Platforms are finally recognizing that people don't want to consume AI slop. A growing number of sites and apps now have tools and policies to flag, label, and ban AI-generated content. I was recently digging through my Instagram settings, trying to disable Meta's now-defunct feature that allowed anyone to create AI deepfakes of me without consent. Anger bubbled up inside as I tapped through the Kafkaesque opt-out process . Rather than throwing my phone across the room, I blurted to my partner that we should leave San Francisco behind and be off-grid sheep farmers.

There are endless ways to record and transcribe your virtual meetings with AI. It's perhaps the least hyped, and most useful, feature of the AI age: transcription . As a young journalist, I dreamed of a computer that could turn recordings into text. Now we have that, and it's amazing. A variety of services, called meeting assistants, promise to transcribe and summarize your meetings for you.

New AI toolbars and prompts are showing up in Google Docs and Gmail. If you don't want Gemini's help in writing documents and emails, here's how to turn that stuff off. Have you noticed how desperate tech companies are to get you to use their artificial intelligence features, even if you don't want to use them? They're adding buttons to user interfaces and using pop-up tool tips to implore you to click them and become a dedicated user of their AI creations. Google Docs, for example, is rolling out a giant Gemini bar at the bottom of the screen for some users.

We're still in the dog days of summer--keep your cool with deals on the best fans we've tested for on the go and at home. We've been testing fans for far longer than just this summer, and while historically this is one of the worst times of the year to try to save money on anything "cooling, a few of our top picks are on sale. If you could use some extra chill, check them out before the deals are gone. Our favorite portable fan goes on sale pretty often, but not for less than it is right now. It's discounted in nearly every color.

Plastic-Free Drip Coffee Is a Holy Grail. Microplastics are in everything, especially your coffee. A new generation of plastic-free coffee brewers is trying to change this. The era of plastic-free drip coffee has finally arrived. It couldn't come soon enough. Drip coffee is my first true love when it comes to caffeine. But sadly, my first love is hopelessly addicted to plastic. From the very first Mr. Coffee machines in the 1970s, nearly every drip coffee maker on the market, including many of my favorite drip coffee makers, has included plastic at some point in the brewing process. But plastic, as we're now learning, can leach tiny particles called microplastics into coffee or water, which you then happily drink in your morning cup.

I put handheld, wearable, and misting fans through a sweltering summer to see which ones kept me coolest. When I was first hired as a commerce editor at WIRED in summer 2024, one of the first media requests I fielded was from a nationally renowned talk show. The ask was for an editor to speak on the popularity of portable and neck fans. High-temperature records were breaking all over the US, and abroad, neck fans were suddenly the "it" accessory at the Paris Olympics, hugging the nape of athletes like Simone Biles. "I can't do this," I told my manager at the time.