the phones over time, Apple has avoided the AI arms race and the massive capex that accompanies it.” His company views Apple’s stock as “a bit of an anti-AI holding.”

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Few of us are under the illusion that we own the content that we post on Instagram, but we do get a say in how that content is presented—w can choose which photos and videos we share, what captions appear (or don’t appear) on each post, as well as whether or not we include where the image was taken or shared from. We might not control the platform, but we do control the content of our posts—unless those posts are found on search engines like Google.

As reported by 404 Media, it appears that Instagram is experimenting with AI-generated SEO titles for users’ posts—without those users’ input or permission. Take this post for example: Author Jeff VanderMeer uploaded a short video of rabbits eating a banana to his Instagram. The video was posted as-is: There was no caption, location tag, or any other public-facing information. It’s just a couple of rabbits having a bite.

Instagram, however, took it upon itself to add a headline to the post—at least when you stumble upon it on via Google. Rather than display a link featuring Jeff’s Instagram handle and some metadata about the video, the Google entry comes back with the following headline: “Meet the Bunny Who Loves Eating Bananas, A Nutritious Snack for…” (the rest of the headline cuts off here).

VanderMeer was less than pleased with the discovery. He posted a screenshot of the headline to Bluesky, writing, “now [Instagram] appears to generate titles [and] headlines via AI for stuff I post…to create [clickbait] for [Google] wtf do not like.”

This was not the only AI-generated headline VanderMeer was roped into. This post from the Groton Public Library in Massachusetts, which advertises VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation as the library’s December book group pick, was also given the “clickbait” treatment on Google. Just as with VanderMeer’s post, the Groton Public Library didn’t include any text in its Instagram post—just an image showing off the book. But if you see the post within a Google search, you’ll see the following partial headline: “Join Jeff VanderMeer on a Thrilling Beachside Adventure with Mesta…”

404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg says that they’ve confirmed that Instagram is also generating headlines for other users on the platform, all without permission or knowledge. Meta did not return 404 Media’s request for comment. (I have also reached out for comment.) Google, on the other hand, did return 404 Media’s messages, and confirmed the headlines are not coming from its AI generators—though it has been using deceptive AI-generated headlines of its own on Google Discover. In fact, the company says its search engine is simply pulling the text from Instagram itself. Maiberg found that these headlines do appear under title tags for Instagram posts when using Google’s Rich Result Test tool. When digging through the code, Maiberg also discovered AI-generated descriptions for each post, which could be what Instagram is ultimately using to generate the headlines.

Why would Instagram generate AI headlines for posts?

I’ll update this post if I hear back from Instagram regarding these AI-generated headlines. Until then, I can only speculate on their intended purpose (assuming Instagram is the one generating these headlines in the first place). And the likeliest reason is to boost engagement: Instagram probably wants to increase the visibility of its users’ posts in search, which means giving Google more information to work with. If the user doesn’t provide their own details about the image, Instagram’s AI appears to be filling in the blanks, first generating a description, and from there, sticking a “clicky” headline onto it.

The results aren’t actually all that appealing, though. Just because Meta AI may be capable of generating headlines, doesn’t mean it is good at it, or even that it should—especially when users never consented to this practice in the first place. It’d be one thing if Instagram had an option before you post—something like “Generate a headline for me using Meta AI that will appear in search engines for my post.” Most of us would opt out of that, but it’d at least be a choice. However, it appears that Instagram decided that users like VanderMeer weren’t capable of writing a headline as clever as “Meet the Bunny Who Loves Eating Bananas.”

The worst part is, the AI doesn’t even accurately describe the posts. That Groton Public Library post was only about a book club meeting featuring VanderMeer’s novel, but the headline says “Join Jeff VanderMeer,” as if he’d be making an appearance. Not only did Instagram add a headline without VanderMeer’s consent, it spread misinformation about his whereabouts. And for what? Some extra engagement on Google?

If Instagram wants its posts to appear as headlines on search engines, it should include the actual posters in the conversation. As VanderMeer told 404 Media: “If I post content, I want to be the one contextualizing it, not some third party.”