It?s A.I. model rollout season in Silicon Valley, and OpenAI appears to be feeling the pressure. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sent a memo to staff on Monday declaring a ?code red? effort to improve ChatGPT and delay other initiatives. We explain why the latest frontier models from Google and Anthropic have OpenAI spooked and how the company is reshuffling priorities to respond. Then, we give our honest thoughts on which A.I models we like best and share how we?re using A.I. in our day-to-day lives. And finally, we take a look at some of the most popular A.I.-generated content on the internet this week in our latest installment of the Hard Fork Review of Slop.

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Last year we debuted Hard Fork?s 100 Most Iconic Technologies list, in which we ranked the technologies from across all of history that best define life as we know it. To our surprise, it became one of our most popular episodes ever. So now we?re doing it again ? with a twist. All year, we?ve been collecting ideas for the 50 Most Iconic Technologies of 2025, and this week we present them to you, along with our case for why each entry played an important part in defining this year, for better or worse.

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We want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Find ?Hard Fork? on YouTube and TikTok.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore stories from the wild frontier of tech.

What?s real? What?s hype? ?Hard Fork? is here to help you make sense of it. Tune in every Friday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.