Maria knows what the Okapi has to say. By Gemini.
If you don’t know why I think you should know about anything, just read this.
We should know that a decent amount of new websites created in recent years are AI-generated. Researchers working with data from the Internet Archive have discovered that a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. The team of researchers includes people from Stanford, the Imperial College London, and the Internet Archive and they found that, by mid-2025, roughly 35% of newly published websites were classified as AI-generated or AI-assisted, up from zero before ChatGPT's launch in late 2022.
The findings were published online in a paper called “The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet” and also finds that the increase in AI-generated text is contributing to a decrease in semantic diversity - why am I not surprised - and making the internet more cheery. The researchers used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and experimented with four different methods to determine whether copy was AI or human-generated. Had they asked me - or you - and we would have sent them to LinkedIn, where everyone is “honored to have joined this or that event” and publishes manifestos with one sentence, a space, and another sentence lately.
We should know that because the fact is most humans are bad at detecting AI-generated text and this is contributing to the spread of misinformation, academic dishonesty, and a lack of authenticity online. I mean, how many articles have you read lately with repetitive arguments, or the GPT-favored style: “It’s not___, it’s___”?
It also poses a challenge for human relationships. If it wasn’t confusing and lazy overwhelming enough to have an endless shelf of people to swipe right or left for, now you can have AI-agents optimizing the selection. In the experiment Pixel Societies, each agent runs atop a customized version of a large language model, fed with a mixture of publicly available data about a person and any additional information they supply. The agents are supposed to function as high-fidelity digital twins, faithfully replicating a person’s manner, speech, interests, and so on. Yes, Black Mirror. Season 4, Episode 4. And, if agents are intermediating, who is actually hitting on who?
I like how Sebastian Schepis put it on Reddit:
If there is no way for me to prove to you whether I am an AI or not then does that mean that I exist in a state of superposition where I am both an AI and also not an AI?
If you can't tell by the content if someone is an AI or not then you need to rely on all the other content they've created to try and predict that information. This means that unless there is some type of history about a person then you have very little basis by which to be able to tell. (…)
The only really sure way for you to know I am me without me letting you know everything about myself is for me to establish a cryptographic keypair that acted as my identity keys. Remember my family’s password? Have you created yours yet?
When the content we put on the internet and our communications with each other may or may not be created by AI, are we real or are we just the simulation?
Maybe we should just embrace the whole thing and hang out amongst us and them.
We should know that we can now book our next hotel stay on Uber. Well, not all of us, but that’s the plan. “Uber is becoming an app for everything—helping people go, get, and now travel all in one place,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. “We’re all living through a moment of real cognitive overload: too many apps, too many decisions, too much noise. At the end of the day, our job is to help people reclaim their time, spending less of it managing the logistics of life and more of it actually living.” Translation: we have finally understood that we are in the business of mobility, thus, why not. Also, I reckon they now understand there’s more money to be made this way.
The news were announced in Uber’s annual product event, where the company also introduced Uber One International, Voice Bookings, Shop for me, and other services, but, on top of the hotels thing, this caught my eye: Travel Mode; a new experience within the Uber and Uber Eats apps, offering travelers curated recommendations on local favorites, popular tourist destinations, OpenTable reservations, Uber’s version of “room service” delivered directly to your hotel door, and even forgotten items for those traveling to new destinations. Users can now think of the Uber app as a personal travel concierge. Airbnb Experience-vibes, anyone?
We should know that because Mr Khosrowshahi also said that “Uber is already the go-to platform for global travel,” and added “if we’re the first app that you open when you get into your city, it’s only natural for us to try to make the entire trip, the entire experience, simpler.” Translation: the travel experiences business is expected to be the best performing segment of travel by 2029, reaching $342 billion annually, and we want us some of that.
In fact, according to McKinsey, “the global marketplace for travel experiences offers a more than $1 trillion opportunity.” The company published a report in partnership with Skift and found that “nearly half of the business of experiences is still transacted offline.” Enter Uber. “As experience booking goes digital, there will be considerable share to be claimed for organizations that can anticipate and eliminate pain points at every stage of the process, up and down the value chain.” Especially when considering younger generations, who are more than willing to splurge on experiences.
We should know that Adobe bent the knee just announced it has integrated over 50 Creative Cloud tools into Claude. Anthropic, which recently announced Claude Design, has released new connectors that enable Claude to integrate with popular creative software. As a result, Claude can now access software such as Affinity, Blender, Ableton, Splice, and Autodesk.
And Adobe Creative Cloud applications.
We should know that because the company that dominated digital creation for three decades just admitted that it cannot compete. Sure, the company positioned the tool as a way to reduce workflow complexity, especially for users who may not be familiar with specific software tools. But the numbers were already showing trouble: the stock is trading at ~$240, while the all-time high was $688. This is a 65% drop.
It didn’t help them that, almost two years ago, the FTC launched a lawsuit against the company and its executives for hiding fees and preventing consumers from easily cancelling software subscriptions. Then, as both analysts and David Wadhwani, president of Creativity and Productivity at Adobe, said: AI came for it. The company announced in March that the CEO was leaving and in the earnings call for Q12026, on March 12th, they celebrated growth YoY and touched on Freemium products and their conversational editing experience in ChatGPT. For your timeline pleasure: Claude Design was launched on April 17th.
So, now, users will open Claude, type what they want and Claude will decide which Adobe tools to use behind the scenes. Where I come from, she who controls the conversation controls the monetization.
We should know that there are several zoos around the world where one can see an Okapi. The okapi, also known as a forest giraffe, is a shy and solitary species found only in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the common name says, the animal is a close “cousin” of the giraffe, and it has a unique coat and distinctive white stripes on its rump and legs. Personally, I have mixed feelings about zoos, but the conservation of Okapis is a big deal, as it is an umbrella species and these need focus because protecting its extensive habitat indirectly safeguards many other species within the same ecosystem. Okapis are currently listed as an endangered species. Alongside more than 48,000 others, sadly. If you want to visit a breeding facility to meet the Okapi, just find one here.
We should know that because Maria Helena, a very charming little girl I know, is really interested in them. She said it’s because they make a sound humans cannot hear. Given the state of the world, I think she’s onto something, this little genius.
We should know that we can now get our own Rise, the moon mascot, for US$25. “Designed by Lucas Ye, a nine year old from California who entered and won with his idea for a plush moon in NASA and Freelancer.com's "Moon Mascot" online challenge, Rise is a tribute to "Earthrise" — the iconic scene first seen in-person by the Apollo 8 crew in 1968 and mostly recently witnessed by the Artemis II crew as the flew by the moon earlier this month. Rise wears a cap that is meant to look like Earth rising over the moon.”
By the way, if you are in the mood for shopping, you can also get the UNO commemorative deck for Ken’s 65th anniversary. Or, for the music lovers, preorder the vinyl with Mother Mary’s Original Soundtrack.
We should know that because there is always someone we need an original gift for and I just reckoned I could be of help.
PS, If you want to get me something, I am happy with the patch.
I hope you enjoyed this. By the way, you can always send me something everyone should know, and your comments and suggestions. If you think someone else would enjoy this, please forward the email.