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The obesity rate in the U.S. is continuing its downward trend. The news comes three years after obesity rates hit a record high. In 2022, almost four out of 10 (39.9%) of Americans met the threshold for the classification, however, the number first began to shrink in 2023. Now, the rate of obesity is now down to 37%, according to new data from Gallup. The new findings are based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults. And while the numbers don’t seem massively significant, the report found that those three percentage points add up to around 7.6 million Americans who no longer meet the criteria for being obese. According to the newly released data, the numbers coincide with a growing number of Americans who have begun relying on GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, for weight loss. “The percentage of adults who report taking this class of medicine specifically for weight loss has increased to 12.4%, compared with 5.8% in February 2024 when Gallup first measured it,” the report explains. The report also notes that far more women are taking the drugs than men (15.2% and 9.7%, respectively), which helps explain why women’s obesity rates have dropped off more abruptly. Likewise, the largest reduction came from 40 to 49-year-olds and 50 to 64-year-olds, which, uncoincidently, are also the groups who most use GLP-1s for weight loss. The news comes as reliance on GLP-1s is continuing to surge. On Thursday, Eli Lilly, the maker of weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro, topped estimates for the third quarter, as demand for weight loss drugs continues to escalate. Zepbound posted $3.59 billion in revenueup a hefty 184% from the year-earlier period. The impressive numbers come shortly after an experimental pill from Eli Lilly outperformed Novo Nordisks oral semaglutide. The pill, orforglipron, helped patients lose more weight and control their blood sugar better than Novo Nordisks Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy. “Lilly delivered another strong quarter, with 54% revenue growth year-over-year driven by continued demand for our incretin portfolio,” David A. Ricks, Lilly chair and CEO, said in an October 30 press release. “We advanced orforglipron through four additional Phase 3 trials, enabling global obesity submissions by year-end, and we achieved U.S. FDA approval of Inluriyo (imlunestrant)marking key progress across our pipeline.” And, as the market for weight loss drugs grows, drug companies are battling it out for a competitive edge. On Thursday, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, made an aggressive bid on U.S. obesity biotech firm Metsera in an effort to dominate the weight loss drug market. Novo Nordisk bid $8.5 billion, topping Pfizer’s $7.3 billion bid. Interestingly, while obesity rates have taken a major dive, diabetes diagnoses have actually gone upreaching a record high of 13.8%, per the recent data. “As diabetes is a lifetime disease, short-term reductions in the obesity rate would not be expected to curtail the percentage of Americans who have been diagnosed with it,” the research explains.
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E-Commerce
Generative AI ranges from gimmicky to powerful, depending on its context. But the biggest shortcoming is that whatever you make isnt really all that editable you typically have to juggle several apps to get the outcome you want. Now, a new update to Canva, called Ask @Canva, makes just about everything youre working on editable by AI with a tap and a request. Ask @Canva is built upon Canvas first foundational modelan AI model it trained in-house specifically for its own purposes. Instead of generating static designs, it produces new projects as full, editable design templates. That means when Canva uses AI to generate your slide deck or social post, all of the text and photos are discreetly editable with the same basic interface Canva has offered for years. [Image: Canva] Typography is pulled from its library to match the tone of your work. Images and illustrations are generated by default, but swappable with your own. At the core of all of Canvas UX is invisible AI arranging and rearranging your work with aesthetic balance. But now, Canva is putting generative AI within close reach on every element in your work. Think of Ask @Canva as a design intern, or perhaps save me! button, that you can request to redesign or rewrite any element on the pageand even critique your entire project. [Image: Canva] How Ask @Canva works The feature follows Canvas aggressive adoption of generative AI into its UX. In 2023, Canva was the first in its peer group to bring barebones generative AI into its app. Then in 2024, it introduced Magic Studio, a suite of AI tools that solved practical problems for users (like extending an image or creating a simple animation). Earlier this year, it introduced the Visual Suite 2.0its biggest front end redesign in 13 years, which basically consolidates a lot of the app and its varying templates within a single window, so you could completely rebuild your project, switching it from a slide deck to a website, all while remaining within your main canvas in the Canva app. With its new model, Canva is repositioning its app as a creative operating system that uses AI to bind all media together. All of Canvas just make it for me AI tools should improve alongside the update. There is one big difference, however, in terms of Canvas new approach to AI beyond mere improvements to the model: Now, when you select anything on a pagea block of text, an image, a background colora tooltip pops up with an option to Ask @Canva. Tap it, and you can simply ask the software to do whatever youd like it to do to the asset in plain languageas if youre talking to a colleague, but the colleague is a robot. [Image: Canva] Ask Canva is part of our commenting . . . system, and it now lets you interact with Canva like it’s a collaborator, explains Cameron Adams, cofounder and chief product officer at Canva. What makes Ask @Canva so powerful is that it understands both the element youre highlighting and its context within the greater project youre editing. So you might ask Canva to change an images illustration style to better match others on the page (a method traditionally known as style transfer). In a demo, Adams successfully asks the system to make a slice of pizza float in space. These AI edits all happen in situ. That said, you can also use Ask @Canva a step zoomed out, requesting its advice for how you should change your design. Im amused when Adams does this, and Ask @Canva compliments his use of a purple-blue gradient (which is so on-brand for Canva I cant tell if the AI understands its brand standards or if its algorithmic bias). But the AI also (astutely) calls out an unflattering contrast between the left and right sides of the page. It was the same critique I had waiting on my tongue. [Image: Canva] Building AI into every layer of Canva The human versus automated balance that Canva is working toward with AI has been interesting to track. You can now start any project by typing what you want into a Google Search-esque bar. Its AI will now ask you follow ups, tooabout the topic and tone of your projectso that its first draft of whatever you want to create is as close to your vision as possible. [Image: Canva] But Adams recognizes a lot of its customers still dont do that. They prefer to work from Canvas template library and just see a sample that resonates. With Ask @Canva, the company is likely appealing to these customers, too, by offering AI at a deeper layer of the project. Here, AI is not the tool used to start a project creatively from the top, but instead its entrenched deeply inside the interface to help solve a problem for which there may be no other ready tool. Every person is different, and it’s been the same [story] in software development for decades, says Adams. Yu’ve always needed to give people different approaches to the same problem, because some people are visual thinkers. Some people have no idea what they want on the page. For now, the great unifier of AI within Canva seems to be Ask @Canva: a tool hiding a click away for when everything else might fail. Yes, its another iteration of the prompt. But now, its not some grand orchestrator of your vision. Instead, its more like an emergency button available all the time, on every asset.
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping as “amazing” and “12” on a 10-point scale, but the agreement the two leaders reached appears to be no more than a fragile truce in a trade war with root causes still unresolved. The framework announced on Thursdaythat includes China resuming soybean purchases, suspending its rare earths export curbs for a year, and the U.S. lowering tariffs on China by 10%broadly rewinds ties to the status that existed before Trump’s “Liberation Day” offensive triggered tit-for-tat escalation. But the deal exposes the fundamental mismatch between what Washington wants and what Beijing is willing to offer. Absent from the talks were the big issues cited by Trump as he launched his tariffs in AprilChina’s industrial policies, manufacturing over-capacity, and its export-led growth model. “So what are we talking about? We are talking about de-escalation of the measures that both sides have taken since the start of the Trump administration in this kind of escalating trade war,” said Emily Kilcrease, director at the Center for a New American Security. The outcome underscores the robustness of Xi’s new approach to dealing with the U.S., which relies on a broad toolbox of measures like export controls, swiftly deployed in response to each move by the Trump administration. An official briefed on the deliberations said the Chinese had a realistic set of expectations for this encounterand those did not include a fundamental reset of two-way ties. They were nonetheless happy with Trump’s tone coming in and his framing of the meeting as a “G2”, said the official, who declined to be named or further identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media. China sees this as a stepping stone to a bigger meeting where they can stabilize the relationship, the official added. ‘World-class leaders’ Given the long-simmering tensions, the very fact that both leaders had a warm meetingand agreed to two follow-up visits next yearoffers rattled multinational corporations caught in the middle a much needed reprieve, say experts. Xi opened the talks, which took place ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, by saying that “China’s development and rejuvenation are not incompatible with President Trump’s goal of Making America Great Again’.” He added that he was willing to work with Trump to “lay a solid foundation for China-U.S. relations and create a favourable environment for the development of both nations.” Trump emerged from the encounter glowing, chit-chatting and leaning into Xi as both left the venue, later calling him the great leader of a great country, and saying that this is how two global superpowers should deal with one another. “When we have this limited time-frame, the deal and the deal-making structure both function as an engagement mechanism between the two countries, so they can address the issues properly and adjust their mutual interests down the road to make sure people keep talking to each other,” said Bo Zhengyuan, Shanghai-based partner at research consultancy Plenum. Trump said that tariffs on Chinese imports would be cut to 47% from around 57% by halving the rate of levies related to trade in fentanyl precursor chemicals to 10% from 20%. Xi will work “very hard to stop the flow” of the chemicals used for the production of the deadly opioid that is the leading cause of American overdose deaths, Trump said, acknowledging that the issue was complex. The tariff was reduced “because I believe they are really taking strong action,” he added. Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasised that Trump and Xi were world-class leaders in a Monday call with his U.S. counterpart Marco Rubio. Their long-term engagement and mutual respect have become the most valuable strategic asset in U.S.-China relations, he told his American counterpart, in unusually effusive language for a Chinese diplomat. ‘Difficult situation’ The deal buys both sides some breathing room: Trump gets a win before his planned visit to Beijing in April, Xi gets relief from elevated U.S. tariffs that have put pressure on Chinese manufacturers. But even this tactical detente is incomplete. China’s latest rare earths licensing curbs are delayed, not dismantled, but earlier restrictions on the critical minerals that have upended global trade remain, leaving U.S. factories facing ongoing uncertainty in sourcing critical materials. “I think that what we’ve seen this year has been a more or less total vindication of China’s strategy of never striking first but always striking back,” Joe Mazur, geopolitics analyst at Trivium China, a consultancy. “It’s very clear that rare earths is the primary piece of leverage, the ace in the hole that China is able to wield over the U.S.it doesn’t look like the U.S. has any comparable leverage or any way of breaking the stranglehold for the time being.” The agreement also highlights how dramatically the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies has deteriorated since Trump’s first term, when negotiators produced a comprehensive 96-page document covering intellectual property, banking, and agriculture. This time around, the talks were far less intensive and both sides only offered relatively brief readouts that mostly focused on holding back threats made in the run-up to the talks. Da Wei, the director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, warned that repeated escalations could exhaust Xi and Trump’s personal rapport. “If the escalation of tensions happens many times, probably the patience and trust between the two leaders at a personal level will run out,” he said. “Then we will have a very difficult situation.” Trevor Hunnicutt, Laurie Chen, and Mei Mei Chu, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shuttering of stores in North America, but it didnt identify specific locations or an exact figure. Working with limited information, news outlets made a number of different estimates at the time, ranging from around 100 closures to over 400. The number disclosed by Starbucks this week is above even many of the higher-end estimates. Moderators of the subreddit r/Starbucks, meanwhile, had created a crowdsourced Google Doc for confirmed closures. When reached by Fast Company for comment on store closure locations, a Starbucks representative said the company does not have that to share. The representative pointed to a September blog post from CEO Brian Niccols and said, The best place for up-to-date hours of operation for our coffeehouses in the Starbucks app. All part of the plan The significant number of store closures came as part of the companys Back to Starbucks restructuring plan, which Niccols has been championing as key to growing the coffee chain’s foot traffic. In Julys third-quarter earnings report, Starbucks said that the plan focuses on exceptional service, simplified routines, and deeper customer connections. For Starbucks, that means expanding the assistant manager role across U.S. stores, hiring 90% of retail workers internally, and a lot more seating. Yes, Starbucks wants to move away from machines and mobile orders to create a warm, inviting in-store experience. According to Niccol, its working. Were a year into our Back to Starbucks strategy, and its clear that our turnaround is taking hold, he said in a statement. Our return to global comp growth and the momentum were building give me confidence were on the right path to deliver the very best of Starbucks for our customers, partners and shareholders. U.S. stores fell 2% on comparable sales year-over-year (YOY) in quarter three, while this quarter saw comparable sales remain the same YOY. Shares of Starbucks Corporation (Nasdaq: SBUX) were up around 1.17% in early trading on Thursday. The stock is down roughly 7.62% year to date.
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E-Commerce
For the past 30 years, the web browser has been the primary way humans navigate the internet. It makes sense, then, that as artificial intelligence becomes more humanlike in its capabilities, it would use the same tool. That’s basically the idea behind AI-powered browsers, which are definitely having an “it” moment now that OpenAI has launched Atlas, its own web browser that incorporates ChatGPT as an ever-present helper. Atlas follows Perplexity’s Comet, which arrived in the summer to quickly capture the imagination of what an AI browser could do. In both cases, the user can, at any time, call up an AI assistant (aka agent), able to perform multistep taskssuch as navigating to a grocery retailer and filling an online shopping cart with ingredients for a recipefrom a simple command. Atlas vs. Comet: Who has the smarter browser? {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} Who has the better experience? Based on features, the clear winner is Comet, which boasts Chrome-like functionality, supporting multiple user profiles, extensions, and more buttons for specific, fast AI-powered actions, such as instant summarization of web pages. However, because ChatGPT is the go-to AI that over 800 million people now use, that context represents a huge advantage. When you call up the chatbot in Atlas, you can simply point to the relevant conversation, plus it will remember aspects of your browsing experience to better help you. The Atlas-vs.-Comet fight may be moot, though, since Google Chrome is the incumbent browser for most people (it has 74% market share worldwide), and it has AI features, too. Chrome’s large user base, however, also means Google can’t move as fast: Since the whole idea of AI agents taking control of your browser to perform tasks is fraught with security concerns, Google’s Gemini assistant in Chrome is relatively feeble; if you ask it to, say, shop for you on Amazon, it’ll give you the digital equivalent of a shrug. So Chrome’s continued dominance in the AI era isn’t assured. But the question of who will win the AI browser war doesn’t matter so much as whether AI browsing will take off at all. I’ve been using Comet heavily for a few months, and although I find the idea of an agent doing all my tedious internet tasks compelling, I’ve found the actual set of things it can do to be quite narrow. Generally, the task needs to be something that doesn’t require a lot of specialized context (since the AI can’t read your mind) or complex prompting (since spending several minutes crafting a prompt is time you could use to just do the task yourself). Nonetheless, OpenAI imagines a future where most of the activity online is done via AI agents in browsers like Atlas. In its announcement, it says, “This launch marks a step toward a future where most web use happens through agentic systemswhere you can delegate the routine and stay focused on what matters most.” OpenAI could be right. Those narrow use cases for agentic browsing could be expanded greatly with more elegant and comprehensive merging of personal context and the browsing experience. If the agent understands the entire background of what you’re doingthe whyand gets better at navigating the web (as it inevitably will), AI browsing might even burst through to the mainstream. What agentic browsing means for publishers If that happens, it would have huge implications for the media. Because not only will people get a lot of their information through the lens of their preferred AI agent, the tasks performed on their behalf will be informed by content seen through that same lens. For example, an agent told to search for a “stylish suit” would need to essentially Google what’s in style, then use that information to complete the task. No human eyeballs ever look at the content it uses to research what’s in style, but getting the right information is a crucial part of the agent performing the task well. How agents access that information, and what they do with it, are important questions to answer in building the framework of how all this works. The whole area of how AI systems access information is of course hotly contested, generating several lawsuits, but there is some consensus. OpenAI made clear in the launch announcement that it would not use Atlas as a “backdoor” to train on content that was otherwise blocked from its training bot. However, access for the agent itself is controversial. AI companies maintain that agents are proxies for users, and should, in many cases, be allowed to bypass bot controls to access content and services that a human could access. Others don’t see it that waythat because an agent is a robot, with no human attention to cater to, it should not be treated as human, and sites should have the option to block agents specifically. This is essentially the core of what Perplexity and Cloudflare were arguing about this summer. With the release of Atlas, AI browsing can only accelerate, and answering these questions will become more urgent. Media strategy depends on knowing who your audience is, understanding how they access your content, and having reliable ways of monetizing that behavior. Right now none of those components are well defined for a future where the primary users of the internet are browser agents. It’s not just a question of whether sites should be able to block agents specifically. That’s just a building block in creating a system where an agent can work autonomously to either pay or register to access certain content, or prove it has a license to do so. For example, if a subscriber to Fast Company asks their agent to do a task, and in the course of that task needs information the publication can provide, access should be seamless and, importantly, measurable. But if you don’t have a subscription, your agent will be blocked and nee to go elsewhereregardless of whether the actual article is paywalled for humans. The real power of this idea is in the aggregate, where licensing deals carry over to users of the AI. In the case of OpenAI, which has licensed content from several media companies, that could theoretically carry over to its agents. And since agent activity is measurable, there could theoretically be a way for publications to reach those AI users and turn them into more engaged audience members. It could all be done anonymously, through the AI provider, based on user activity. When your audience isnt human It’s questionable whether most web browsing in the future will be done by bots, but regardless of the proportion, it seems likely that agentic activity on the web will expand significantly, as security concerns are slowly resolved. That means publishers will need to adapt to a world where bots acting on behalf of users become a big part of their audience, and deciding what those agents see and how much they will pay will be critical. The fundamental question in front of us now, however, is figuring out who decides: the people making the content or the people making the agents. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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