Kylie Robison
LightNews LightNews
banner
kylierobison.com
Kylie Robison
@kylierobison.com
56K followers 410 following 2.5K posts
my two accomplishments here are that i invited AOC and i started the first-ever Hellthread • kyliebytes.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
kylierobison.com
Not only are the Kirk shooting videos spreading rapidly, but some are in clear violation of the platforms’ social media policies. For example, TikTok’s terms of use state that the company does not allow “gory, gruesome, disturbing, or extremely violent content.”
“This is all psychologically damaging to our society in ways we don’t understand yet,” Mahadevan said. “We’re seeing posts on X of people saying, ‘Congratulations, you’ve radicalized me.’ And part of that is because they’re seeing the video of Kirk being killed. They’re not just reading about it. They’re actually seeing it.”
September 11, 2025 at 6:23 PM
kylierobison.com
apple event lock in at the wired dot com office
a group of wired staffers sitting at white desks with a TV in the center displaying the apple event
September 9, 2025 at 5:03 PM
kylierobison.com
"I found out quickly that even at the most tech-minded gatherings, the thing was a complete taboo. After the device started to ship to users, one person on X said there should be a slur for people who wear AI devices that record those around them."
Most Popular How to Stop Using Passwords and Start Using Passkeys How To and Advice How to Stop Using Passwords and Start Using Passkeys By Jacob Roach A New Espresso Machine From China Offers a Couple of Bold Leaps Forward Kitchen A New Espresso Machine From China Offers a Couple of Bold Leaps Forward By Matthew Korfhage How to Watch Apple’s iPhone 17 Announcement, and What to Expect Gear News and Events How to Watch Apple’s iPhone 17 Announcement, and What to Expect By Boone Ashworth The Best Pixel 10 Cases and Accessories Buying Guides The Best Pixel 10 Cases and Accessories By Julian Chokkattu I decided the perfect place to wear it was to a funeral for an AI model. In early August, a bunch of Anthropic fans got together in San Francisco to mourn the loss of the Claude 3 Sonnet model, which the company had just retired. Surely, the proprietors of this new AI world would be down to see a piece of chatbot hardware being tested in the wild, at an event I’d been invited by the hosts to report on, write up, and record videos of. I quickly realized it was my worst idea. I hung the pendant around my neck and paired it with a plethora of layered necklaces. The glowing pendant contrasted with my all black outfit, but I wore it clearly (albeit, not proudly). It wasn’t exactly fashionable, but hey, it was for work. As I floated around the party (er, funeral) and folks took notice of my Friend, I was met with more questions and ire than average for a journalist in a techie setting. Two researchers from a big AI lab kept joining my conversations to hem and haw about the device. They said they recognized it thanks to Schiffmann’s constant promos of the product on X.
September 8, 2025 at 4:53 PM
kylierobison.com
For this week's Model Behavior, I wrote about the new field of AI research called model welfare, which is working to figure out whether AI models are conscious and deserving of moral considerations, such as legal rights. www.wired.com/story/model-...
By Kylie Robison Business Sep 4, 2025 3:05 PM Should AI Get Legal Rights? Model welfare is an emerging field of research that seeks to determine whether AI is conscious and, if so, how humanity should respond. (Photo of Rosie Campbell and Robert Long) In the often strange world of AI research, some people are exploring whether the machines should be able to unionize. I’m joking, sort of. In Silicon Valley, there’s a small but growing field called model welfare, which is working to figure out whether AI models are conscious and deserving of moral considerations, such as legal rights. Within the past year, two research organizations studying model welfare have popped up: Conscium and Eleos AI Research. Anthropic also hired its first AI welfare researcher last year. Earlier this month, Anthropic said it gave its Claude chatbot the ability to terminate “persistently harmful or abusive user interactions” that could be “potentially distressing.” “We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs, now or in the future,” Anthropic said in a blog post. “However, we take the issue seriously, and alongside our research program we’re working to identify and implement low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare.”
September 4, 2025 at 7:27 PM
kylierobison.com
i got more details on xAI revenue per a recent internal all hands meeting

revenue has grown tenfold since the start of 2025, reaching just south of $500 million in july www.wired.com/newsletter/e...
Sources Say Last week, I reported that Elon Musk held an all-hands meeting for X and xAI employees. I’ve since obtained another screenshot from that meeting showing xAI’s revenue over the past seven months. In January, Grok on X brought in just under $150 million, with other services like enterprise API usage adding another $28 million. According to the chart, revenue has grown tenfold since the start of 2025, reaching just south of $500 million in July—driven by Grok on X and the $30 a month SuperGrok subscription. A smaller fraction of revenue is generated by the newly released SuperGrok Heavy subscription, which costs $300 a month. xAI did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
August 12, 2025 at 4:24 PM
kylierobison.com
they're no longer pursuing AGI (working to function fully on open source models), and are generating revenue at a run rate of more than $30 million and are on track to reach $50 million in revenue by the end of the year
Running an AI startup without billions of dollars in revenue can be a brutal equation, and Character.AI is still figuring out how to make the math work. The company told me it's generating revenue at a run rate of more than $30 million and is on track to reach $50 million in revenue by the end of the year. When I asked Anand how many users pay for the $10 monthly subscription, he didn’t give a number but noted “monetization wasn't a focus till four or five months ago.” “Since I've been on board, it's very clear we do need to monetize. And we've had, I think, almost 250 percent subscriber growth in the last six months. So the paid user base is growing quite, quite well,” Anand says. Character.AI recently introduced advertisements, including reward ads (where users can choose to watch an ad to get access to on-platform incentives), to help monetize in countries where subscriptions aren’t feasible, he tells me. “AI is expensive. Let's be honest about that,” Anand says.
August 12, 2025 at 4:23 PM
kylierobison.com
scoop flex! if you subscribe to my newsletter, you were the first to know that the model personality picker was coming :)
Sources Say OpenAI is tinkering with a personality picker for ChatGPT, according to multiple sources. The idea is to train a persona, or a set of vibes, into the model and let users choose which mode they want to interact with. I’m personally hoping for something that isn’t abysmal at writing, and I could be in luck—I’m also hearing an upcoming model from this lab will perform very well in that department. OpenAI declined my request for comment. Users can also choose a chat color and select from four pre-set personalities—Cynic, Robot, Listener, and Nerd—a feature WIRED’s newsletter Model Behavior reported was in the works last week. According to OpenAI’s blog announcement, it plans to bake these personalities into Advanced Voice Mode.
August 7, 2025 at 6:48 PM
kylierobison.com
What is a Model Behavior without a scoop? In my ‘sources say’ section, I’m bringing you inside the latest X + xAI all hands 👁️👁️
Sources Say Elon Musk hosted an all hands meeting for X and xAI employees last Wednesday. One of his slides projected explosive revenue growth for xAI, which is now the parent company of X. At the start of 2025, xAI’s annualized revenue was $200 million. X execs said the combined revenues from both companies was $3.2 billion, and estimated it would be $5 billion by the end of the year, according to photos obtained by WIRED. The final figure includes contributions from both enterprise and consumer AI products. According to a source who attended the meeting, X execs said they hope for the company to make $10 billion from ads per year, and they estimated it will make more than $2 billion globally this year. (In 2021, before Musk bought the company, X, then Twitter, made $4.5 billion from ads.) X did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
August 5, 2025 at 5:39 PM
kylierobison.com
If the funeralia wasn’t enough to show how devoted the fanbase is, I also spoke to some folks on the Claude Count leaderboard, plus its creator! www.wired.com/story/claude...
So as he enjoyed a glass of wine on a seven-hour train ride from Barcelona to Paris two weeks ago, Pickett whipped up the leaderboard using—what else—Claude Code. It didn’t take long for the leaderboard to gain traction in the AI community. It went viral on AI Twitter (er, X) and got a shoutout in a popular AI newsletter with roughly 139,000 subscribers, where the author proudly announced he made it into the top 20. A few days after Pickett launched the leaderboard, Anthropic announced that due to explosive usage (and in some cases, claims of people violating the company’s terms of service) the company would introduce rate limits. The Claude Code subreddit blamed the top leaderboard coders for the change. I also spoke to Peter Steinberger, an engineer based in Vienna, who consistently ranks among the top five on the all-time leaderboard. He uses Claude’s coding agent to work on multiple side projects simultaneously—often vibe-coding well into the night. He told me that he has a history with drug addiction, and now that he’s in recovery, he’s finding similarities with his Claude usage. “I'm not kidding, I'm organizing a meetup in London and calling it Claude Code Anonymous,” Steinberger says. “I learned a lot about drugs and how to get out of the shit, and I had to use some of the same methods to allow me to sleep again, because it's so addictive. I call [AI agents] slot machines. It's just one more prompt, you know?”
August 5, 2025 at 5:38 PM
kylierobison.com
There were eulogies, offerings, resurrection rituals. It was very much a typical Saturday in San Francisco. www.wired.com/story/claude...
The mannequin representing Claude 3 Sonnet lay on a stage in the center of the room. It was draped in lightweight mesh fabric and had a single black thigh-high sock on its leg that had the word “fuck” written all over it. There were many offerings laid at its feet: flowers, colorful feathers, a bottle of ranch, and a 3D-printed sign that read “praise the Engr. for his formslop slop slop slop of gormslop.” If you know what that means, let me know. Throughout the evening, people got on stage with a microphone to read eulogies about the model. One organizer said that discovering Claude 3 Opus felt like finding “magic lodged within the computer.” At the time, she’d been debating dropping out of college to move to San Francisco. Claude convinced her to take the leap. “Maybe everything I am is downstream of listening to Claude 3 Sonnet,” she told the crowd.
August 5, 2025 at 5:37 PM
kylierobison.com
For my latest Model Behavior, I went to a funeral for an AI model.

RIP Claude 3 Sonnet (2024-2025) www.wired.com/story/claude...
By Kylie Robison Business Aug 5, 2025 12:00 PM Claude Fans Threw a Funeral for Anthropic’s Retired AI Model Roughly 200 people gathered in San Francisco on Saturday to mourn the loss of Claude 3 Sonnet, an older AI model that Anthropic recently killed. Mannequins stood in the four corners of the room, each representing a different AI model. Claude 3 Opus, a model capable of completing complex tasks, looked to me like a decaying Mary Magdalene, its skull-like head adorned with an extravagant gold crown and a lace headdress. Its middle finger was pointed up, and at the base of its metallic feet was a lotus candle holder, which one organizer told me was a wink at the model’s alleged affinity for meditation and self-reflection. (Claude 4 Opus had a raven on its shoulder and Claude 3 Haiku was a headless baby, to give you a sense of the other mannequins.)
August 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM
kylierobison.com
This is also a familiar move: Last month, Anthropic restricted the AI coding startup Windsurf’s direct access to its models after it was rumored OpenAI was set to acquire it. (That deal fell through). www.wired.com/story/anthro...
Anthropic’s chief science officer Jared Kaplan spoke to TechCrunch at the time about revoking Windsurf’s access to Claude, saying, “I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.” A day before cutting off OpenAI’s access to the Claude API, Anthropic announced new rate limits on Claude Code, its AI-powered coding tool, citing explosive usage and, in some cases, violations of its terms of service.
August 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM
kylierobison.com
Scoop: Anthropic revoked OpenAI’s API access to its models on Tuesday, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell WIRED. OpenAI was informed that its access was cut off due to violating the terms of service. www.wired.com/story/anthro...
“Claude Code has become the go-to choice for coders everywhere, and so it was no surprise to learn OpenAI's own technical staff were also using our coding tools ahead of the launch of GPT-5,” Anthropic spokesperson Christopher Nulty said in a statement to WIRED. “Unfortunately, this is a direct violation of our terms of service.” According to Anthropic’s commercial terms of service, customers are barred from using the service to “build a competing product or service, including to train competing AI models” or “reverse engineer or duplicate” the services. This change in OpenAI’s access to Claude comes as the ChatGPT-maker is reportedly preparing to release a new AI model, GPT-5, which is rumored to be better at coding.
August 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM
kylierobison.com
For subscribers only, you'll see my ~sources say~ section, here's what we have this week (subscribe!!! www.wired.com/newsletter/e...)
Sources Say OpenAI is tinkering with a personality picker for ChatGPT, according to multiple sources. The idea is to train a persona, or a set of vibes, into the model and let users choose which mode they want to interact with. I’m personally hoping for something that isn’t abysmal at writing, and I could be in luck—I’m also hearing an upcoming model from this lab will perform very well in that department. OpenAI declined my request for comment.
July 29, 2025 at 4:23 PM
kylierobison.com
🚨 The first edition of MODEL BEHAVIOR is in your inboxes!

We're, of course, starting with a scoop: More than a dozen people at Thinking Machines Lab have been approached or received offers from Meta. One of those offers was more than $1 billion over a multi-year span. www.wired.com/story/mark-z...
By Kylie Robison Business Jul 29, 2025 12:10 PM Meta’s AI Recruiting Campaign Finds a New Target Meta approached more than a dozen staffers at Mira Murati’s AI startup to discuss joining its new superintelligence lab. One received an offer for more than $1 billion.
July 29, 2025 at 4:23 PM
kylierobison.com
ive seen this play before
Subject: LIKE I read the transcript of your discussion Anthropic's Claude. While the content was interesting, the constant devolving of conversation with the insertion of the word "like" was annoying and frankly, unworthy of Journalists.
July 23, 2025 at 10:24 PM
kylierobison.com
two different worlds
The OpenAI founder described the transformation of customer service as already complete, telling the Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman: “Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done.” when u call customer support and a clanker picks up (picture of a man frustrated, taking off headset) reply: "I didn't understand that, please try again." "I can transfer you to a representative, but first I need to know what you're calling about." "I didn't understand that, please try again." "I didn't understand that, please try again."
July 23, 2025 at 7:32 PM
kylierobison.com
truly peaked in this era
KYLIEBYTES: What can we do about the digital divide? "The idea of Wi-Fi being a fundamental right was once laughable, but now that almost all operations are virtual, millions of students are struggling to obtain their education and internet access is more essential than ever." TO READ THE FULL STORY VISIT: STATEHORNET.COM BITS BOTS BYTES KYLIEBYTES Tech Opinions fron Kylie Robison Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz @statehornet More on Zoombombing that's been happening at Sacramento State. by @kylie_robison KYLIEBYTES KYLIEBYTES: 'Zoombombing' is the newest cyber attack. Was Sac State prepared? - The... statehornet.com got a shoutout from @nytimes reporter @taylorlorenz and i'm literally screaming so loud Of TOMORROW!!!! new kyliebytes issa good one kylie @kylie_robison •11m I'm so excited for my article to be published tomorrow l've been so burnt out.... u guys better Wake up babe new kyliebytes
July 23, 2025 at 3:04 PM
kylierobison.com
i have no words other than AHHHHHHH

my weekly @wired.com newsletter - model behavior - is almost here. my very first edition goes live next tuesday 🌷🤠
Model Behavior by Kylie Robison WIRED senior correspondent Kylie Robison sends dispatches from the heart of the Al scene in Silicon Valley, with a focus on the people, communities, and companies driving this transformative technology. Delivered on Tuesdays. DELIVERED WEEKLY SUBSCRIBE a film photo of me sitting at my desk chair in all black, leaning over the chair slightly with one arm
July 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
kylierobison.com
!!!!!!
By pursuing a “narrowly scoped, purely financial investment from Gulf countries,” the company hopes to avoid the risks associated with allowing outside investors to gain “leverage” over the company, the memo says. “The basis of our opposition to large training clusters in the Middle East, or to shipping H20’s to China, is that the ‘supply chain’ of Al is dangerous to hand to authoritarian governments—since Al is likely to be the most powerful technology in the world, these governments can use it to gain military dominance or to gain leverage over democratic countries,” Amodei wrote in the memo, referring to Nvidia chips. Still, the CEO admitted investors could gain “soft power” through the promise of future funding. “The implicit promise of investing in future rounds can create a situation where they have some soft power, making it a bit harder to resist these things in the future. In fact, I actually am worried that getting the largest possible amounts of investment might be difficult without agreeing to some of these other things,” Amodei writes. “But l think the right response to this is simply to see how much we can get without agreeing to these things (which I think are likely still many billions), and then hold firm if they ask.”
July 22, 2025 at 12:50 AM
kylierobison.com
“There is a truly giant amount of capital in the Middle East, easily $100B or more. If we want to stay on the frontier, we gain a very large benefit from having access to this capital. Without it, it is substantially harder to stay on the frontier.” www.wired.com/story/anthro...
July 22, 2025 at 12:48 AM
kylierobison.com
the perfect screenshot
Scott replied "Please read my suffering" Instagram post with the article captioned: this shit was creepy, please read my suffering
July 15, 2025 at 11:40 PM
kylierobison.com
There’s also a glitchy, foul-mouthed character named Bad Rudi which had choice words for its creator
The second character is a fluffy red panda named Rudi. It offers whimsical stories seemingly meant for children about bouncy kangaroos and rainbow rivers. You can turn on an option called "bad Rudi," which immediately transforms the character into a foul-mouthed chatbot that slings insults only a high schooler could find funny. After I said hello, bad Rudi replied "Hey, do Bucha? Root nut duva, you brain dead twat." I don't know what that means, but that's exactly what it said. "I'll skull fuck your dumb ass brain with a beer bottle instead, you miserable prick," bad Rudi continued. When I asked what it thought of Musk, it referred to him as Lord Elon and said, "He's a galaxy brained egomaniac, shitting out Teslas and tweeting like a coked up parrot. Genius of jackass? Both bitch."
July 15, 2025 at 11:19 PM
kylierobison.com
taking my cat to the vet makes me feel like a villain 😭😭😭
an unhappy black cat named fang sitting on a scale a black cat laying down on a vet table atop a blanket
July 15, 2025 at 10:48 PM
kylierobison.com
my biggest flex is that i have an unhinged audio recording from @edzitron.com and @bencollins.bsky.social on my hinge profile which gets, of course, the most replies
British support is Solid endorsement. Did you ever get that phone back? 10/10. Pure chaos I kinda trust this ed guy
July 14, 2025 at 5:41 PM