1. OpenAI says the brand-new GPT-5.1 is ‘warmer’ and has more ‘personality’ options
A thoughtful upgrade to ChatGPT’s flagship model, GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking are auto-routed to match query complexity, while eight new “personality” presets—from Friendly to Cynical—invite users to shape tone and temperament. This signals a shift from one-size-fits-all AI toward much more personalized, human-centric interfaces.
“With more than 800 million people using ChatGPT, we’re well past the point of one-size-fits-all.” (theverge.com)
2. Sitting in a videoconference is a uniformly crap experience. Instead of corroding our humanity, let’s design tools to enhance it
Robert O’Toole weaves philosophy and design thinking to argue that videoconferencing must transcend feature bloat and embrace “calm technology” rooted in empathy, ritual, and human entanglement—so that remote gatherings feel less like disembodied data streams and more like genuine co-presence.
“Calm matters in technology. It should be one of the main design goals.” (aeon.co)
3. From book critiques to music choices, computation is changing aesthetics. Does increasingly average perfection lie ahead?
Ed Finn offers a sweeping history—from Deep Blue’s centaur chess to Auto-Tune to smartphone filters—to show how algorithms have become co-creators of our aesthetics, raising urgent questions about surprise, serendipity, and the future of human creativity in an age of automated perfection.
“Surprise is a human territory… it is a question of survival on an intellectual level.” (aeon.co)
4. Apple introduces Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet
Apple’s latest UX leap turns your iPhone or Watch into a secure, on-device passport reader, encrypting and granting fine-grained control over what identity data you share—first at over 250 TSA checkpoints and soon far beyond—reimagining the experience of ID verification as private, fluid, and design-driven.
“Digital ID takes advantage of the privacy and security features already built into iPhone and Apple Watch to help protect against tampering and theft.” (apple.com)
5. Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too
Deepak Varuvel Dennison explores how the dominance of Western, English-language data leaves GenAI blind to oral traditions, non-Latin scripts, and local ecologies—risking the permanent erasure of centuries-old wisdom unless we confront AI’s deep epistemic biases.
“GenAI risks contributing to the erasure of systems of understanding that have evolved over centuries.” (aeon.co)