Growing the AI vocabulary
Enterprise agentic AI platform Ema describes this change as agentic business transformation (ABT), a term it coined last year in partnership with HFS Research, in an attempt to plug what it sees as a gap in the existing lexicon about AI agents, and to provide enterprises with a new framework with which to think about their own adoption of the technology.
“None of the existing vocabulary captures the full scope of the change,” explains Ema CEO and founder Surojit Chatterjee. “Digital transformation was about moving from paper to software. AI transformation was about adding artificial intelligence to existing processes. Co-pilot is about AI assisting in various human tasks. But ABT is something categorically different: It’s the integration of AI agents into the fabric of the organization.”
For Shah, the dedicated term (ABT) “helps drive the need to redesign an organization in its entirety: its operating model, its workflows, decision rights, and performance management systems.” He emphasizes that “everything that’s needed to ensure those agents are actually active participants in value creation, rather than just point tools or productivity aids.”
According to Ema, ABT encompasses three core pillars: an organization’s technology stack, its workforce, and the metrics used for success.
AI agents as connective tissue
The first pillar of ABT is the technology stack. “Your existing tech stack was designed for human-operated, application-centric workflows,” says Chatterjee. “It needs to be reconsidered when the actor is an AI agent operating at machine speed across multiple systems simultaneously.”
As AI agents are integrated into an organization, enterprises will need to pivot from a set of linear processes and steps, to rewiring work in a very different way, explains Shah. That’s because the value in AI agents isn’t as another layer in an existing technology stack but as a connective tissue, he explains, moving between or across layers to coordinate a high-level task or retrieve and interpret data from multiple discrete applications. AI agents can create “a true competitive differentiation for an enterprise” by making decisions based on this capacity to contextualize, he says. “That is where the next battleground will be.”
To build this connective tissue, leaders need to adapt their technology stack to surface higher quality decisions from AI agents, prioritizing access to multiple datasets and applications simultaneously to develop tacit knowledge. “Organizations that make this architectural shift become genuinely more adaptive,” says Chatterjee. “When a new business requirement emerges, you don’t wait six months for a software vendor to build a feature. You configure an AI employee using natural language and connect it to the systems it needs. The time from business to production workflow drops from months to days.”
The workforce, redesigned
As AI agents are deployed for more use cases, enterprise leaders must consider what this means for dynamics across their workforce, the second pillar of ABT.
Workforce structures today deviate little from the hierarchical model of the early days of industrialization. To maximize efficiency and scale, processes are standardized, tasks are clearly delineated between strategic business units (SBUs), and employees progress up through an organization based on their capacity to optimize output from teams below them. But with AI agents that can execute, coordinate, and optimize tasks—often without managerial coordination—the lines of that established hierarchy become blurred.
In a workforce that blends AI agents and human employees, managers will be freed up from many execution-based tasks but take on new responsibilities associated with managing hybrid teams. Managers “will need to be able to manage issues around trust, explainability, psychological safety, and even status dynamics” to navigate new tensions that could arise in a hybrid workforce, says Shah.
The impact of agentic AI on existing workforce structures goes far beyond the management layer, too. McKinsey predicts that by 2030, three-quarters of current jobs will require redesign, upskilling, or redeployment, and organizations will need to act swiftly to amend recruitment, retention, and remuneration.
From output to outcome
Success metrics are the third and final pillar of ABT.
As AI agents assume greater ownership of core enterprise processes, taking on collaborative roles alongside human employees, traditional workforce metrics that focus on activity or output—such as calls handled or reports filed—no longer make sense.
“When you add AI employees into the workforce, activity metrics become meaningless or actively misleading,” says Chatterjee. “An AI employee can handle a thousand customer interactions in the time it takes a human to handle ten. If you measure success by interactions handled, you’ll conclude the AI is working brilliantly while missing whether any of those interactions actually drove customer satisfaction, retention, or revenue.” To correct this, enterprises must develop a new set of metrics that focus on outcome rather than output. That is, metrics on the broader benefits or changes achieved, rather than individual deliverables.
For example, when one of Ema’s large enterprise customers overhauled its own metrics, switching from tool metrics like cost per query and AI accuracy, to outcomes like the percentage of contracts reviewed without human escalation, the measured ROI from agentic AI tripled within two quarters. The changes meant “this customer stopped building point solutions in high-volume, low-complexity workflows and started deploying AI employees where the outcome value was highest,” says Chatterjee.
Integrating new metrics may also require a complete reconfiguration of reward and talent management processes, as well as accountability and ownership within organizations, points out Shah. In human-AI teams, for example, although ethical and fiduciary responsibilities will likely remain with human employees, operational accountability will become significantly more diffused to reflect the systemic role of AI agents.
This change will raise new questions that senior leadership teams will need to wrestle with, Shah adds. They’ll need to consider: Who is accountable when an AI employee makes a mistake? What happens when AI and humans disagree? What guardrails should be erected to safeguard customers?
Laying the groundwork for systems-level change
Systems-level change is gradual. These are complex lines of inquiry that experts continue to grapple with. But in kickstarting internal dialogue about the core pillars of ABT—the workforce, the technology stack, and the metrics by which success can be gauged—leaders can lay the groundwork for an enterprise better poised to embrace AI agents at a systems level and start to close the gap between their ambition and execution.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.

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The high school students, who are seeking to proceed under pseudonyms, filed the lawsuit in California, where xAI — Musk’s artificial intelligence company — has its headquarters. They are seeking class-action status in order to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of victims like themselves who either are minors or were minors when sexually explicit images of them were created.

According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe 1 was alerted anonymously in December that someone was distributing sexually explicit images of her on a social media website.

“At least five of these files, one video and four images, depicted her actual face and body in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses,” the lawsuit states. It claims the person distributing the images knew Doe and used xAI’s image generation tools to turn real photos of her into sexually abusive ones. One of the images was taken from a homecoming photo. Another was taken from a high school yearbook.

The person distributing the images also created explicit images of at least 18 other girls, two of whom are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit. In late December, local police arrested the perpetrator and confiscated his phone. They found that he had uploaded the images to several platforms where he traded them for sexually explicit images of other minors.

Other AI companies have prohibited their image-generators from producing any sexually explicit content, even of adults. Musk saw this as a business opportunity and promoted the ability of xAI’s Grok chatbot to create “spicy” content, the lawsuit claims. However, there is currently no way to prevent the generation of explicit images of adults while completely blocking the generation of images of children, the lawsuit claims. It also claims that xAI knew Grok would be able to produce sexually explicit images of children but released it anyway.

The lawsuit claims the person who distributed images of the plaintiffs used an application that licensed the xAI technology or “otherwise purchased its access to Grok, and was used as a cut-out or middleman.”

XAI did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment. But a Jan. 14 post about the controversy on the social media platform X said: “We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.

“We take action to remove high-priority violative content, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and non-consensual nudity, taking appropriate action against accounts that violate our X Rules. We also report accounts seeking Child Sexual Exploitation materials to law enforcement authorities as necessary.”

Meanwhile, the students in the lawsuit said they worry that the images created of them will live forever on the internet. They fear stalking because their real first names and the name of their school are attached to the files. They worry that their friends and classmates have seen the photos and videos, which appear to be real, and they worry about who will see them in the future.

Jane Doe 1 said she has suffered from anxiety, depression, stress. “She has difficulty eating and sleeping and suffers from recurring nightmares,” the lawsuit states. Jane Doe 2 “has begun self-isolating and avoiding being on her school campus, and even dreads attending her own graduation.” Jane Doe 3 suffers from constant fear and anxiety that someone will see the AI-generated images and recognize her face, according to the lawsuit.

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When Jody Hughes’ daughter asked Adobe Express for Education, graphic design software provided by her teacher, to generate an image of “long stockings a red headed girl with braids sticking straight out,” it produced nothing resembling the Swedish children’s book character she had accurately described. Instead, using recently-added artificial intelligence, it generated sexualized imagery of women in lingerie and bikinis. Hughes quickly contacted other parents, who said they were able to reproduce similar results on their own school-issued Chromebook computers. Days later, the parent group Schools Beyond Screens told the LA school board they were opposed to further use of the Adobe software.

The incident raised questions not only about the LA school district’s use of a particular AI product but also about guidelines state administrators provide to schools throughout California on how to safely adopt the technology. A few weeks after the incident, the state Department of Education published a new edition of the guidelines, which it had been working on for several months with help from a group of 50 teachers, administrators, and experts. The revision came in response to instructions from the Legislature, which passed two laws in 2024 telling the department, essentially, to get a handle on AI’s rapid spread among students, teachers and administrators.

Critics wonder if the guidelines would have helped avoid what parents referred to as Pippigate; the controversy, they say, provides evidence that districts, schools, and parents, who often lack the time or resources to ensure that software tools don’t produce harmful output, need more support from the state. The guidelines, they add, are also too vague in places and don’t do enough to define guardrails for how teachers use AI in the classroom. 

The issues with the guidelines call into question whether the department can effectively respond to instructions from elected officials on how to safeguard a technology that, according to the guidelines themselves, can leave children isolated and with narrowed perspectives.

With AI rapidly becoming more prevalent in society, effectively managing the technology has become an urgent issue. Though OpenAI’s ChatGPT popularized generative AI just three years ago, polls show that a majority of teachers and students nationwide now use the technology in some capacity.

While AI can help save teachers time, personalize learning, and support students who do not speak English or who have disabilities, it can also inaccurately grade their papers and generate images that perpetuate or intensify stereotypes or sexualized imagery of women, particularly women of color. The majority of California K-12 students are people of color. Since the rapid expansion of generative AI adoption started, teachers who spoke with CalMatters have felt both a need to prepare their students for a future where AI is ubiquitous and a fear that AI tools can enable cheating on tests and lead to deficiencies in reasoning, logic, and critical thinking.

“Educators have a narrow window to set norms before they harden,” said LaShawn Chatmon, CEO of the National Equity Project, an Oakland group that helps teachers produce more equitable outcomes. “Local education agencies that take advantage of this opportunity to co-design learning and policy with students and families can help shift who gets to decide AI’s role in our learning and lives.”

A district spokesperson told CalMatters that images generated by the AI model don’t align with district standards and “we are collaborating with Adobe to address the issue.” Adobe VP of Education Charlie Miller said the company rolled out changes to address the issue within 24 hours of hearing about the incident. Miller did not respond to questions about how the tool was vetted before deployment.

As a result of what his child experienced, Hughes thinks students shouldn’t be told to use text-to-image generators for homework assignments. But he sees no attempt to place such limits on use of the technology in the Department of Education guidance.

“These tech companies are making things marketed to kids that are not fully tested,” he said. “I don’t know where to draw the line but elementary school is too young because it can get real nasty real fast as we’ve seen with the Grok stuff,” he added, referring to recent abuse of the Grok AI system to nonconsensually remove clothing in images of women and children.

Issues with AI guidance

The guidance supplies a list of unacceptable uses of AI by students, such as plagiarism, and urges educators to integrate real-world scenarios and case studies into discussions to help students apply ethical principles to practical situations. It also says students should be taught to “think critically and creatively” about AI tools’ “benefits and challenges.”

Julie Flapan, director of the Computer Science Equity Project at UCLA’s Center X, said that the Pippi Longstocking incident called to mind a 2024 study that found young Black and Latino people are more likely to use generative AI than young white people. That data, in tandem with the historical disparity in access to computer science education, means, she said, that some parents and students will need help to think critically about AI.

“We often think about technological advances as ways to level the playing field,” she said. “But the reality is we know that they exacerbate inequalities.” 

Flapan said it makes sense that the guidelines urge critical thinking and vetting of AI tools before use and encourage education leaders to engage communities in decisionmaking. But, she added, the guidance doesn’t detail how to do that.

Charles Logan, a former teacher now at a responsible tech laboratory at Northwestern University, said that the guidelines fall short by not offering teachers and parents clear guidance on how they can opt out of using the technology. A Brookings Institution study released in January, based on interviews with students, teachers and administrators in 50 countries, concluded that the risks of AI in classrooms currently outweigh the benefits and can “undermine children’s foundational development.”

Mark Johnson, head of government affairs at Code.org, praised the guidelines, but said the state should offer more AI education support to educators and make proficiency in AI and computer science requirements for graduation. A recent report by Johnson found four states adopted such graduation requirements after releasing AI guidance.

Katherine Goyette, who served as computer science coordinator for the Department of Education until January, when asked about the Longstocking incident, pointed to parts of the guidance emphasizing the importance of engaging families, communities and school board members when evaluating AI tools. She also said critical thinking is important in preventing such outcomes, pointing to guidance that pushes administrators to consider potential harms before use.

Additional direction is on the way for how to put the recently released guidance into practice: the department’s AI working group will introduce specific policy recommendations based on the guidance by July.

The pressure of the AI inevitability narrative 

The latest version of California Department of Education AI guidelines come as local educational agencies move away from blanket AI bans considered after the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Instead, districts are moving toward deciding when and how students and teachers can use the technology. Those local decisions will be critical to how the technology is actually used in schools, since the state cannot require school districts adopt its guidance.

Even the largest school districts in California can encounter serious issues when deploying AI. In June 2024, Los Angeles Unified’s superintendent promised the best AI tutor in the world but had to pull it from use weeks later. A week later, news emerged that a majority of members on the San Diego Unified School District board, the second-largest district in the state, signed a contract for curriculum that they didn’t know included an AI grading tool.

The move toward state and district AI guidance, rather than bans, reflects a broader sense of inevitability in the state around adoption of the technology. In his October veto of a bill that would have prevented use of some chatbots by minors, Gov. Gavin Newsom said AI is already shaping the world and that “We cannot prepare our youth for a future where AI is ubiquitous by preventing their use of these tools altogether.”

Logan, who recently advised San Diego parents about how to resist and refuse AI use in classrooms,  pushes back against this idea. He says the California Department of Education guidance should address situations in which parents might want to avoid having their children use AI at all.

“It’s surprising that the guidance wants to make proficient AI users of kindergartners and there wasn’t space to say no or opt out,” he said in a phone call.

The statewide AI guidance joins a series of efforts to protect kids from AI, including bills now before the Legislature that seeks to place a moratorium on toys with companion chatbots and protect student privacy in the age of AI. Common Sense Media and OpenAI are working on getting a kids online safety initiative on the ballot for the election in November.

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She turned to artificial intelligence.

White, who runs a small music production business and had previously used AI tools to create promotional videos, began feeding court documents and case details into generative AI platforms. She asked the programs to analyze procedural rulings, identify possible errors and draft arguments for her appeal.

“It felt like having an on-demand research assistant,” White said. “I never could have managed all that paperwork and legal language on my own.”

Months later, White succeeded in overturning her eviction notice, avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in penalties and unpaid rent. She credits AI with helping her organize her case and better understand court procedures.

White is part of a growing number of self-represented, or “pro se,” litigants turning to generative AI to help them navigate the legal system. With tools available for as little as $20 a month — or even free — some are skipping attorneys entirely and relying on algorithms to draft motions, explain statutes and outline strategies.

A Growing Trend in Courtrooms

Legal professionals across the country say they are seeing an increase in court filings that bear the hallmarks of AI assistance.

“I’ve seen more pro se litigants in the last year than in most of my career,” said Meagan Holmes, a paralegal at a Phoenix law firm. “You can usually tell when a document has been generated by AI.”

While some litigants report success in small claims or procedural disputes, attorneys warn that AI-generated filings often contain inaccuracies — sometimes significant ones.

One of the most common issues is fabricated case law. AI systems occasionally generate citations to court decisions that do not exist, a phenomenon known as “hallucination.” In other instances, real cases are cited but misrepresented.

Damien Charlotin, a legal researcher who tracks judicial decisions involving AI-related filing errors, has documented hundreds of cases worldwide since 2023 in which courts directly addressed AI misuse.

“It’s accelerating,” Charlotin said. “The most common problem is fabricated case law, but misrepresented precedent is harder to detect and can be just as serious.”

Judges have issued sanctions in some cases, including fines and community service requirements, when litigants — and even licensed attorneys — submitted filings containing AI-generated errors.

Risk and Responsibility

Several AI companies include disclaimers stating their platforms should not replace professional legal advice. Yet when users ask legal questions, chatbots generally provide detailed responses with only minimal cautionary notes.

Legal experts say the responsibility ultimately falls on the user.

“Just like a law firm would double-check the work of a junior associate, you have to verify anything AI produces,” said one attorney who has reviewed AI-assisted filings. “Courts don’t excuse inaccuracies because a litigant used a chatbot.”

Self-represented litigants who rely heavily on AI may face consequences if filings contain false or misleading information. Judges have warned frequent filers against submitting repetitive or frivolous motions generated by automated tools.

A Tool — Not a Replacement

Despite the pitfalls, some legal professionals remain cautiously optimistic. Pro bono legal clinics in several cities are now teaching self-represented litigants how to use AI responsibly — focusing on research support, document organization and fact-checking techniques rather than legal advice.

“This is a transformative moment,” said Zoe Dolan, a supervising attorney at a Los Angeles-based nonprofit legal advocacy organization. “AI can expand access to information. But it has to be used carefully and critically.”

Even attorneys who caution against overreliance on AI admit they use it themselves — as a brainstorming or research aid.

“AI is helpful as a starting point,” said Andrew Montez, a Southern California attorney. “But it’s never a substitute for legal judgment, experience and manual verification.”

Leveling the Playing Field?

For litigants like White, AI represents something else entirely: access.

“AI gave me drafting help and organizational skills I couldn’t afford otherwise,” she said. “It felt like David and Goliath — except my slingshot was technology.”

As courts grapple with a surge of AI-assisted filings, one thing is clear: generative AI is reshaping how some Americans approach the legal system. Whether it ultimately empowers litigants or overwhelms courtrooms may depend less on the technology itself — and more on how responsibly it’s used.

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As Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram and is headed by Mark Zuckerberg, pulls back from its costly metaverse ambitions and doubles down on artificial intelligence, the company has confirmed plans to cut hundreds of jobs in California, marking another major restructuring at one of the state’s most influential tech employers.

The latest filings show significant reductions inside Reality Labs—the division once central to Meta’s metaverse vision—as the company reallocates resources toward AI models, infrastructure and next‑generation computing.

California’s WARN notice revealed that the company intended to permanently lay off 272 employees by March 20, 2026. The company will specifically cut ties with 53 employees at its Playa Vista location in Los Angeles County and 219 employees at its Burlingame location in San Mateo County.

Here’s what to know about Meta’s layoffs.

Beyond California, Meta filed a WARN notice in Washington, revealing that it would lay off 331 employees across the state. According to the notice, employees are expected to receive their benefits and pay up until the day they separate from the company.

The notice did not include information about any potential severance packages being offered by the company. The affected positions ranged from game developers, data engineers, software engineers, AI researchers and more across several of the company’s departments, for the Metaverse Content Group, Horizon OS, and Reality Lab Group, to name a few.

USA Today reached out to Meta for comment regarding the layoffs, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

In 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would be changing its name from Facebook to Meta, to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. As part of the company’s transition, it invested heavily in Reality Labs, formerly known as Oculus VR, to support the research and development of virtual and augmented reality hardware and software.

Meta initially invested $10 billion into the company to fund its research into new technologies. However, the company’s 2024 fourth-quarter earnings revealed that Meta had lost more than $60 billion in operating costs.

“Our outlook reflects an expectation for continued strong ad revenue growth, partially offset by lower year-over-year Reality Labs revenue in the fourth quarter,” reads the company’s 2025 third-quarter report.

Meta will announce its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings on Jan. 28, 2026, and continue its focus on developing the company’s AI capabilities.

“We are at an exciting point for our company, where we have continued runway to improve our core services today as well as the opportunity to build new AI-powered experiences and services that will transform how people engage with our products in the future,” Meta said in its 2025 third-quarter report. “Next year will enable us to continue to deliver strong revenue growth in 2026, while our progress on AI models and products will position us to capitalize on new revenue opportunities in the years to come.”

The company’s new AI lab, Meta Platforms, had rapidly developed a “high-profile model” months after its launch. Although Bosworth did not provide an example of this new AI platform at the Davos event, he noted that it showed “a lot of promise,” according to Reuters.

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Olivia Yokubonis, armed with a kind voice and scientific research, often pops up in feeds on social platforms, gently reminding viewers that they might not remember the video they saw two videos before she appeared on the screen.

Yokubonis is a content creator who goes by the name Olivia Unplugged online, making videos to combat overuse or mindless use of social media. For the most part, people who view her videos welcome the disruption from the endless loop of content, treating it as a wake-up call to get off their phones. Other times, they are snarky.

“People will comment and they’ll be like, ’Oh, (it’s) ironic that you’re posting. And I’m like, ‘Where else am I supposed to find you, Kyle? Outside? You’re not outside. You are here, sitting here,’” she said. “For us to actually be seen, we have to be where people are.”

Yokubonis’ content responds to the feeling many people have, that they spend too much time on social media or apps.

“Most people have no clue how much time they spend on social media,” said Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has been studying social media use for years. Through his research, Turel found that when he presented people with their screen time information, they were practically “in a state of shock” and many people voluntarily reduced their usage afterwards.

Yokubonis is part of a growing group of content creators who make videos encouraging viewers to close out the app they’re on. Some are aggressive in their approach, some more tame; some only occasionally post about social media overuse, and some, like Yokubonis, devote their accounts to it.

She works for Opal, a screen time app designed to help users “reclaim their focus,” she said, but those who engage with her content might not have any idea she is working for the company. Brand logos, constant plugs to download the app and other signs of branding are almost entirely absent from her page. “People love hearing from people,” she said. Millions of views on her videos point to that being true.

“It’s a fine line and a balance of finding a way to be able to cut through that noise but also not adding to the noise,” she added.

Ian A. Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, said he finds this kind of content interesting, but is curious whether it’s disruptive enough to prompt action. He also said he wonders whether those with the strongest scrolling habits are “thoughtless about the way (they’re) intaking information.”

“If they’re paying full attention, I feel like it could be an effective disruption, but I also think there is a degree to which, if you are really a habitual scroller, maybe you aren’t fully engaging with it,” he said. “I can think of all sorts of different variables that could change the effectiveness, but it does sound like an interesting way to intervene from the inside.”

With billions of active users across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms, talk of cutting down on screen time is perennial, as is the idea of addiction to social platforms. But there’s tremendous disagreement over whether social media addiction actually exists.

Is social media “addiction” real?

Researchers, psychologists and other experts agree some people spend too much time on social media, but the agreement tends to stop there. Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms, like strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal, to qualify as addiction. Others, like Turel, acknowledge the term seems to resonate with more people and is often used colloquially.

Anderson said he recognized the prevalence of casual mentions of being addicted to phones and was curious to see if that talk was “benign.”

A recent study of his suggests the debate extends further than academic discourse. In a representative sample of active Instagram users, Anderson found that people often overestimate whether they are “addicted” to the app. On a self-report scale, 18% of participants agreed that they were at least somewhat addicted to Instagram and 5% indicated substantial agreement, but only 2% of participants were deemed at risk of addiction based on their symptoms. Believing you are addicted also impacts how you address that issue, Anderson said.

“If you perceive yourself as more addicted, it actually hurts your ability to control your use or your perception of that ability and makes you kind of blame yourself more for overuse,” Anderson said. “There are these negative consequences to addiction perception.”

Cutting down on screen time

For those looking to curb their social media habits, Anderson suggests making small, meaningful, changes to stop from opening your social media app of choice. Moving the app’s place on your phone or turning off notifications are “light touch interventions,” but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom — or other places where you often use it — could also help.

Plenty of intervention methods have been offered to consumers in the form of products or services. But those interventions require self awareness and a desire to cut down on use. Content creators who infiltrate social media feeds with information about the psychology behind why people scroll for hours a day can plant those early seeds.

Cat Goetze, who goes by CatGPT online, makes “non-pretentious, non-patronizing” content about artificial intelligence, building off her experience in the tech industry. But she’s also been on a lengthy road to cut down her own screen time. She often makes videos about why the platforms are so compelling and why we tend to spend longer than we anticipate on them.

“There’s a whole infrastructure — there’s an army of nerds whose only job is to get you to increase your time spent on that platform,” she said. “There’s a whole machine that’s trying to get you to be that way and it’s not your fault and you’re not going to win this just (through) willpower.”

Goetze also founded the business Physical Phones, which makes Bluetooth landline phones that connect to smartphones, encouraging people to spend less time on their devices. The inside of the packaging reads “offline is the new luxury.”

She was able to build the business at an accelerated pace thanks to her social media audience. But the early success of Physical Phones also demonstrates the demand for solutions to high screen time, she said.

“Social media will always play a part in our lives. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. If we can get the average screen time down from, if it’s 10 hours for a person to one hour, or from three hours to 30 minutes, that is going to be a net positive benefit for that individual and for society,” Goetze said. “That being said, I’d love to be the person that they’re watching for those 30 minutes.”

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Since Jan. 1, residents of the Golden State can use a new tool to request removal of their personal information held by more than 500 data brokers.

The Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, is a simple-to-use tool that lets people submit requests for their personal data to be scrubbed from databases.

It’s the first system of its kind in the United States, and launched after legislation that expanded consumer privacy rights and added obligations for companies.

Privacy advocates say DROP is a useful for helping people reclaim some of their privacy from the data broker industry, which collects scraps of personal information to sell for marketing and other purposes.

Here’s a guide to how it works:

Submit a request

Go to the official DROP website at privacy.ca.gov/drop. Read through the terms of use before accepting.

You’ll have two ways to verify you’re a California resident and set up your profile, either by filling in your personal information or by using a login.gov account.

Most people will use the first option, which requires name, date of birth and address, and a phone number or email address to receive a verification code.

If you opt to use login.gov, you’ll need to upload a copy of your passport, driver’s license or state ID.

Next, fill out your deletion request with your name, birthdate and ZIP code. You’ll also again need to provide a phone number or an email address, to receive another verification code.

Perhaps you went by a different name previously, such as a maiden name? You can add multiple versions of all the information types, except your birthdate.

“The more information you provide, the more likely your personal data will be deleted,” the DROP website says.

Identifiers

There are also fields to add a “unique identifier,” either in the form of a Mobile Advertising ID for iOS or Android devices, a connected TV ID, or a vehicle identification number, or VIN.

Android identifiers are found in the settings menu. Apple doesn’t allow users to find the code, but it can be turned off in settings. More information is available on the CPPA website.

Most people don’t have these numbers at hand. You can skip this section and add them later.

Timeline

While people can sign up now, data brokers won’t start deleting information until Aug. 1. After that they will process deletion requests every 45 days. Data brokers that fail to comply face fines of $200 a day.

Perhaps you moved to a new house or bought a new phone or car after you filed your request. You can always go back to your profile to update it with more information and submit a fresh deletion request at any time.

Data brokers

Data brokers are shadowy intermediaries that sweep up scraps of personal information about consumers and package them for sale in vast databases with millions of records, often without consent.

They data is bought from businesses that people deal with, scraped from websites or captured with tracking tools on mobile devices.

Buyers could include legit groups such as landlords and insurance companies, or “malicious actors” like fraudsters, hate groups, domestic abusers or hostile foreign governments, the California privacy watchdog says.

“While some of this data is used to provide you with personalized services such as targeted advertising, misuse of this data can lead to identity theft, stalking or other harmful outcomes,” it said.

Types of data

Personal information collected by brokers includes your online purchases, web browsing history, employment data and IP address. It could also include sensitive information like a social security or passport number, driver’s license, precise geolocation and info on health and sexual orientation.

Deletion requests will include any so-called “inferred preferences” — in other words, assumptions about what you might buy based on the data.

What’s not covered

Privacy experts welcomed DROP but noted some blind spots.

It only covers data brokers who are registered in California. Some categories of data are exempt like public records for car and real estate ownership or credit rating info.

Still, “it is a good step for people to take,” said Hayley Tsukayama, director of state affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She also noted that DROP focuses on deletion and opting out, “which is really important, but the law itself doesn’t address (data) collection that strongly,” in contrast with European Union privacy regulations known as GDPR that spawned browser cookie consent popups.

Benefits

People should see fewer things like spam texts or emails for lists they didn’t subscribe to, said Tsukayama. “That’s kind of my hope, because those are the sorts of things that are getting sold and that’s kind of the most tangible way to grasp what a data broker is.”

Another, less obvious benefit is cutting the amount of location or medical data floating around that could get fed into algorithms.

“For everyone’s privacy, I hope that data brokers would have less access to some of this sensitive information,” said Tsukayama.

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The two previously planned to place competing initiatives before voters, each stipulating that the one that got the most “yes” votes would win. OpenAI’s proposal largely reflected existing law, while the Common Sense measure included new bans on what AI systems children could access.

The merged measure is known as the Parents & Kids Safe AI Act. It would, among other things:

• Require chatbot developers use technology to estimate a user’s age range and apply filters and protective settings for  people with an age predicted under the age of 18
• Require AI systems to undergo independent audits to identify child safety risks and report them to the California attorney general
• Ban child-targeted advertising and the sale or sharing of kids’ data without a parent’s consent
• Stop manipulation through emotional dependency by preventing AI systems from promoting isolation from family or friends, simulating romantic relationships with kids, or claiming that they’re sentient

 A Common Sense spokesperson said the measure was filed Thursday afternoon. It’s not yet visible on the attorney general’s website but you can read a copy obtained by CalMatters here. As described in a press release, the combined measure drops a ban on student smartphones in K-12 California schools and prohibition on minors using chatbots capable of engaging in erotic or sexually explicit talk that were part of Common Sense Media’s original initiative. 

The initiative must receive 546,651 signatures in order to come before voters in November. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has until June 25 to determine if it reaches that threshold or qualifies for the ballot.

Common Sense put forward its original ballot initiative, the California Kids AI Safety Act, last fall, not long after the Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill the nonprofit had authored that contained similar provisions.

In response, in December 2025, OpenAI put forward a competing ballot measure that mirrors a bill that Newsom signed into law last October, requiring companion chatbot providers to enact a suicidal ideation protocol and inform people every three hours that they’re speaking with AI. Critics called that move manipulative and designed to thwart stronger protections for kids.

Common Sense Media research has found that seven in 10 teens have used companion chatbots and that the tech is too dangerous to be used by minors. In promoting its original ballot initiative, the group warned that without action the tech could lead to more harm and addiction for young people. In one well-publicized case, the parents of California teen Adam Raine sued OpenAI, alleging Raine was coached by OpenAI’s ChatGPT to commit suicide.

OpenAI’s willingness to compromise marks a contrast with how tech companies banded together to get their way in a policy fight in 2020. That year, major gig economy players like DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, and Uber spent $200 million bankrolling a successful ballot initiative regulating gig work, Proposition 22. It effectively exempted them from a state law that would have required the companies to provide full employment benefits to their drivers.

Sen. Steve Padilla, the Chula Vista Democrat who carried the chatbot bill signed by Newsom, called the merged ballot measure a significant breakthrough. But he added that he thinks the matter should be handled by lawmakers and the governor instead of directly by voters. Since the ballot initiative would amend the state constitution, Padilla said it “would create an unnecessarily high-bar to revise and update that law in the future. Moreover, legislative hearings will provide the broader public an opportunity to comment and provide input on this important issue.” 

In recent weeks, Padilla has proposed a bill with a four-year moratorium on the sale of toys with companion chatbots inside. OpenAI signed a partnership with Barbie-maker Mattel but has yet to produce any products.

OpenAI’s fight at the California ballot box isn’t limited to kids’ online safety issues. One proposed ballot initiative would give a state commission the power to slow or stop AI model development if commission members suspect catastrophic risk of harm to Californians. Two other proposals target corporate conversions from nonprofit to for-profit companies, as OpenAI has planned. The initiatives compel nonprofits that restructure in such a way to dedicate all their assets to the public benefit of humanity. To reach that goal, the initiatives would create a commission that has the power to shut down AI models and that hosts competitions that invite the public to propose ways AI can help humanity. Under one of the initiatives, the commission would also have the power to revoke nonprofit conversions.

OpenAI was founded about a decade ago with a charter stating its purpose was to benefit humanity. Its plans to convert to a public benefit corporation led to heavy criticism from nonprofits and scrutiny by attorneys general in California and Delaware. Both states eventually reached agreements with OpenAI to allow a restructuring after the company agreed to place roughly 25% of its assets into a nonprofit.

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“Technological innovation has continually shaped the evolution of entertainment, bringing with it new ways to create and share great stories with the world,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. “The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.

“Bringing together Disney’s iconic stories and characters with OpenAI’s groundbreaking technology puts imagination and creativity directly into the hands of Disney fans in ways we’ve never seen before, giving them richer and more personal ways to connect with the Disney characters and stories they love.”

Under the licensing arrangement, users of the Sora platform will be able to generate sharable video content with access to more than 200 Disney- owned characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to the Mandalorian.

Curated selections of Sora-generated videos will be available for viewing on Disney+. Under the licensing agreement, Disney will take advantage of OpenAI technology “to build new products, tools and experiences, including for Disney+ and deploying ChatGPT for its employees.”

Disney insisted that both companies “are affirming a shared commitment to the responsible use of AI that protects user safety and the rights of creators.”

“Together, the companies will advance human-centered AI that respects the creative industries and expands what is possible for storytelling,” according to a Disney statement.

Disney characters are expected to become available for Sora users in early 2026.

Characters available under the agreement will range from classic figures such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Cinderalla, to those from the worlds of “Star Wars,” “Frozen,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Toy Story” and “Moana,” along with those from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Disney is the global gold standard for storytelling, and we’re excited to partner to allow Sora and ChatGPT Images to expand the way people create and experience great content,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said in a statement. “This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences.”

Disney’s announcement came on the same day news broke that the studio had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, alleging the web-search giant of widespread copyright infringement through its AI services by generating content with copyrighted Disney characters.

The letter sent by attorney David Singer alleges Google “has refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement, even though such measures are readily available and being used by Google’s competitors. Instead, Google continues to directly exploit Disney’s copyrights for commercial gain.”

Disney previously sent similar letters to companies including Meta and Character.AI, Deadline reported.

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Trump’s order will enable an American-led of group of investors to buy the app from China’s ByteDance, though the deal is not yet finalized and also requires China’s approval.

Much is still unknown about the actual deal in the works, but Trump said at a White House signing ceremony Thursday that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has agreed to move forward with it.

Vice President JD Vance added that “there was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press inquiry seeking confirmation of China’s approval.

President Joe Biden signed legislation passed by Congress last year that would ban TikTok unless ByteDance sold its U.S. assets to an American company by early this year. Trump has repeatedly signed orders that have allowed TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. as his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.

The executive order itself is a declaration by the president that the proposed deal meets the security concerns laid out in that law. And it gives all negotiating parties an additional 120-day reprieve in order to finalize it.

Young people especially “really wanted this to happen,” Trump said.

Any major change to the popular video platform could have a huge impact on how Americans — particularly young adults and teenagers — consume information online.

About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published Thursday.

Asked if he’d want a U.S.-owned TikTok algorithm to suggest more content promoting his Make America Great Again movement, Trump said he’d make it “100% MAGA” if he felt he could, but he intends for “every philosophy, every policy” to be “treated right.”

Vance said the deal ensures that “American investors will actually control the algorithm” that determines the content seen on the social media app. He said more information about the deal will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Who will control the new TikTok venture?
Under the terms of the deal that have so far been revealed by the White House, the app will be spun off into a new U.S. joint venture owned by a consortium of American investors — including tech giant Oracle and investment firm Silver Lake Partners.

Though the details have yet to be finalized, the investment group’s controlling stake in the new venture would be around 80%. While ByteDance is expected to have a stake in the new venture, it would be less than 20% — a portion of the ownership reserved for foreign investors. The board running the new platform would be controlled by U.S. investors. ByteDance will be represented by one person on the board, but that individual will be excluded from any security-related matters.

TikTok’s new owners include many whose business or political interests are tied to Trump, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, raising questions about whether political influence will be exerted into the platform.

Although he stepped down as Oracle’s CEO more than a decade ago, Ellison remains heavily involved as chairman and chief technology officer. Now 81, he could be in line to become a behind-the-scenes media power player, having already helped finance Skydance’s recently completed merger with Paramount, a deal engineered by his son, David.

Trump said Dell founder Michael Dell will also be an investor in the new venture.

TikTok users could now “get the editorial policies of the people who now have control of the company,” said David Greene, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ”It won’t be 100% MAGA. The question is how it will treat criticism of him and people he likes.”

What we know about the algorithm powering the platform

The recommendation algorithm that has steered millions of users into an endless stream of video shorts has been central in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But a U.S. regulation that Congress passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cut ties with ByteDance.

American officials previously warned the algorithm — which is a complex system of rules and calculations that platforms use to deliver content to your feed — is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, but no evidence has ever been presented by U.S. officials showing that China has attempted to do so.

Trump’s order says that a licensed copy of ByteDance’s algorithm — “retrained” solely with U.S. data — will power the new U.S. version of the app. The joint venture will control and monitor the code and all content-moderation decisions. Administration officials say the retraining will nullify any risk of Chinese interference and influence.

It’s not clear if the U.S. version of TikTok would be a different experience than what users in the rest of the world are used to. Any noticeable changes made to a social media platform’s service raises the risk of alienating its audience, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst for the research firm eMarketer.

In a prime example of how a change of control can reshape a once-popular social media platform, billionaire Elon Musk triggered an almost immediate backlash after he completed his takeover of Twitter nearly three years ago.

But Musk made extremely visible changes, including changing its name to X, pulling back on its content moderation and adding exclusive features for paid subscribers. The changes that gradually occur while different data is fed into the U.S. copy of TikTok’s algorithm could be unnoticeable to most of its audience.

“Social media is just as much about the culture as it is the technology, and how users will take to new ownership and potentially a new version of the app is still an open question,” Enberg said.

What motivated China to make this deal

Beijing once called the demand that TikTok be spun off from its Chinese parent company an act of “robbery,” but Chinese officials changed their tune as the U.S.-China trade war progressed.

A TikTok deal would allow China to keep the ball rolling on trade negotiations, said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center. “TikTok alone does not compare with the importance of amicable U.S.-China relations.”

Dimitar Gueorguiev, associate professor of political science at Syracuse University, argues that Beijing is more interested in retaining access to U.S. technology and services, at least in the short term, so it can build up self-sufficiency in semiconductor, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.

“That is the front line of technological competition,” Gueorguiev said. “TikTok, by contrast, is a maturing consumer app with diminishing strategic weight.”

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