In the beginning, the chatbots and their ilk fed on the human-made internet. Various generative-AI models of the sort that power ChatGPT got their start by devouring data from sites including Wikipedia, Getty, and Scribd. They consumed text, images, and other content, learning through algorithmic digestion their flavors and texture, which ingredients go well together and which do not, in order to concoct their own art and writing. But this feast only whet their appetite.

On paper, Pixar’s new film, Elemental, seems like the kind of wildly inventive, visually dynamic project that has made the company such a consistent success in the animation world. The studio’s formula is clear enough: Take an inanimate, perhaps abstract thing (a toy, a car, a feeling, a human soul) and personify it, even as a talking blob of sorts, building out a representational world that nonetheless feels familiar.

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers what they experience or observe personally that is most at odds with what they see portrayed in the media.G. is a 77-year-old woman:
I’m not seeing the real me.

The submersible craft’s journey to the bottom of the ocean and back was supposed to take about eight hours. Two and a half hours for the descent, a few hours to explore the century-old wreckage of the Titanic, and then another two and a half hours to return to the surface.But the sub and its five passengers have now been missing in the Atlantic Ocean for three days. In that period, it has had no communication with the rest of the world.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The Ukrainians are making progress in their long-awaited counteroffensive. Meanwhile, the Russian president is talking like a gangster and rattling the nuclear saber—again.

                           Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds                            Do breed unnatural troubles … — MacbethSome years ago, the satellite radio and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt decided that she wanted a semblance of her wife to last forever.

After more than a decade, autocorrect “fails” could be on their way out. Apple’s much-maligned spelling software is getting upgraded by artificial intelligence: Using sophisticated language models, the new autocorrect won’t just check words against a dictionary, but will be able to consider the context of the word in a sentence.

Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of the world’s most popular TV show, is supposed to be an everyman. The Truman Show is set in an island town, Seahaven, that evokes the prefab conformities of American suburbia. Truman is a brand in a setting that is stridently generic. Since his birth, he has navigated a world manufactured—by Christof, the creator of his show—for lucrative inoffensiveness.