封面故事：Before personalized photo cards, there was Hallmark. Photographer: Jim Watson /Getty Images
原标题：AI 管家来到你家
翻译者 Jingyi，百度翻译助攻。
01 我们已经有 AI 管家了，您呢？
圣诞节还剩下不到 1 周，我们家的贺卡已经在邮箱了，部分感谢 AI。对于我而言，将这些季度的问候放一块儿，耳罩，或者令人讨厌的涂涂画画。今年，我非常惊讶，AI 干这些活的时候，是多么轻松，即便感觉上像在作弊一样。
这是大问题，关于因以下事情而生气，即难以描述的好品质，关于人类的创造性，一场争论无可避免地变得更加复杂，当爱和大方以及其他的讨厌的 IRL 情绪被纳入。这似乎错了，几乎是全自动的能力，由 Apple 智能、或者必应的分包 Crosby-esque、Google Gemini chatbot。是不是？但是我仍然不觉得内疚，我们假期的贺卡有点 AI+，即便有人会批判那些橱柜里的精灵。
earmuffs 耳罩
je ne sais quoi 难以描述的好品质
sprinkling 少量的
01 Season's Greetings, From our AI-modified Family to Yours
With Christmas less than a week away, my family’s holiday card is finally in the mail, thanks in part to artificial intelligence. For me, putting together these seasonal greetings normally becomes—earmuffs, Mom—an annoying, last-minute scramble. So this year I was surprised at how easy AI made the process, even if it felt like cheating.
There’s a big question raging about whether AI contributes to or detracts from the je ne sais quoi of human creativity, a debate that inevitably gets more complicated when love and generosity and other pesky IRL emotions get involved. It seems wrong to, say, fully automate gift giving with Apple Intelligence or subcontract Bing Crosby-esque tenderness to Google’s Gemini chatbot, right? Yet I felt zero guilt sprinkling AI on our holiday card, even under the judgmental eyes of the Elf on the Shelf.
The big hassle is usually finding family photos that are halfway presentable. But with all the AI editors available in Google Photos and Adobe Inc.’s Express and Lightroom apps, it was a cinch cleaning up a collage of me, my wife, our baby daughter and our dog, Derby. It took just a few taps to eliminate unwanted elements and alter cloudy lighting to sunny skies. In one portrait of us taken in a busy downtown setting, Google’s “magic eraser” replaced a bunch of passersby and parked cars in the background with quieter storefronts and empty brick sidewalks.
Does this make the image misleading? Sure. But it’s also just a faster version of what people have long been creating with professional photographers, Photoshop, Instagram filters and the like. And it’s a small taste of what’s on the horizon from design businesses such as Shutterfly and Zazzle. “Generative AI is a tool that gives customers leverage—it gives them 10x or 100x more than what was possible before,” says Andrew Laffoon, co-founder of Mixbook, a popular digital service for crafting holiday prints and photo books.
Mixbook has already rolled out a bunch of AI features. Its caption generator, for example, helps users brainstorm text based on photo subjects. For a picture of my daughter playfully stealing a dog treat from Derby, it suggested a slew of lighthearted taglines (“friendship grows with every meal”) as well as short poems personalized for the scene. Laffoon envisions being able to talk with the AI to request exactly what you want. “You can say to the AI: Make it more sentimental, funnier, shorter, longer,” he says. “Let’s be honest, not everyone qualifies to write cards for Hallmark.”
In a funny way, AI is kind of a perfect successor to Hallmark-like messages, which are synonymous with outsourced cliché and somehow societally acceptable despite their vacuous vibe. Instead of getting just dozens of options for sentimental messages at a CVS or Walgreens, you now can get virtually infinite alternatives thanks to AI. The same goes for photo modifications. Laffoon says AI will help enhance pictures, not manufacture them. “We’re not doing generative AI to make up a fake trip to Italy or insert your favorite celebrity,” he says. “A little exaggeration is probably OK, but the good stories are rooted in what’s true.”
Laffoon points out that we’ve offloaded this sort of work to computers for decades, from predefined layout templates to buttons for removing red eye, but modern AI certainly represents a new level of creative and emotional automation. It perhaps explains why brands in the space sound wary of mechanizing too much of the process. In emailed statements, a Shutterfly spokesperson says AI is an enabler of “human connection” rather than a replacement for it, while a Zazzle rep says AI only augments its approach “to preserve the authenticity that makes each creation unique.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether these companies can strike the right balance between AI and authenticity. Maybe AI creations will come across as too generic or phony. Maybe holiday cards are already superficial enough that recipients won’t be able to tell the difference. If the movie Her offers any indication of the future, messages with a human touch will always have more value. Even in the film’s world of advanced AI, Joaquin Phoenix played a lost romantic whose full-time job was penning handwritten love letters for customers, suggesting human sentiment will remain important, even if we have trouble conveying it ourselves.
“Expressing emotion is really hard for most people to do—it’s messy and vulnerable,” Laffoon says. “When you have someone help you, like a Hallmark card, that gives you the ability to say something you might not have said on your own.”
02 Advanced AI Moves Slower than Expected
The two years since OpenAI supercharged the generative AI era with the introduction of ChatGPT have passed in a blur of technological one-upmanship. OpenAI and its primary competitors, Anthropic, Google and Meta, have released a flurry of cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, each more skillful than the last. It’s now Silicon Valley gospel that more computing power, more data and larger models will lead to such fundamental improvements in AI that the technology will transform entire industries within the next few years.
And yet, threats to the pace of development began emerging even before ChatGPT’s second birthday. In 2024, OpenAI and two other leading AI companies hit stumbling blocks. At OpenAI and Google, some software failed to live up to internal expectations, while the timetable of a long-awaited model from Anthropic, a competitor built by former OpenAI employees, slipped after it had already been announced. If progress in generative AI slows in some durable way, it will bring into question whether the technology can ever achieve the more expansive promises the industry’s top innovators have made for it. Identifying ways to propel the AI boom into its next stage will be the field’s primary challenge in 2025.
In an industry that prides itself on innovation, Rachel Metz writes, companies are looking for different ways to push models forward: AI Giants Seek New Tactics Now That ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Is Gone.
03 What Snapchat Owes in Teen Fentanyl Crisis
“I’m a survivor, and that’s bad for you, CEO of Snapchat, because, uh, uh, uh …” Michael Brewer can’t finish his sentence. The teenager’s speech is slow and slurred, interrupted by an involuntary gag reflex as his tongue slides down his throat—a symptom of a brain injury caused by fentanyl poisoning.
It’s a muggy August afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida. Michael’s legs are strapped into a stationary exercise bike at a rehabilitation facility where he’s learning to regain control of his body and, he hopes, to walk again. Eminem pumps through his headphones. Rain pelts the windows, but Michael can’t see it, because the fentanyl also left him blind. He swallows, breathes and tries again: “I survived, and that’s bad for you, Snapchat, because I’m talking on the record.”
Michael isn’t referring only to his interview with a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter. He’s also a star witness in a lawsuit 64 families are pursuing against Snap Inc., alleging that the company’s Snapchat app helped fuel an epidemic of teen overdoses. At 13 he connected with a dealer he met on Snapchat and bought a pill that, unbeknownst to him, was laced with fentanyl. He took it, blacked out and stopped breathing. Now 17, Michael is a star witness because he’s one of only two teens in the case who can describe what happened firsthand. All the other kids are dead.
That’s the start of Olivia Carville’s new feature about child safety in the digital world. Keep reading: Fentanyl Almost Killed Michael Brewer. Now He Wants Snap to Pay.
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