Infinite Money Glitch

August 04, 2025

THE ARTIFICIAL TIMES

Good morning! If your sports-obsessed coworkers seem unusually happy for a Monday, there’s a reason. We’re exactly one month away from the first NFL regular season game. Hope you're ready for the onslaught of fantasy drafts, office debates, and weekly team pick‘em pools (we definitely are).

  • OpenAI found an infinite money glitch

  • Trending AI tools

  • Vogue just dropped their new AI model

  • Help Wanted

Read time: 4 minutes

OpenAI

OpenAI just closed an $8.3 billion funding round at a jaw-dropping $300 billion valuation. Investors piled in so quickly the round was five times oversubscribed and wrapped up months ahead of schedule. For context, that's "bigger than many tech giants at IPO day" kind of big.

Breakdown

  • What’s the deal
    The funding was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, which chipped in around $2.8 billion, about 10 percent of its total capital. Other major players included Blackstone, TPG, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price.

  • Part of a bigger plan
    This isn’t a one-time money grab. OpenAI is rolling out a massive $40 billion fundraising effort throughout 2025. SoftBank alone is reportedly planning to invest $30 billion. So this $8.3 billion is just the warm-up.

  • Why investors are so hungry
    OpenAI hit $12 billion in annualized revenue as of mid-2025. Business subscribers have grown to about five million, and ChatGPT is now processing billions of queries every single day.

  • Where the money is going
    The fresh cash will fuel AI infrastructure projects like the Stargate data center network. It will also back in-house AI chip development and help OpenAI finalize its shift from nonprofit hybrid to fully for-profit. This is key for any future IPO and for reducing its dependence on Microsoft.

Fun fact: If you were to stack $1 bills on top of each other, the stack would be 20,000 miles high by the time it reaches OpenAI’s $300 billion valuation. The line of hopeful investors would be even higher.

Trending Tools

Ridley: The DIY home-selling platform letting homeowners ditch real estate agents, using AI-guided checklists and optional human support for a flat‑fee sale.

Qodo: An AI code integrity sidekick that auto-generates tests, reviews code, and helps keep your IDE squeaky clean.

Anam: Creates hyper-real digital-human avatars that can deliver lifelike training, support, and sales convos.

AI Use Case

Vogue just dropped an AI-generated ad campaign and the internet is not having it. Critics are calling out everything from visual inaccuracies to labor ethics, and this fashion faux pas has sparked a much bigger debate about AI in the creative world.

The Breakdown

  • The AI ad that launched a thousand tweets
    Vogue's ad featured digitally rendered models created with AI tools like Midjourney. While some viewers thought the results were visually stunning, others noticed anatomical oddities like backward hands and melting accessories. The visuals may have been sleek, but the flaws were hard to miss.

  • Artists and activists cry foul
    Many artists and fashion professionals pushed back, arguing that using AI in high-profile campaigns devalues human creativity and threatens real jobs. The ad also reignited concern over models’ likenesses being scraped for training data without consent. It’s not just about fashion—it’s about fairness.

  • Vogue’s response
    Condé Nast hasn’t issued a formal apology, but insiders suggest the team underestimated the blowback. The company claimed the campaign was experimental and part of its ongoing exploration of “cutting-edge” technologies. Translation: they were testing boundaries, and the public snapped back.

  • The bigger picture
    This isn’t just a Vogue problem. Brands across industries are dabbling in AI-generated content without fully thinking through the legal, ethical, or artistic implications. The speed of adoption is racing ahead of the public’s comfort level, especially in fields where authenticity matters.

Our suggestion: they should’ve tried something less risky like using Sydney Sweeney for their campaign instead of an AI model. How could that go wrong?

Help Wanted

AI Engineer @ xAI - Just a casual $440k job posting.

Pros: You will be working on the team building an AI anime girlfriend that chats with lonely men.

Cons: You will be working on the team building an AI anime girlfriend that chats with lonely men.

I like you, do you like me?

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