In an era of AI's growing capabilities and influences, recent advancements are reshaping HCI and CSCW's view of AI as mere tools. Playful interactions with AI systems naturally emerged as a way for users to make sense of the ever-changing technology. However, these emergent and playful interactions are underexamined. We target this gap by investigating playful interactions exhibited by users of a recently trending powerful AI technology, ChatGPT. Through a thematic analysis of 372 user-generated posts on the ChatGPT subreddit, we found that a substantial portion of user discourse revolves around playful interactions. The analysis further allowed us to construct a preliminary taxonomy to describe these interactions, categorizing them into six types: reflecting, jesting, imitating, challenging, tricking, and contriving; each included sub-categories. Overall, this study contributes to the field of HCI and CSCW by illuminating the multifaceted nature of playful interactions with AI, underlining their significance in shaping the human-AI relationship.

As China continues to steam ahead, marketers looking to carve out a slice of the pie should be mindful of consumer trends in the world's most populous consumer market. Market research & insight firm, Mintel, has released their take on what to look for in terms of the key consumer trends that will have the greatest impact in China for the coming year. One takeaway we found most interesting was the increasing sophistication of younger consumers and how they expect brands to interact with them. "Higher levels of social stress are driving China's youngest generations to demand more informal and playful interactions in both the virtual and physical world," said the report. This, along with other insights in the report, make clear that brands should take heed of China's ever-evolving segments and what road they are most comfortable taking on their customer journey.