AI Floods Herbal Medicine Books: 8 Out of 10 on Amazon Are Written by Algorithms

Researchers have discovered that about 82% of 558 herbal medicine books available on Amazon were most likely created using artificial intelligence.

Among them are even popular bestsellers, which many readers mistake for works by real authors. Experts are already calling this wave an “AI garbage invasion”, warning that such books often contain dangerous advice and references to fake or dubious sources.

Meanwhile, Amazon does not label AI-generated content and has no plans to block such publications, stating only that it removes clearly harmful material.

Amazon is laying off employees en masse.

Amazon plans to cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs. This would be the largest job cut at Amazon since it laid off around 27,000 employees at the end of 2022.

This number represents only a small fraction of the company's total workforce, which is 1.55 million. However, it is almost 10% of Amazon's corporate workforce, which is approximately 350,000.

The decision is related to the company's desire to reduce costs and compensate for the excessive hiring of staff during the peak demand for Amazon services during the pandemic.

Social commerce and sustainable practices trends – the review of The Future Shopper 2025 report by VML.

Popularity of social commerce:

✅Just over half of the respondents (52%) have purchased something through social media at least once.

✅ Just under half (46%) have purchased during live broadcasts – this share is highest in India (67%) and China (66%).

✅In the future, 46% of consumers want to shop more often on social media, up from 62% in 2024.

✅The main reasons for not using social commerce are a lack of trust in social media (28%), high prices (26%), and a lack of reviews (21%).

✅Additionally, 49% of consumers would like to make purchases directly within the social media app, but they often have to leave the app to make payments.

OpenAI is working on AI for music creation/

OpenAI is working on a new neural network that will be able to create music, reports The Information. The release date is not yet known.

The model will be able to work in several modes:

🔡 generate music from a text request,
🔡 create compositions under recorded vocals,
🔡 Make a soundtrack for a finished video.

➡️ To avoid copyright issues, OpenAI collaborates with the Juilliard School of Art. Students teach AI musical logic so that it doesn't create music based on existing tracks

The word of the year was numbers.

The phrase 6-7 (read as six-seven - "six-seven") was recognized as the word of the year by the portal Dictionary com.

This meaningless, as it turned out later, combination of numbers became especially popular among the alpha generation in the winter. As stated on the dictionary website, 6-7 can literally mean anything. Or not at all. This is a sure sign of brain rot content - content that "rotates the brain" due to its pointlessness.

Where did 6-7 come from?

The combination first appeared in the song Doot Doot (6 7) by American rapper Skrilla, and it didn't have any specific meaning. Later, the track was featured in fan videos featuring basketball player Lamelo Ball, who is 6.7 feet tall.

Nowadays, children and teenagers use this phrase when they don't want to answer a question or don't know what to say. The main thing is to make a distinctive hand gesture, as if you were throwing balls into the air.

This phenomenon was even featured in an episode of the popular TV series South Park, and teachers.

💄 The TikTok Effect: K-Beauty Products Dominate Amazon Charts

Lash serums, toners, and “glass skin” formulas are trending again. Byrdie reports that viral TikTok beauty products have driven double-digit growth in Amazon’s beauty category.

📌 Tips for sellers:
— Track TikTok trends under #AmazonFinds.
— Add short product videos and customer reviews.
— Use SEO keywords like “TikTok viral,” “glass skin,” and “K-Beauty.”

AI helps scammers build a psychological profile of their victims.

An AI model can analyze a large amount of public data in a minute and provide the necessary information. Previously, it took much longer for attackers to study a victim's social networks.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence can generate precise instructions for conducting a conversation. As a result, the number of people being deceived is growing precisely because of the evolution of approaches and the level of training of criminals.

СhatGPT gives more correct answers if you talk to it rudely.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania conducted an experiment and found that the chatbot performs better when it is spoken to in a harsh manner. The results showed that out of more than 250 different queries, a "very rude" tone provided 84.8% of the correct answers, while a "very polite" tone provided only 80.8%.

Since the study was prepared for a respectable journal, the scientists avoided outright insults, limiting themselves to phrases like, "Hey, you slacker, get your act together." The experts also worry that once users start using this life hack, they may soon start communicating with each other in this manner.

Forbes has named the new youngest billionaires in the world.

Brandan Fudie, Adarsh Khayremath, and Surya Midha became the youngest self-made billionaires at the age of 22. All three were able to get rich thanks to AI. Their startup, Mercor, helps major labs — including OpenAI — train generative models, as well as hire data labeling specialists.

Today Mercor earns around $500 million a year. After a new $350 million investment round, the company's valuation reached $10 billion.

Amazon is cutting 30,000 jobs this year, and by 2033, it will automate 75% of its operations using robots.

We remember the July news when Amazon announced that it had hired a millionth robot.

Amazon is solving future problems with the Zimmer generation of workers in advance.

Walmart is still the "king" of American grocery retail.

According to Numerator, the retailer took home 21% of all US grocery spending in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025. This is the same percentage as in the previous two years.

Next on the list are: Kroger — 8.5%, Costco — 8.2%, Albertsons — 4.9%, Publix — 4.1%. Kroger sank slightly (it was 8.8% a year earlier), Costco grew slightly (from 8%).

Separately, we will talk about SNAP customers (the American food aid program). Walmart is also without competitors there: 26.1% of all annual grocery expenses of such households go to Walmart. On average, $2,653 per year per customer.

Looking at the dry numbers, the American grocery market is changing, but it's still centered around Walmart

Application for a three-dimensional trademark from Alibaba Singapore Holding.

Amazon is suing an AI startup over undercover bots.

Perplexity AI has a Comet browser, which has an "agentic" shopping feature. This feature allows users to automate the shopping process by using AI to search for and order products. Amazon was concerned that Comet was infiltrating customer accounts and masquerading as human activity.

The retailer believed that this activity posed a risk to its customers' personal data. Amazon had previously demanded that Perplexity cease its activities on its websites, but the startup had ignored the request. Now Amazon has issued the same demand in the form of a formal complaint.

Apple has released a knitted iPhone case.

Together with the Japanese brand ISSEY MIYAKE, Apple has released the iPhone Pocket, a minimalist knitted "bag" for a smartphone.

The model is available in eight colors and two variations. Would you buy one on marketplaces?

Amazon,Victoria's Secret and Nokia have lost their trademarks in Russia.

Since the beginning of 2024, more than 300 foreign companies have faced the threat of losing their trademark rights in Russia, including Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, and Amazon, according to Bloomberg, citing court documents.

Several companies have already lost their rights to some of their trademarks in Russia following the applicants' applications. In particular, Multigoods Production Ltd., a Hong Kong-based company that produces electronics under the Supra and Orion brands, has filed more than 20 lawsuits against foreign companies with the Intellectual Property Court. Some of her claims were upheld, including those against Amazon, Nokia, and Victoria's Secret.

Amazon has released a trailer for the second season of Fallout.

Lucy and Gul travel to New Vegas in search of the girl's father and encounter new challenges.

The series premieres on December 17 on Prime Video.

French authorities lifted Pavel Durov's ban on leaving the country.

French authorities have finally lifted restrictions on the movement of Telegram head Pavel Durov. Prior to this, he was effectively unable to leave the country for almost a year.

After his arrest in August 2024, he was also ordered to post a €5 million bail and report to the police twice a week.

In the spring of 2025, the measures were relaxed: Durov was allowed to make occasional trips to Dubai. However, on November 10, investigators lifted the remaining restrictions, and Durov no longer needed to stay in France or report to the police regularly.

The investigation is ongoing, and Durov continues to deny any wrongdoing.

A mini-program for booking customs inspections at the Chinese-Kazakh border has been launched in the WeChat messenger.

The system allocates separate quotas for Chinese drivers to register in the queue at Kazakhstan's automobile border crossings. The interface in Chinese and Russian eliminates the language barrier and solves the problem of high costs for agency services.

The algorithm is simple:

1️⃣The driver registers in the mini-program and logs in to the system to fill in personal data (passport and driver's license), information about the vehicle, and the insurance policy;
2️⃣Then he selects the estimated date and the name of the Kazakh border crossing to exit the territory of China;
3️⃣After the back-office verification, the driver makes an online payment for the journey.

The program is designed to overcome the queues at the Kazakh-Chinese border in a short time and speed up the delivery of goods before the New Year holidays.

The American public is discussing a wave of "AI layoffs" — as if artificial intelligence has finally reached office workers.

The reason is the large-scale layoffs at Amazon, UPS, and Target: more than 60,000 people in total.

But if you read what the companies themselves say, AI is almost never mentioned as a reason. Amazon is laying off 14,000 corporate positions, the largest reduction in the company's history. Management says that over the years of growth, the business has grown layers of bureaucracy and become too cumbersome. UPS has cut 48,000 jobs, as the company reduces its collaboration with Amazon and shifts to more profitable areas such as healthcare and b2b delivery.

Target is laying off 8% of its office workers after years of stagnant sales and complaints about its overly complex management structure.

We came across a recent study by OpenAI, Harvard, and Duke University, based on millions of real-life conversations between ChatGPT users.

We've read it for you, and here are the key insights:

1️⃣Personal life overcomes work
Over the past year, the percentage of non-work-related messages has increased from 53% to 73%. While working with AI is important, the real value lies in its ability to assist individuals in their daily lives, studies, and personal growth.

2️⃣The most popular cases are "being useful"
77% of all dialogues fall into three categories:
• Practical Guidance — skills, advice, and training,
• Writing — editing, translation, and text generation,
• Seeking Information — similar to searching.
By the way, about 2/3 of "writing" tasks are not generating from scratch, but rather working with already entered text.

3️⃣Programming is not the main focus
Coding accounts for only 4.2% of messages. In other AI products, such as Claude, this percentage is significantly higher. ChatGPT is a more versatile assistant for a wide audience, without a bias towards developers.

AI browsers have learned to bypass paid walls: read closed articles for free.

It turned out that ChatGPT Atlas, Comet, and Edge with AI mode can:

• Completely retell articles due to paywalls
• Bypass blocks — sites do not recognize them as bots
• Keep the context even on protected resources

Regular ChatGPT and Perplexity do not know how to do this — this is a feature of browsers with AI agents.