The romance genre -- long the publishing industry's earliest adopter of technological shifts, from e-books to self-publishing to serial releases -- has become the front line for AI-generated fiction, and the results as you can imagine are messy. Coral Hart, a Cape Town-based novelist previously published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, produced more than 200 AI-assisted romance novels last year and self-published them on Amazon, where they collectively sold around 50,000 copies. She found Anthropic's Claude delivered the most elegant prose but was terrible at sexy banter; other programs like Grok and NovelAI wrote graphic scenes that felt rushed and mechanical. Chatbots struggled broadly to build the slow-burn sexual tension romance readers crave, she said.

A BookBub survey of more than 1,200 authors found roughly a third were using generative AI for plotting, outlining, or writing, and the majority did not disclose this to readers. Romance accounts for more than 20% of all adult fiction print sales, according to Circana BookScan, and the genre's reliance on familiar tropes and narrative formulas makes it especially susceptible to AI disruption.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Autodesk has sued Google in San Francisco federal court, alleging the search giant infringed its "Flow" trademark by launching competing AI-powered software for movie, TV and video game production in May 2025.

Autodesk says it has used the Flow name since September 2022 and that Google assured it would not commercialize a product under the same name -- then filed a trademark application in Tonga, where filings are not publicly accessible, before seeking U.S. protection.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The upcoming reveal of the Aston Martin AMR26 in Saudi Arabia will mark a new chapter for the team under legendary designer Adrian Newey, as well as signifying the conclusion of the 2026 launch season.

Payton Westcott will represent Mercedes in F1 ACADEMY for the 2026 season.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

photograph I acquired from a large archive of negatives from a San Francisco Bay based commercial photographer taken mostly in the 1960s to 1970s.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, April 1959

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

Peter Kernwein posted a photo:

When Victoria Dugger encountered Jasper Johns’ “Flag” during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in 2024, she found herself contemplating similar ideas. The encaustic painting is one of Johns’ most recognizable works and revels in ambiguity: although it bears stars and stripes, it’s not an exact representation of Old Glory, nor is it solely a gestural, abstract work. Instead, “Flag” prompts questions about motif, material, and meaning that defy any singular narrative.

For Dugger, Johns’ multivalent approach felt particularly apt 70 years later. On the eve of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, she began a body of work that reflects a similar set of inquiries through the lens of Blackness, disability, and desire.

Freak Flags, on view this month at Sargent’s Daughters, reinterprets the United States flag through gingham, glitter, beads, fringe, and more. The title of the exhibition implicates the legacy of freak shows, which often exploited people with disabilities and diseases and presented them as odd curiosities. Spectacle takes a different form in Dugger’s mixed-media works, though, as she replaces stars with glittery tasseled pasties and lines the edges with vibrantly dyed locks of hair.

There are also miniature picket fences and curls of barbed wire woven throughout some of the compositions. While the former symbolizes the ideal of safety and suburbanization within the American Dream, the latter nods to a history of domination and discrimination from Manifest Destiny to Japanese internment to contemporary immigration practices along the southern border.

These sinister elements sit alongside fields of gouache flowers, dainty butterflies, and frilly piping. This complicated mishmash captures the fraught history and ideals that continue to shape American identity and policies. While some of Dugger’s flags are presented upright with the rectangular patch in the top left corner, others are flipped upside down, a long-utilized symbol of a nation in distress.

See Freak Flags through February 28. Keep up with Dugger’s work on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Victoria Dugger Reinterprets the American Flag in Glitter and Fringe appeared first on Colossal.

Advertising search and web meters recorded site crashing traffic for ai.com

Anthropic's sensitive cubs and roaring cougars commercial trampled OpenAI's offerings in searches and site hit metrics during the Super Bowl, according to ad tracking firm EDO. However, the unknown player ai.com, which pitched the fantastical idea that “AGI is coming,” won the day.…

De voorzitter van de Nederlandse Politiebond, Nine Kooiman, zegt pal achter de agenten te staan die gisteren hard ingrepen bij stadion Galgenwaard. Na de wedstrijd tussen FC Utrecht en Feyenoord werd de Mobiele Eenheid (ME) ingezet om Feyenoord-supporters terug in hun bussen te krijgen. Kooiman is "trots" op de agenten die, volgens haar, weer moesten dealen met "ongekende agressie".

MOUNTAIN VIEW (ANP) - Alphabet, het moederbedrijf van Google, gaat naar verwachting ongeveer 20 miljard dollar ophalen met de uitgifte van obligaties. De belangstelling van beleggers was zo groot dat er voor meer dan 100 miljard dollar werd ingeschreven, zeggen bronnen tegen persbureau Bloomberg. Zo'n enorme belangstelling voor een bedrijfslening komt zelden voor.

Aanvankelijk mikte Alphabet op het ophalen van 15 miljard dollar. De grote belangstelling laat zien dat beleggers veel geld willen steken in bedrijven die profiteren van kunstmatige intelligentie. Vorige week haalde softwareconcern Oracle 25 miljard dollar op met een obligatielening, terwijl de vraag daar zelfs 129 miljard dollar was. Dat was een nieuw record.

Alphabet kondigde vorige week aan dat het dit jaar tot 185 miljard dollar wil investeren, meer dan in de afgelopen drie jaar bij elkaar. Het concern steekt vooral veel geld in het uitbreiden van AI-datacentra.