Superficial Intelligence? 🤖✍️

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the rollout of watermarks for AI-generated text. OpenAI has bowed to the EU’s wishes and will put identifiers in AI-generated text. Is it a good thing for all of us? We also have news on the artificial-intelligence-to-super-intelligence rebrand, which is, perhaps surprisingly, good news for owners of Slovenian internet domain names. Our app of the week uses Siri AI to help with credit card rewards, and we look at John Ternus’ hands-on role at Apple.

🎬 Our Top Take

©✍️ OpenAI – Watermarks on Text Will Be Used to Meet New EU Rules

According to reports, OpenAI has had a system in place to ‘watermark’ written content generated by ChatGPT for a while. It has – unlike Anthropic – resisted using it because it felt it would push users elsewhere. After all, nobody wants their boss or teacher running checks to see if that presentation/homework was really your own. Yet, in the EU, OpenAI has agreed to roll out watermarks for AI-generated text in the coming weeks to meet the Bloc’s new regulations. The watermarks are actually phrases, certain combinations of words, that can be picked up by detector tools but are (supposedly) not noticeable to humans. Is it foolproof? Absolutely not, as testing already shows that a bit of editing can fool the detectors, yet you would expect it to get more sophisticated, especially if the EU and other jurisdictions make this a priority. But the issue here is the overall drive for transparency. Anthropic has already agreed to watermarks globally, and Microsoft, Google, and others have signed up to the EU’s new rules. Some will argue that watermarking helps with fairness, especially when it comes to academia, but there is also a vocal minority (for now) who believe that AI answers require a lot of crafting, and that whatever the chatbot spits out should be considered the work of the prompter, not the bot. A debate for the philosophers of the future, perhaps. #WaterSports Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: CardPointers

CardPointers has long been a popular app for those in the know. The concept – helping you save and earn money by informing you of which credit cards to use and where – was a clever one, but it has now become much more sophisticated with its big update for iOS 27, which includes a much deeper integration with Siri AI. The app now has visual intelligence, so it can recognize a storefront or product and simply recommend the best credit card to use, and it can work with Siri to make recommendations for all types of purchases. You can find the CardPointers app updated for iOS 27 here. Note that a subscription fee applies, but if you’re a shopaholic, it’s worth checking out, as the company claims most users save $750+ per year. Not too shabby.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 20K Acquisitions

📈📉 AI – Rebrand to SI Causes Rush for Slovenian Website Domains

In August, most would have been of the opinion that “.si” domains (the web domain for Slovenia) were not really in demand. And they’d have been right, as fewer than 2,000 were in existence. Yet, the rebranding of artificial intelligence (AI) to super intelligence (SI) by the Trump Administration has meant that the Slovenian domain is in hot demand, with around 20K acquisitions recorded in a single day last week. We wonder how those folks who paid big money for .ai domains are feeling right now. #SloveniaDomain Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

The Apple App Store is now receiving submissions from developers for new apps designed to work on the foldable screen of the iPhone Duo. We are excited to see what app creators come up with. And if any of you have an idea for an app for a foldable phone (or a non-foldable one, for that matter), why not drop us a line? Even if it’s a rough idea or basic concept, we can take you through some of the steps to help make it a reality.