This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how Americans are spending more money on hobbies despite economic pressure. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday (today!), for consideration by your Cheddar peers. But first? News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.22% )   $DJI ( ▼ 0.66% )   $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$OPEAZZX ( ▼ 0.22% )   $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.08% )   $DIS ( ▲ 0.69% )   $CMCSA ( ▼ 1.37% )   $CBS ( 0.0% )   $FOX ( ▲ 0.72% )   $AMZN ( ▲ 1.42% )

OpenAI Invisibly Watermarks Text in EU

No wonder those French students are rioting. (Er, that isn’t why they’re rioting, Matt — Ed.) To satisfy the EU AI Act’s transparency rules, OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▼ 0.22% ) is rolling out an “invisible text watermark” across the EU for its ChatGPT and Codex models. Instead of slapping a visible stamp on your text, the system uses a method called “textGrain” to subtly shape word choices using a secret key to sort next-word predictions. Readers cannot see the pattern, but an AI detector can — and the signal even travels with the text when copied and pasted. L’horreur!

Of course, every digital lock invites a clever workaround. OpenAI’s tests revealed that replacing just 10% of words with synonyms tanked the detection rate from roughly 92% to 66%. Short passages, math answers, and translated text are also notoriously hard to spot. Acknowledging these hurdles, OpenAI said, “These limitations contribute to our decision to provide initial detector access only to approved researchers and expert organizations.”

Thank the Lord.

Furthermore, OpenAI acknowledged that watermarks “can indicate that an OpenAI system generated or processed part of a passage, but not how much human judgment, editing, or creativity went into it.”

Exactly. Plus, it’s an EU-only rollout. Sucks to be French! Ha ha! And it comes two months after Anthropic began watermarking Claude globally. That move triggered backlash from users who argued they had supplied “the instructions, context, decisions” while Claude was merely “the tool.” OpenAI had previously held back on text watermarking over fears users would flee to un-watermarked rivals. But for now, if you want your AI essay to stay under the radar in Europe, just…keep a thesaurus handy!

Quote of the Day

ChatGPT Cracked 300 More Math Problems

Just a month after OpenAI's internal AI model cracked a notoriously difficult Millennium Prize Problem, the lab has dropped 372 groups of results that included AI solutions to more than 300 math problems across number theory and algebraic geometry.

The academic world is unhappy. Reacting to a proof regarding the well-known “quasi-Riemann hypothesis,” Alex Kontorovich, a distinguished math professor at Rutgers University, wrote on X, “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” Meanwhile, even a rival researcher at Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.08% ) called the release “obviously the most significant moment in mathematical history.”

Mathematicians now feel like collateral damage in a trillion-dollar corporate arms race. Dozens of Fields Medal winners signed a furious open letter warning that the tech industry's rush “threatened to undermine the very purpose of math,” explicitly pleading, “We ask them to stop testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models.”

OpenAI’s response to the academic revolt was essentially a polite corporate brush-off. The lab countered, “It is important to continue to evaluate our internal frontier models on mathematics and other sciences, so we can accelerate developing the tools to advance those fields.”

In other words, mathematicians freaking out is good publicity before the company floats.

The Emmys Move to Prime Video for $15M

For the first time since 1949, television’s biggest night is cutting the cord. The Television Academy has officially abandoned its 31-year-old “wheel deal” — the annual broadcast rotation among ABC $DIS ( ▲ 0.69% ) , NBC $CMCSA ( ▼ 1.37% ) , CBS $CBS ( 0.0% ) , and Fox — to sign an exclusive six-year global partnership with Amazon’s Prime Video $AMZN ( ▲ 1.42% ) , reportedly worth around $15 million annually.

The move marks a seismic shift for legacy networks, who spent decades passing hosting duties around like a hot potato. TV Academy chairman Cris Abrego defended ditching linear television: “The wheel deal was incredibly successful for the Academy and the Emmys for a long time.… But as we approached the end, I felt strongly that it shouldn’t just default to the way it always had been done,” he told Variety. Abrego also pointed to the annual headache of resetting creative plans and sponsor relationships: “The continuity is difficult when you’re starting new every year.… We wanted a real kind of commitment and investment, to build and to evolve.”

Plus there was that fat Amazon check waiting, of course. And for Amazon, placing Hollywood’s crown jewel in front of its streaming portal is a massive flex. Under the deal, the telecast will stream free without a paywall across more than 240 countries and territories. Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, called it “a fair deal” and welcomed rival platforms: “We want to have Netflix’s $NFLX ( ▲ 1.47% )  biggest stars, and we want to have Disney’s, and we want to have everybody else’s as well,” he said. And for viewers terrified that unconstrained streaming runtimes might create an endless marathon, Hopkins offered reassuring mercy: “I think a three-hour award show is plenty.” Us too.

Song of the Day: Kofi Stone, ‘Sicily’

"Sicily" is a highly praised, standout track from Birmingham rapper Kofi Stone's fourth studio album, The Last Flower to Bloom, which dropped this moth. The song features a guest appearance by R&B sing