Kyle Chayka

New York, Washington, D.C.

Senior Staff Writer at The New Yorker

staff writer @newyorker; second book, FILTERWORLD: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, coming @doubleday January 2024; newsletter: https://t.co/iELTxgVFJV

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Articles

ジブリ風のAI画像の限界を宮崎駿は知っている

5 days ago | wired.jp | Kyle Chayka

「人間らしい」アートの代表例を挙げろと言われたら、ジブリアニメの作品名を答えるのは悪くない選択だ。スタジオジブリは日本のアニメ制作会社で、84歳の伝説的な監督、宮崎駿が設立した。手描きの絵やみずみずしい質感のある色彩、壮大なストーリーを特徴とし、幼い頃の曖昧な感情と大人になるまでの紆余曲折を思い起こさせる作風で知られている。米国のミレニアル世代は、まさに成長する過程で翻訳された英語版に触れる機会に恵まれた。そのため、『となりのトトロ』『もののけ姫』『千と千尋の神隠し』といった作品はこの世代にとって子ども時代の共通の思い出となっている。ジブリ作品の映像、そして死にゆく森の生き物や湯屋の強欲な幽霊たち、それらとの失われたつながりという宮崎作品のストーリーラインは、わたしたちに楽しくノスタルジックな思い出と震えるような悲しみを喚起させる。 ChatGPT-4oの波紋だが残念なことに、大量のジブリ風画像に遭遇すると、そのような感動はすぐに蝕まれてしまう。2025年3月下旬、まさにそうした事態がネット上で起こった。原因はOpenAIのChatGPTの最新版にある。...
Recession Indicators Are Everywhere

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Anecdotally, signs of a recession are already here. Hairdressers are reporting that their clients are ordering less expensive treatments. “I’ve been eliminated from their budget,” one aesthetician told Bloomberg. Young people are hosting home cafés, making their own cappuccinos and iced matchas in lieu of patronizing coffee shops.
Social Media Is Getting Better by Falling Apart

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Posting online has gotten weird. Twitter is X; TikTok’s fate remains uncertain; and upstart platforms such as Bluesky are growing. The future of social media may be less like the old Facebook and more like e-mail. Plus:• How Trump’s tariffs fit the autocrat’s playbook• The Brazilian judge taking on the digital far right• Regrets? YouTube moms have a fewSocial Media Is Getting Better by Falling ApartKyle ChaykaChayka writes about technology and internet culture.
TikTok and the Retreat from Technological Globalization

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

ByteDance and the U.S. government had reportedly been nearing a deal that was slated to be announced last week. According to the Times and other outlets, it would have involved the American database company Oracle and tech-investment firms, perhaps including Andreessen Horowitz and Susquehanna, the latter of which is already a stakeholder in ByteDance.
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media

2 weeks ago | rsn.org | Kyle Chayka

X and Facebook are governed by the policies of mercurial billionaires. Bluesky’s C.E.O., Jay Graber, says that she wants to give power back to the user. Jay Graber, the C.E.O. of the upstart social-media platform Bluesky, arrived in San Francisco the Sunday after Donald Trump’s reëlection and holed up in a hotel room.
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Jay Graber, the C.E.O. of the upstart social-media platform Bluesky, arrived in San Francisco the Sunday after Donald Trump’s reëlection and holed up in a hotel room. She’d spent the previous days road-tripping down the West Coast from her home, in Seattle, stopping at beaches and redwood groves along the way, and in San Francisco she’d hoped to remain half in vacation mode. But now Bluesky was seeing a surge in new users, and it was looking as if she’d need all hands on deck.
日本で生まれたテクノ・ファシズムが米国にやってきた

2 weeks ago | wired.jp | Kyle Chayka

今年1月の大統領就任式で、マーク・ザッカーバーグ、ジェフ・ベゾス、イーロン・マスク、グーグルのスンダー・ピチャイなど、シリコンバレーのトップ経営者たちがトランプ大統領の後ろにずらりと並んだとき、多くの人は企業利益のための結束だとみなした。超富裕層のCEOたちは、規制緩和、税制優遇、反woke（ウォーク）［編註: 保守派がリベラル派を揶揄する際に使う“意識高い系”の意］への文化シフトの時代を期待して、自分たちと同じ大物実業家であるトランプを支持すべく集まったのだ。日本生まれのテクノ・ファシズムしかし歴史家のジャニス・ミムラは、さらに深刻な見方をしていた──これは政府と産業界が積極的に結びつく新たな形態であり、国家が自由主義的な価値観を犠牲にして強硬な産業政策を主導することになるだろうと。第二次トランプ政権ではシリコンバレーのリーダーたちが政治のなかに巧妙に入り込みつつあり、それはミムラの主な研究対象のひとつである、政治権力を掌握して日本の第二次世界大戦への突入を主導したエリート官僚たちを想起させた。...
The Limits of A.I.-Generated Miyazaki

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

If asked to come up with a quintessentially “human” work of art, one could do worse than to name a film by Studio Ghibli. The Japanese animation studio, founded by the legendary eighty-four-year-old director Hayao Miyazaki, is known for its hand-drawn imagery, lushly organic color palettes, epic narratives, and evocation of both the emotional ambiguities of childhood and the twisting path to becoming an adult.
Resisting Trump 2.0 with Brain-Rot Memes

4 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Earlier this month, Tesla, the Elon Musk-led car company, staged a publicity stunt in front of the White House. A row of electric vehicles, including an angular stainless-steel Cybertruck, was arranged for Donald Trump to inspect before a fleet of news cameras. As far as photo opportunities go, it was absurd enough, turning the supposedly august Presidential residence into something resembling the set of a car-dealership commercial.
Donald Trump’s A.I. Propaganda

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Just before midnight on February 25th, President Donald Trump posted a thirty-three-second video to Truth Social, the right-wing social network he owns, featuring the tagline “GAZA 2025 WHATS NEXT?” The clip shows victims of war scrabbling in gray rubble and running from soldiers, until the color palette suddenly brightens and the people pass through an archway into the promised land of “Trump Gaza”: a grotesquely slick seaside metropolis of modernist beachfront mansions, hotels, and casinos...