- In today’s CEO Daily: How leaders are contending with AI slop.
- The big leadership story: Trump’s salary freeze prompts worries about worker retention.
- The markets: Mixed globally amid more fighting between the U.S. and Iran.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. What’s your take on AI slop? I now get multiple AI-generated PR pitches every day. The format is comically uniform, from the greeting to the bullet-point topics, and I think it’s a disservice to the person being pitched. We all crave that human touch. More than 1 million people have clicked LinkedIn’s “seems like AI slop” button, and Graphite reports that AI now generates more online articles than humans do.
The explosion of AI-written content is sparking debates over how to handle op-eds like the one that investor Stan Druckenmiller wrote for the Wall Street Journal using AI, which sparked a response from his editor, and much debate about what’s appropriate. (My take, with strong caveats, is that editors are to blame if a piece feels manufactured, predictable, and devoid of personality. I also debated the topic yesterday on BBC’s The Media Show.)
I’ve been asking people how AI is shaping what they consume and create. At a party for David Booth’s terrific book Stay Calm earlier this week, a prominent academic told me he’s now using AI up to 10 hours every day, admitting he’s both obsessed and worried about what it can do.
But Booth, a pioneer of index investing and founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, is a fine example of what doesn’t change. His book tells a story that only he can tell—how he went from a shoe salesman in Kansas to a $1 trillion asset manager—and it synthesizes a philosophy of investing that he’s discussed and shared for decades.
Did he use a ghostwriter or AI? If he did, you wouldn’t know it.
What’s emerging from my conversations:
AI leaves leaders craving a good read. CEOs tell me they’re reading fewer books and reports because of AI, and that worries them. They’re not alone. About 40% of Americans didn’t read a book last year. One CEO in financial services told me that they’re now trying to read more the old-fashioned way. “I’m paid to think,” they told me, “and I realized I’m losing the nuance and originality of an argument when I read these summaries. A slower read, a deeper read, gives you more time to digest and come to your own conclusions.”
We value human creativity. I spoke yesterday with Andy Hunter, CEO of Bookshop.org, which acts as an e-commerce platform for 90% of the country’s 3,400+ independent booksellers—a category that’s booming, by the way. He uses AI for code review but not customer recommendations. He worries less about slop than fraud, as he’s seeing a lot of AI-generated books created on the spot to capitalize on search trends. “There’s a lot of garbage content being created to trick people into buying it; I don’t think Amazon is doing a good enough job of protecting their customers from that,” he told me. “We want human beings to recommend books to other human beings. That’s what independent bookstores do. The solution to AI slop is human curation, human creation.”
When everyone’s better, it’s hard to be the best. The baseline for content and communication is now around B+. Anyone can tell a coherent story. But having the tools to create a Hollywood movie on an iPhone doesn’t make you a great director any more than the ability to spit out a column makes you a great thought leader. AI expands the mushy middle, where nobody wants to be. As David Meadvin, CEO of One Strategy Group, puts it: “I think the right question to ask here is whether AI is making you a little bit more ordinary.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
Trump’s pay freeze
President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget proposal would deny most federal employees a raise next year, prompting warnings that the move could worsen retention problems and hurt agency productivity. More than 271,000 federal employees have left the government since the administration began.
Tim Cook stays close to Apple
Tim Cook became Apple’s executive chair after John Ternus succeeded him as CEO, with a $2 million annual salary and a $45 million target-value equity award. Apple says Cook will continue to work with policymakers.
The impact of food recalls
The FDA issued 26 food recall notices in August, and 94% of Americans say the frequency of recalls concerns them. More than two-thirds say a recall has made them steer clear of an entire food category.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are up 0.04% this morning. The last session closed up 0.46%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.14% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.13% in early trading. The Nikkei 225 was down 0.17%. South Korea’s KOSPI was up 0.26%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.10%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.39%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.17%. Bitcoin is up at $78k.
Around the watercooler
The Trump Administration says more oil exited the Middle East this week than before the Iran war, but the data says otherwise by Jordan Blum
Big tech is investing millions in data centers and saving a quick tax buck while doing it—leaving some states collecting revenue loss by Joshua Hong
Mamdani to New York City kids: No AI until high school by Catherina Gioino
Despite being a multimillionaire, Suze Orman still cooks at home whenever possible—and says eating out is one of the biggest wastes of money by Preston Fore
New LA Angels owner Stan Kroenke is quietly America’s largest private landowner, boasting 2.7 million acres and besting Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos by Sasha Rogelberg
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.