• Facebook Marketplace sellers are using images of women to draw attention to items for sale.
• There's just one thing: The women aren't real. They're AI-generated.
• I talked to one seller who said the tactic got him a lot of views, but not necessarily more sales.

Let's say you've got a 2013 Jeep Wrangler you want to sell. It's a great car — low mileage, good condition, and a custom-lifted suspension. But there's a lot of Jeep Wranglers out there on Facebook Marketplace — how do you make your listing stand out?

For Rogelio Llamas, it was a little sex appeal that was missing. He added an image of a woman in a bikini top, denim shorts, and cowboy boots leaning on the hood of his Wrangler. Now there's a way to draw eyeballs. Just one thing: The woman wasn't real. Llamas generated her with AI.

Llamas, who's in Southern California, is part of a trend I've seen on Facebook Marketplace lately. He told me he got the idea from a YouTuber who makes videos about how to buy items at thrift stores and resell them for a profit.

On Reddit and social media, people have started to notice a strange new trend: scantily clad AI-generated women propped up against everything from cars to dump trucks to other items for sale.

In one listing for a motorcycle, a hot goth girl appears to be sitting on it. In another, three women in nearly identical outfits (yet slightly too tall) lounge across a 2010 Mercedes. In a listing for what appears to be a dilapidated hot tub, three young women in tank tops and short shorts sit atop the filthy plastic.

On X, someone found a listing for some kind of Caterpillar heavy machinery equipment — featuring a sexy woman in a bathing suit posing on the rusted metal. All had hallmarks of AI images — strange figures, slightly off sizes, and generally improbable looks.

Using attractive women to appeal to car or boat buyers isn't a new concept by any means. Sex sells! But the addition of AI-generated babes to Facebook Marketplace listings feels new.

For one thing, images on Facebook Marketplace typically look kind of crummy. The whole point is you're getting a listing of a real used item sold by a normal person, not a professional. As a frequent Marketplace buyer myself, I'm generally wary of any listing that looks too professional or whose photos are too good — to me, that's a sign the seller knows what they have and may be pricing it too high.

Llamas said that in the influencer video he watched, it suggested using a larger body size for the AI-generated woman rather than a slim one, because it creates a curiosity gap that makes someone want to click. (Who knows if that's the case?) The fact that it seems obviously AI is intentional. "It's supposed to be funny, but also be like, damn, is she real??" Llamas told me over Messenger.

The WTF-factor seems to be a trend. In one Marketplace listing someone posted on Reddit, a seller put an AI sumo wrestler standing on the drawers of a large toolbox, presumably to demonstrate the strength of the drawers and also to catch attention.

But the eye-catching tactic doesn't always translate to a sale. Llamas said that, indeed, he got way more views and clicks on his Jeep listing after adding the photo with the woman. Unfortunately, they're not all serious buyers. "They are messaging if she comes with the car, if she's real, or they think I'm her." He said. "I get negative messages like 'go to the gym' or 'you're fat,' very few have actually messaged me for the car itself."

The Jeep has been on the market for 19 weeks so far.

• Google unveiled a new AI-powered search this week. It could ruin the internet.
• The changes mean you'll get a traditional list of links much less often.
• Instead, you'll get AI-powered answers, personalized just to you. That's not the internet we know.

Google is about to ruin the internet.

And I love the internet. I love websites. I love sending links to my friends. I spend nearly my entire workday looking at various Chrome tabs. I enjoy looking at websites I've never looked at before.

All of that is going to change with Google's new search updates, which lean into AI-generated answers. Its plans gave me an awful sinking feeling.

The big change will be to integrate AI even more into search — instead of typing in a few keywords and getting a list of links, Google will spit out more AI-powered answers to questions and personalized requests (I'll explain more in a bit.)

When a Big Tech company gives a demonstration of a new product, you've always got to look at it with some skepticism, so let's take this with at least a grain of salt: But Google, this week, said its new features would let an AI agent send you updates whenever your favorite athletes launch a new sneaker, for instance. (I am not sure how it knows your favorite athletes, but, at the same time, of course, Google knows that about you.)

A personalized internet isn't the internet

I really struggled to get into the mindset of someone who wants this. I'm not a sports fan or a sneakerhead, so new athlete-endorsed shoes don't thrill me, but I do enjoy shopping, so I can see the appeal of buying cool new sneakers. Do I want an alert when an athlete or brand announces this? Do I expect this to be something I wouldn't see in a TV ad, read in a style magazine, or see on the athlete's Instagram? Like, I guess I can see some convenience here, but there's already a robust ecosystem of ways to get this information that I find generally pleasurable to engage with.

Another example: Someone asking Google for advice on where to go for a hike with restaurants and parking nearby. That's a nice, wholesome project for a demonstration, but I can't imagine using Google in this way. I use Google in that time-honored way we've all been taught: typo-laden, two-word utterances — not elegantly worded requests.

I usually already know what I want to find; I just need help getting to the website that gives me the thing I want.

Google, of course, is bullish on its new product — and especially the personalization of it all. "We believe the best version of search is one created just for you," said Robby Stein, vice president of product for Google Search, during the I/O presentation this week.

I guess? Sure?

Stein gives an example of a college student asking about black holes. The student types a question in the search bar, and Google gives an AI-generated answer and creates a customized animation that shows how black holes work. (Eventually, it will give you a few links to other information about black holes.)

OK, cool. But that's not really what "search" is, right? That's just an AI chatbot that answers highly specific questions.

'Google Zero' might be coming

All this is obviously potentially very bad news for websites that have depended at least in part on Google search traffic, including the one you're now reading. There's been an expectation of this coming eventually — a doomsday event referred to glumly as "Google Zero" when Google traffic, which has been dropping across the news industry for the last few years, eventually hits zero. AI Overviews and people using other AI tools like ChatGPT to find information have already cut deeply into publishers' search traffic.

I am aware that my aversion to this new search experience may seem like self-preservation, since this is ostensibly not good for the journalism industry (in the short term, at least). But I assure you that my complaints are more personal and short-sighted. I am annoyed that this will change how I search and how I experience the internet.

I think of "the internet" as a place you go to; it shouldn't come to you.

I know it's outdated, but imagine the information superhighway — a physical space of roads, silos, and dungeons you can wander around. Google is the doorway to it. It hands you the map so you can give yourself a self-guided tour. But you're on your own in there.

By doing this for, say, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for, say, two decades, you become quite adept at knowing where to look and how to navigate. I still think of the internet this way.

The new Google seems like a gated community

But a version of the new AI search is one where you never have to venture out onto the internet; it's brought to you in a sanitized form by an intermediary. It's like living in a gated community with a strict HOA vs. a walkable city with public transit.

I know that harping on the virtues of "websites" is something only old people do; a leftover of the techno-optimism of people who spent time on old-timey messageboards or blogs. And, well, sure, I'm an old crank, but I've also got the youth on my side on this one. As my colleague Dan DeFrancesco writes, Gen Z has an aversion to AI — and this may affect how they adopt these new Google search products. I say, if Gen X fads like hacky sacks are back, then so should caring about the open web.

I don't want Google search to trap me into its AI HOA! I want my internet experience to have a tacky-colored house, an unkempt lawn, and a year-round 12-foot Home Depot skeleton. That's what the internet should feel like to me: something to explore and venture out into, even if that means a tiny bit of imperfect friction.

• I asked ChatGPT to identify the unnamed male celebrity who allegedly tried to sext Lena Dunham in 2012.
• It told me it was Don Rickles, which I feel pretty certain is not correct.
• So what are we doing here, folks? Learning to use AI?

Did you hear about the time Don Rickles tried to chat up Lena Dunham in the middle of the night?

No? Let me explain. First, we need to talk about Reese Witherspoon.

See, I'm a simple woman. I have only two interests: tech news and celebrity gossip. So I was naturally intrigued by a recent online fuss over Reese Witherspoon's admonition for women to learn to use AI. It sparked so much backlash that she had to issue a follow-up explanation.

I've also been intrigued by Lena Dunham's new book. (They're related — sort of. Keep reading!)

I think Reese is generally right about AI — she's saying the same thing that every other business leader is saying. But her comments did make me think a little more about what "Learn to use AI" even means. Writing emails with ChatGPT? Understanding the technology behind different models? Vibe coding? What level of "using AI" is expected here to stave off falling behind in the workforce and life in general?

One area I've really leaned into is using ChatGPT as a sort of super Google — to find something I know is online but would take some effort to dig up with a normal search engine.

A recent example? It's related to — of course — celebrity gossip.

I was reading Dunham's new memoir, "Famesick," which is full of moderately juicy celebrity gossip about named people and also blind items — celebrity gossip that gives a few clues about the identity of the person without naming them, a fun little riddle for the readers to solve.

One blind item is about an unnamed male celebrity who — allegedly — sent Lena a flirty late-night text message after meeting her backstage while taping "The View" in 2012. I figured I could solve this blind item by finding out who the other guest was on the same episode — information that should be online somewhere, but would take me forever to find.

So I asked ChatGPT to identify the male guest on "The View" episode that Lena was also on that year. At first, ChatGPT told me that it was only the four female cast members from the show. When I asked again who the other male guest was, the suggestions were Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth. (Not so. They appeared on a separate episode that same year, according to IMDb.)

That time Don Rickles chatted up Lena Dunham

When I said, "No, a comedian," as Dunham had described the man, ChatGPT confidently provided a new answer: It was legendary comedian Don Rickles who'd texted Dunham after the show.

I laughed out loud because of all the possibilities of who sent a late-night "u up?" text, I feel fairly certain it was not Don Rickles, who would've been 85 years old at the time.

Dunham's description of the man: "a bit of an American Hugh Grant, famous for that sort of chattery charm and his ability to woo his onscreen paramours with his fast-talking, hand-flapping anxiety. Ostensibly a comedian, he was there to promote his Gothic-tinted movie, where he had made a dramatic turn." Doesn't exactly sound like a Borscht Belt insult comic Don Rickles to me.

After spending way too much time searching the internet for answers on this — the old-fashioned way — I can make some guesses about how and why ChatGPT was so wrong here. IMDb's episode guide for episodes of "The View" from 2012 is spotty, with entries for some episodes missing information about guests, and no accessible video clips online. The only proof I found that Lena Dunham ever appeared on "The View" on April 20, 2012, was a Vulture blog post from that day, complete with an embedded YouTube clip that has been marked private.

Knowing this, I can start to see how AI got confused: When there's a lack of information, AI sometimes blurs together what it can find to try to spit out a plausible answer. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth appeared on the May 4, 2012, episode of "The View," and Dunham and Rickles appeared together on an episode in 2016.

ChatGPT doing this kind of thing — basically, taking a guess at what you might want to hear — could be useful if you're trying to write an email to a friend, maybe? It's not useful, obviously, if you're looking for a specific fact and it just plain makes something up.

For the record: Neither Lena nor Don (who died in 2017) nor the National Comedy Center, which is the keeper of the Rickles archive, responded to my requests for comment.

Are we stuck in a pizza glue loop?

Look, I get it. It's not particularly exciting to point out that ChatGPT gets things wrong in the spring of 2026. We know this, or at least we all should know this. Still, I keep coming across so many obvious mistakes when asking AI for factual things. These are the glaring mistakes I catch when I know that what AI has generated is not the right answer.

But what about the mistakes that I don't catch — or don't even know to catch? Things that I blindly accept as fact? For work-related stuff, I'll always double-check, but in those cases, am I actually saving myself any time?

How soon will this improve? Will we be stuck in a pizza glue loop forever? Is this what's going to make a bunch of lawyers and tax CPAs lose their jobs? I mean, OK, sure.

Here's where Witherspoon's and other bosses' idea of "Learn to use AI!" feels frustrating. I feel fairly confident about using various AI tools and have a decent concept of how they work. I am a woman, and I have learned to use AI! And yet, here I am, still unsatisfied.

There's a gap between what Reese Witherspoon wants for me and what I want out of AI — and the wholesome image of comedy legend Don Rickles. For now, those things just aren't lining up right.

• Goodbye, Sora!
• I loved you at first — it was so much fun making silly videos of my friends.
• After a few days, I got bored and moved on. Apparently so did everyone else.

Goodnight, sweet Sora. You were a wonderful tool for trolling my friends, but you burned too bright (and used too much compute) to stay around in this harsh world.

For a brief moment, I absolutely loved Sora. I loved making silly videos of my friends and me. I loved that I could use my friend's face to put them in ridiculous situations, like falling over while roller-skating at their desk, experiencing gastric distress, or singing in a ska band.

I was addicted to making these, churning them out, often starting a new one while waiting for the previous one to render, and sometimes hitting the hourly limit that OpenAI had to impose after some people (oops) were burning through all that free compute. I drained my phone battery by midday.

But a few days after its initial launch, the small handful of my friends and colleagues who had any interest in joining had already joined. None of my normal friends who didn't work in tech or media had any interest in this at all and found it fairly unpleasant.

Also, I couldn't help notice that on the feed of videos, there seemed to be very few women using the app, or at least allowing others to make videos featuring their likenesses. That makes sense; women's experience on the internet has rightfully informed them that it would be a very bad idea to allow strangers to make videos with your face. What I discovered was that Sora had a pervert problem: Although nudity or sexual content was banned, people were making non-nude fetish content like feet videos with random women's likenesses.

Now, OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it will be shutting down Sora, its stand-alone video generation app, and its deal with Disney is dead. An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that the company is focusing its resources on other parts of the business. It seems that Sora was one of the "side quests" that was a distraction and a drain on compute.

Sora became a bore-a

Eventually, my friends all seemed to get bored with the app. As I do at most parties, I stuck around longer than everyone else, but eventually I, too, found that the novelty had worn off. I rarely opened the app after the second week.

This was, I imagine, a problem: making videos of yourself is fun, but watching videos that strangers make of themselves is not fun. The idea of a social feed of AI-generated videos is simply not something that people are interested in. Around the same time, Meta also tried this with an app of AI videos, and it was even more boring.

The last few years have taught us that humans — myself included — have a nearly endless capacity to watch an algorithmic feed of vertical short-form videos. However, it seems clear that this only applies to human-made content: videos of people putting on makeup, dancing in their kitchens, lip-syncing, debating, whatever. A social feed of AI video simply doesn't work.

I am not sure that OpenAI was truly trying to create a successful social video feed; it seems more likely that this was a small experimental effort that ran its course and they're moving on.

I'll miss Sora in the way I miss something like ChatRoulette or BeReal: It was really fun for a short time, and then not at all, and I have zero desire to ever revisit.

Rest in peace, Sora — and thanks for the stupid memories.

• Noise-canceling headphones have been around for decades, but I never tried them — until now.
• I was so confused and freaked out by the sudden silence when I put in my new AirPods 4.
• I felt scared, like a caveman at a monster truck rally. Embarassing, really!

It's March of 2026, and I just bought my first pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I'm shocked, astounded, perturbed, and horrified: Is this how you people have been walking around all this time?!

Last week, after losing my right AirPods 3 earbud, I ordered a new pair of AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation. They're the first headphones I've ever worn with noise canceling.

Of course, noise-cancelling technology in headphones has been around since the 1980s, and became popular in big squishy over-the-ear Bose headphones in the 2000s. Noise canceling has been part of the AirPods Pro lineup since 2019. For some reason, I just ... never tried them.

My first experience with noise canceling

I set up my new AirPods over the weekend while waiting around in the parents' zone at a trampoline park. Because I didn't bother reading the instructions, which suggest pairing by holding the case next to your phone, I simply put the unpaired earbuds into my ears.

Immediately, everything went quiet. I looked around, confused. Did the loud trampoline park just turn off the upbeat pop music they were blasting? Why was everyone suddenly silent? Is there an emergency? Was someone hurt? Oh god, was my kid hurt?! I was panicked, scanning the other tables where adults idly sat looking at phones or tying preschoolers' shoes. No one else seemed to be concerned.

I took out the AirPods, and whoooosh — the music and din flooded back. My brain scrambled to make sense of the sensory experiences hitting it, slowly realizing that this was what noise-canceling does. I was like a caveman being shown a Bic lighter; fearful and confused. I was like the proverbial Victorian child who would pass out if you showed it the AI-generated video of anthropomorphic fruits on "Love Island."

This is incredibly embarrassing on one level because I am a professional technology journalist who generally tries to stay up to date and informed about interesting personal tech devices. The fact that I had never used noise-canceling headphones was an odd oversight.

I don't have good reasons for this, but I do have some weak excuses.

First and foremost, I'm cheap. And in my mind, headphones are something you shouldn't have to spend more than $20 on — up until the iPhone 12, Apple included a free set of corded headphones in the box with a new iPhone or iPod. I had a drawer overflowing with them! Headphones were just something that came into your life, like a cheap black umbrella — you didn't seek them out or intentionally buy them. Now, suddenly, I'm expected to drop a C-note on them?

When AirPods launched in 2016, I initially waved them off as overpriced and frivolous. It looked too easy to lose one. But eventually I gave in and, of course, realized that AirPods are incredibly convenient and great to use (I was right about them being easy to lose, however). Now, it's hard to imagine ever going back to wired headphones, no matter how much Gen Z makes it look cool.

My other main reason is that because I use headphones while walking down the street, riding the subway, or in other public situations, the idea of not being able to hear my surroundings felt like a safety issue. Sure, it might be nice on a plane, but it didn't make sense for my main headphone use.

Jury's still out on whether I like the noise canceling

As I've been playing around with the new noise-canceling headphones, I'm not sure how much I actually like them. Taking them in and out is disorienting, like coming up to the surface too fast while scuba diving (or, what I imagine that feels like).

I tried them at the gym, where they seemed useful, but at home, my husband (who has had noise-canceling headphones for a decade) was mildly frustrated when he tried to talk to me, not realizing I had them in. Understandable!

The AirPod 4s can turn active noise-canceling on and off if you rub the earbud's stem, but I haven't quite mastered this yet — I've tried and sort of fumbled around, turning my podcast on and off and knocking it out of my ear. I'll keep working at it.

I'm just glad to have finally joined the 21st century.