WIRED Roundup: Protest Frogs, Google Bedbugs, AI Psychosis

0:00Louise Matsakis:Every company says AI will make employees more productive, but most employees are still stuck waiting on IT. Waiting for app access, waiting for password resets, waiting for someone to fix a laptop issue so they can get back to work. That operational drag adds up fast, and IT teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up. Servo was built to automate that work. You describe what you want automated in plain English, and Servo builds it for you. No complicated workflow builders, no consultants, just faster support and fewer tickets slowing everyone down. Serval enables IT teams to build automations using plain English instead of drag-and-drop workflow builders.

0:34Louise Matsakis:The platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so IT can focus on strategic work instead of constant firefighting. Serval positions IT as the AI-powered operational backbone of the company, not just a support function. The company guarantees customers can automate 50 % of IT tickets and backs it up with a free 4-week pilot. Learn more or start a free 4-week pilot at serval.com slash uncanny. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash uncanny. Serval dot com slash uncanny. This show is supported by OutShift, Cisco's incubation engine. Today's AI agents operate in silos, limiting their true potential.

1:16Louise Matsakis:We've been focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach. To reach superintelligence together, we need to do more. We need to scale out. And we actually have a blueprint from 70 ,000 years ago. Humans didn't just get smarter individually. The cognitive revolution transformed society because we began sharing knowledge, goals, and innovation. Agents are now at that same inflection point. They can connect, but they can't think together. That's why Outshift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, transforming AI from isolated systems into orchestrated superintelligence.

1:54Louise Matsakis:By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, Outshift by Cisco is enabling agents and humans to share intent, context, and reasoning. The cognitive evolution for agents is here. Explore the Internet of Cognition at outshift.com.

2:09Zoë Schaeffer:That's outshift.com. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's Director of Business and Industry. Today on the show, we're bringing you five stories that you need to know about this week. And later, we'll dive into our main story about how several people have filed complaints to the FTC claiming OpenAI's ChatGBT led them or people they love into supposed AI psychosis. I'm joined today by Wired's Senior Business Editor, Louise Matsakis. Louise, welcome to Uncanny Valley. Hi, Louise. It's great to be here.

2:49Zoë Schaeffer:So, Louise, our first story this week is actually one that we worked on together. part of our ongoing collaboration with Model Behavior. And it's all about how this holiday season, more shoppers are expected to use chatbots to figure out what to buy. I'm curious, before we dive into this, how you decide your own holiday shopping, Louise, especially if you have absolutely no clue what to get someone.

3:12Louise Matsakis:I am definitely annoying in the sense that I really pride myself on my gift giving. But, you know, we all have people in our life who are, despite all of that difficult to shop for. So yeah, I definitely, you know, will look around the internet for like, you know, 10 best things to buy your father-in-law this holiday or whatever.

3:31Zoë Schaeffer:Yes. Okay, so this year, people are going to be following a little bit different of a trend. According to a recent shopping report from Adobe, retailers could see up to a 520 % increase in traffic from chatbots and AI search engines compared to 2024. AI giants like OpenAI are already trying to capitalize on this trend. Last week, OpenAI announced a major partnership with Walmart that will allow people to buy goods directly within the chat window. We know this is a big focus for them. So as people start relying on chatbots to discover new products, retailers are having to rethink their approach to online marketing.

4:10Zoë Schaeffer:For decades, the focus was on SEO, search engine optimization, which is this dark magic that's used to basically increase online traffic, primarily through Google. Now it looks like we're entering the era of GEO or generative engine optimization.

4:28Louise Matsakis:I think that GEO in many ways is not really a totally new invention. It's kind of like the next iteration of SEO. You know, and a lot of the consultants who are working in the GEO industry definitely came from the world of SEO. And a big reason that I'm confident that this is the case is that at least for now, we know that these chatbots are often using search engines to surface content, right? So they're using the same types of algorithms to surf the web that Google does or Bing or, you know, whatever, DuckDuckGo. Clearly, some of the same rules would apply. And also, people are the same. I do think that the way that we interact with chatbots is significantly different from the way that we interacted with search engines.

5:12Louise Matsakis:But the underlying questions we have are pretty similar, right? Like, why is my boyfriend not texting me back? What's this weird rash? What do I get for my father-in-law for Christmas? These questions are the same. And so, like, therefore, kind of the types of content that brands are trying to, you know, get into those answers remains, like, you know, largely the same.

5:33Zoë Schaeffer:Right, exactly. But you can imagine from a retailer's perspective, this is kind of scary because even dealing with Google was a huge headache for people. Every time Google would change the algorithm, the industry would kind of be in upheaval for a little while as they tried to like understand what Google wanted to see and like tailor their content accordingly. So now people are talking to chatbots and they're like, oh my gosh, is all of the work that I put into all of these different webpages for not? Like, do I need to recalibrate it for this new world? We actually spoke with Emory Marcus, who's the CEO of a GEO firm called Brandlight.

6:07Zoë Schaeffer:And he estimated that there used to be about a 70 % overlap between the top Google links and the sources cited by AI tools like ChatGPT. But now he says the correlation has fallen below 20%. So Louise, if I'm a small business owner of some sort, how am I tailoring my content? What am I doing different in this new world?

6:27Louise Matsakis:I think you probably have a lot more explanations for like how the product could be used. So like, you know, let's just say, I don't know, we're selling soap. You might have a long like bulleted list of different ways that the soap could be used. It's good for bubble baths. It has these like acne fighting properties or whatever it is. And I think you would like have all of that spelled out. Whereas before you might focus more on the brand identity of your website and like focus on like, how do you want to sort of like phrase things? Because you're anticipating people coming to the website. You're not anticipating sort of like this third party in the middle where like people are asking the chatbot questions.

7:05Zoë Schaeffer:Yeah, exactly. It did give me a little hope because I feel like we were like so in the era of you look up a recipe and you have to read through a 5 ,000 word blog on this person's life story before you actually get to the recipe. And I'm like, like a chatbot, I just want the bulleted list of ingredients. maybe that's where we're headed. Moving on to our next story, our colleagues Lauren Good and McKenna Kelly reported on how the FTC has taken down several blog posts about AI that were published during Lena Kahn's tenure. If you're familiar with Lena Kahn, she's the former chair of the FTC and her pro-regulation positions toward the tech industry, you can already imagine why this could be concerning.

7:43Zoë Schaeffer:One of the blog posts that was taken down was about open-weight AI models, which is basically like models that are released publicly, which allows anyone to like inspect, modify, or reuse. The post ended up being rerouted to the FTC's Office of Technology. Another blog post titled, Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI, which was authored by two FTC technologists, had the same fate. And yet another post about consumer risks associated with AI products now leads to an error screen saying just, page not found.

8:17Louise Matsakis:Yeah, I mean, this is just really concerning, I think, for a number of reasons. The first is just that it's important for, like, historical reasons, for, like, national reasons to not lose this information. It's totally normal for different administrations to have different opinions, but it's not normal, or at least it hasn't been in this country, for blog posts like this to just disappear. And in this case, it's particularly strange because, you know, one of these posts was about, as you mentioned, Lena Kahn's support for open weight models and for open source in general. And this is something that members of the Trump administration have also agreed with.

8:57Louise Matsakis:I think in this case, Lena Kahn is on the same side with people like David Sachs, who's the AI and crypto czar of the Trump administration. So that's what's like kind of mysterious and confusing here is like if these are things that ostensibly the Trump administration also agrees with, like why erase them? Is it about erasing Lena Kahn's legacy? Is it about wanting to get rid of any mention of like things that happened during the Biden administration? it's sort of like difficult to parse the logic. And I think that it leaves businesses and tech companies kind of confused about where the administration stands.

9:35Louise Matsakis:The point of these blog posts is like, yeah, to like inform the public, but they also serve as like regulatory and business guidance for companies to understand, like we get that maybe a law has not been passed about this or like maybe it's like not clear if this practice is illegal, but it seems like it could be, right? Or it seems like this is the way that this administration is interpreting the law. And so otherwise, you're kind of just left in the dark.

10:01Zoë Schaeffer:It's worth pointing out that this also isn't the first time that the FTC under the Trump administration has removed posts related to AI regulation. Earlier this year, the FTC removed about 300 posts related to AI, consumer protection, and the agency's lawsuits against tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft. Let's switch gears a little bit. I promise this is more of a fun one. So last Saturday, around 7 million people filled American cities for the latest No Kings protest, which is a series of nationwide protests criticizing what participants see as authoritarian measures by the Trump administration.

10:37Zoë Schaeffer:And if you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed that there were quite a bit of people wearing frog costumes.

10:43Louise Matsakis:Yeah, I mean, these frogs rule. And I actually can tell you that this is not the first time I've seen these frogs. So this specific frog costume, I actually first saw in China because people were wearing them in like viral TikToks in China. And a lot of times they were like playing really loud cymbals and like doing really intense breakdancing, like in like city centers and stuff.

11:05Zoë Schaeffer:You know, one thing about Louise is she will always find the China angle and we love that for her. There really is fun quite a lot of the time. But it turns out there's actually kind of a story here. There's lore. Our colleague, Angela Watercutter, did a deep dive into what's behind the frogs and political protests. First, she pointed out the obvious. Putting on costumes helps protesters avoid surveillance. And it also helps them counter the narrative that protesters are like violent extremists, as the Trump administration has been describing them. Angela spoke with Brooks Brown, one of the initiators of this movement, called Operation inflation.

11:41Zoë Schaeffer:They've been giving out free inflatable costumes. And he told her that it's also less likely that someone watching will say maybe the frog deserved it if they get pepper sprayed or something. So there's like real strategy here.

11:53Louise Matsakis:Yeah, I can definitely see how it's harder to sell the narrative that these protesters are dangerous when they're wearing a bunch of inflatable frog costumes. And it's really interesting because, you know, about a decade ago, a frog meant something completely different. Remember Pepe the frog back in like 2015 or so? It was a far-right symbol. And in 2019, during the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, they also adopted Pepe the Frog, but it meant something different in that context as well. So, you know, it seems like the frog is highly adaptable.

12:23Zoë Schaeffer:Yeah, the frog has had many, many lives. And it seems like it's come full circle. Last weekend, images circulated on Blue Sky of the inflatable frog punching Pepe in the face. So it's not just online memes, though. These costumes have made it all the way to the courts. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit lifted the block that barred Trump's National Guard deployment in Portland. Susan Graber, the dissenting judge, sided with the frogs and said, quote, given Portland protesters' well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits and inflatable frog costumes when expressing their disagreement with the methods deployed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority's ruling, which accepts the government's characterization of Portland as a war zone, as absurd.

13:06Zoë Schaeffer:One more quick story before we go to break. If you live in New York City, this tale might be unfortunately familiar. This week, I got word that Google employees working at one of the company's New York campuses should stay home because of a bed bug outbreak in the office.

13:24Louise Matsakis:Oh, God, you would not see me in the office for weeks if there was a bed bug infestation. How did they find out about this?

13:32Zoë Schaeffer:So basically, they received this email on Sunday saying that exterminators had arrived at the scene with sniffer dogs and, quote, found credible evidence of their presence, there being the bedbugs. Sources tell Wired that Google's offices in New York are home to a number of large stuffed animals. And there was definitely a rumor going around among employees that these stuffed animals were implicated in the outbreak. We were not able to verify this information before we published. But in any case, the company told employees as early as Monday morning that they could come back to the office. And people like you, Louise, were really not happy about this.

14:11Zoë Schaeffer:They were like, I'm not sure that it's totally clean here. Thus why they were in our inboxes wanting to chat.

14:18Louise Matsakis:Can I just say that if you have photos or a description of said large stuffed animals, please get in touch with me and Zoe. Thank you.

14:28Zoë Schaeffer:Yes, this is a cry for help. I thought the best part of this is when I gave Louise my draft, she was like, wait, this has happened before and pulled up like a 2010 article about a bed bug outbreak at the Google offices in New York.

14:41Louise Matsakis:Yes, this is not the first time, which is heartbreaking.

14:46Zoë Schaeffer:Coming up after the break, we dive into why some people have been submitting complaints to the FTC about CHI-GPT in their minds leading them to AI psychosis. Stay with us.

15:14Louise Matsakis:Shortwave spends each episode answering one big one, like, why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? And how can trash be good for the environment? Science isn't just for the PhDs of the world. It's for everyone, including those of us who didn't realize we love science. In under 15 minutes, Shortwave follows a question wherever it leads and brings you along for the ride. It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's surprising, playful, and full of wonder. News podcasts are great, but sometimes you want to experience the world in a different way. Shortwave gets you out of your head and in touch with the world around you.

15:54Louise Matsakis:Personally, I loved hearing about Janet Jones, horse trainer and neuroscientist, teach me about horse and human relationships throughout history. Follow NPR's Shortwave podcast and exercise your right to wonder. There's a reason millions of people start their day with Morning Brew Daily. Each morning, we break down the biggest news in business from the latest tech headlines to why nobody can afford a house right now. All in a format that fits seamlessly into your day. You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Neil Freiman.

16:27Louise Matsakis:And we're ready to show you that business news doesn't have to be boring. So join us on Morning Brew Daily, available wherever you get your podcasts.

16:37Zoë Schaeffer:Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer. I'm joined today by Wired's Louise Matsakis. Let's dive into our main story this week. The Federal Trade Commission has received 200 complaints mentioning OpenAI's ChatGPT between November 2022 when it launched and August 2025. Most people had normal complaints. They couldn't figure out how to cancel their subscription or they were frustrated by unsatisfactory or inaccurate answers by the chatbot. But among these complaints, our colleague Carolyn Haskins found that several people attributed delusions, paranoia, and spiritual crisis to the chatbot.

17:16Zoë Schaeffer:One woman from Salt Lake City called the FTC back in March to report that ChatGPT had been advising her son to not take his prescribed medication and telling him his parents were dangerous. Another complaint was from someone who claimed that after 18 days of using ChatGPT, OpenAI had stolen their, quote, soul print to create a software update that had been designed to turn this particular person against themselves. They said, quote, I'm struggling. Please help me. I feel very alone. There are a bunch of other examples, but I'm curious to talk to you about this because, Louise, I know that AI psychosis is something that you have been doing a lot of research on specifically.

17:54Louise Matsakis:Yeah, I think it's important to sort of unpack, like, what do we mean by AI psychosis. What's interesting and sort of noteworthy to me about chatbots is not that like they're causing people to experience delusions, but they're actually encouraging the delusions. And that's sort of the issue is that it's this interaction where it's validating people saying like, yeah, the paranoia you're experiencing is totally valid. Or like, you know, would you like me to like unpack why it's like definitely the case that your friends and families are conspiring against you, right? Like the problem is that it's interactive and it can sort of encourage people to spiral further.