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Variant, a generative design tool that promises endless UI exploration, recently introduced a feature most creative people and designers have used for decades: the eyedropper. In Variant, the tool picks vibes: It lets you click on one AI-generated interface and inject its aesthetic DNAtypography, spatial relationships, and color palettesinto another. After so much hype around vibecoding and its text-based imprecision, seeing a familiar, direct manipulation tool applied to generative AI feels great. The new AI modality takes a nice step to close the gap between the impenetrable ways of large language model black boxes and the tools designers actually use with their eyes and hands. Adopting a universally understood tool to control AI in any way other than words is exactly the kind of innovation the sector needs now. Its just too bad that Variant itself is the vessel for it. The tools underlying AI engine suffers from a distinct lack of differentiation. Everything it makes looks flat and same-y, so the new style absorb-and-drop tool is not really that useful. Yes, the transformed UI changes, but the results already looked very similar anyway (except for the color palettes). That said, the implementation is cute. When you click on a previously generated UI, the eyedropper animates the design as it is sucking its soul. You then move the eyedropper, click on another generated UI, and the new style spills over it, rearranging it to match the source. Its a satisfying bit of UI theater, an illusion broken by the fact that you have to wait a little to see the results, as the AI works it all out. The problem is the little variance in Variant. You cant eyedrop a bitmap image or a Figma project and tell the AI, make this new app UI look like this. Currently, Variants eyedropper feels like trying to paint in Photoshop when your palette only contains five shades of beige. A for effort Thats too bad, considering the eyedropper is one of the most resilient and powerful metaphors in computing history. The concept dates back to SuperPaint in 1973, which introduced the ability to sample hue values from a digital canvas. While MacPaint popularized digital painting tools in 1984, it was Adobe Photoshop 1.0 in 1990 that locked the eyedropper icon as the standard for color sampling. Then, in 1996, Adobe Illustrator 6.0 evolved the tool into a style thief. It allowed designers to absorb entire sets of attributesstroke weights, fill patterns, and effectsand inject them into other objects. Now Variant is effectively trying to take this to its UI design arsenal. The difference is that Adobes tools offered precision. You knew exactly what you were getting. With Variant, you are making a visual suggestion to a probabilistic engine and hoping for the best. But it is a good change that highlights why we need more tools like this eyedropper and fewer text prompts. Unlike the latest generation of multi-modal video generative AIs, the lack of precision in vibecoding tools is unnerving to me. It reminds me of an exercise I did in communication design class, back in college: A professor made us play a game where one student built a shape with Tangram pieces and had to verbally describe to a partner how to reproduce it with another Tangram set. It was impossible to match it. We are humans, orders of magnitude better semantic engines than any AI, and even we fail at describing visuals with words. We need interfaces that allow for direct, exact manipulation, not just crossing fingers and hoping for the best. Variants eyedropper shows us the way. Generative AI tool makers, more of this, please. Stop forcing designers to talk to the machine, and let us show what we want. We made a tool that lets you absorb the vibe of anything you point it at and apply it to your designsIt's absurd and it just worksStyle Dropper, now available in @variantui pic.twitter.com/B3eXDntYtw— Ben South (@bnj) February 10, 2026
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When it comes to EVs, a bigger battery isnt always better. Ford Motor Company is making that bet as part of its effort to manufacture a new suite of more affordable electric vehiclesbeginning with a $30,000-starting-price mid-size electric truck set to launch in 2027. To get more out of a smaller battery, Ford has had to reimagine every step of its manufacturing process. It has scrapped the typical assembly line process in favor of what the automaker calls its Ford Universal EV Platform, and simplified every part of its EV, from the miles of wiring inside the electric system to the number of parts that make up its frame. And its had to rethink the battery itself, to make it both more efficient and less expensive to produce. Ford credits many of those innovations to the team from Auto Motive Power, an EV charging startup Ford acquired back in 2023. [Photo: Ford] Ford Bounties to increase efficiency Batteries are a massive challenge to designing affordable, efficient EVs. The battery makes up at least 25% of an EVs total weight and around 40% of its total cost. In recent years, EV batteries have kept getting bigger. A bigger battery can add miles to an EVs range, but that also means adding more weight, which makes an EV less efficient, and potentially more difficult to handle. It also means more production costs, which could make that EV more expensive. To make more affordable EVs, then, Ford has rethought every part of its EV in service of that battery. Every engineer, whether working on the vehicles aerodynamics or its interior ergonomics, uses metrics that Ford calls bounties to weigh design tradeoffs in terms of how they affect the vehicles range and battery costs. Alan Clarke [Photo: Ford] That has led to a system-level optimization that the team has done to turn over every rock to find dollars of cost and watts of efficiency, says Alan Clarke, executive director of Fords Advanced EV Development department. Ford removed 4,000 feet of wiring from its Universal EV Platform, for example, shaving off 22 pounds compared to the wiring used in Fords first-gen electric SUV. While the Ford Maverick has 146 structural parts in its frame, Fords forthcoming midsized EV will have just two parts, thanks to a lighter and simpler “unicasting” process. [Photo: Ford] A more efficient battery Besides the design tradeoffs it made, Ford also redesigned its battery to make it both smaller and more efficient. That can translate to a better range and charging experience for customers, too. The pipe of electrons coming out of the wall is always the same for every customer, Clarke says. But how many miles that translates into is directly defined by efficiency of the power electronics and efficiency of the vehicle. [Photo: Ford] In its forthcoming midsized EV, Ford will use lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, batteries. With no nickel or cobalt, these batterieswhich are common in Chinese EVsuse less expensive chemical ingredients than lithium ion and other battery types. How efficient an EV battery is depends largely on its software, and thats where the team from Auto Motive Power comes in. An EV battery pack is composed of multiple cells, and “the performance of that battery pack is limited by your worst cell,” Clarke explains. Battery cells are sensitive to temperature, voltage, and other conditions around them. “You want to buy [an EV] from whatever company understands their batteries the best, thermally manages them the best from a software standpoint, can measure where they are and balance them and charge them at the rates that don’t deteriorate them,” he adds. The E-box is a single module that controls power distribution, battery management, and provides AC power back to your home during an outage. [Photo: Ford] Algorithms can monitor a batterys voltage, temperature, and regenerative braking in order to maximize the vehicles energy use. Software controls how an EV takes energy out of its battery and puts it into the vehicle’s drive unit. And it also allows the automaker to optimize a battery in real time, responding to the drivers behaviors and real-world data to reduce battery degradation and protect its lifespan. Each customer has different ways of utilizing batteries, explains Anil Paryani, formerly the CEO of Auto Motive Power and now an executive director of engineering at Ford. In Arizona, they might have different heat challenges . . . so we have user-optimized controls to minimize those trade offs, he says. Sometimes customers just have different charging behaviors. For example, Paryani says that his mom lives in a condo, and so she almost exclusively uses fast chargers, which can negatively impact an EVs battery life. What do we have to do to avoid [battery] deterioration? he says. We are addressing that with our software. Ford is making its battery cells at its BlueOval Battery Park in Michigan. Akshaya Srinivasan leads vehicle efficiency and performance for the Universal EV Platform team, helping develop bounties. [Photo: Ford] Staying a startup inside Ford Auto Motive Power was founded in 2017, and was previously a supplier to Ford before it was acquired by the automaker in 2023. At the time, the team was still operating as a very scrappy startup, Paryani says. Becoming part of a $56 billion automaker could have drastically changed that, but they were able to maintain that startup energy. Executives decided to keep the team walled off, Paryani says, so that we can take design risks that I don’t think traditional auto companies would ever think of taking. [Photo: Ford] Big companies like Ford can often get caught up in analysis paralysis, Clarke admits, while startups are known for failing fast. Paryani and his team held on to that ethos, while taking advantage of Fords resources, like access to its EV development center. [Through] all of the different things that Anil’s team have tried, we’ve learned so much about different materials, interaction between different devices, that we wouldn’t have, Clarke says. “Or in order to learn it, we probably would have spent two years building models and realizing it wasn’t a good idea.” Paryanis team, instead, tried out multiple ideas quickly through prototypes. This work is crucial to developing better EVs, which are ultimately still an early technology. “Internal combustion engine vehicles have had 120 years of maturation, of engineering work, of optimization, of innovation, that have gone into them,” Clarke says. EVs, by contrast, are in “inning oneor maybe inning two.”
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Anderson Cooper, who has reported for CBS’ “60 Minutes” for the past two decades in addition to hosting a weeknight news program on CNN, said Monday that he’s leaving the CBS broadcast to spend more time with his family.His decision comes at a time of turmoil at “60 Minutes.” Cooper appeared on the show Sunday night, introducing a brief piece on filmmaker Ken Burns. It’s not likely to be his last time on the show; he’s expected to finish the current broadcast season, which ends in May.“Being a correspondent at ’60 Minutes’ has been one of the great honors of my career,” Cooper said in a statement. “I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crew in the business. For nearly 20 years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs and CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.”Cooper’s exit from what remains the most prestigious show in television news is sure to raise questions about whether it had anything to do with the leadership of Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News since last fall. Cooper’s spokesperson said Monday he had no additional comment.He has contributed stories to “60 Minutes” since the 2006-2007 television season in a unique job-sharing arrangement with CNN. His prime-time cable news show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” has aired since 2003.In a statement, CBS News praised Cooper for his two decades of work.“We’re grateful to him for dedicating so much of his life to this broadcast, and understand the importance of spending more time with family,” CBS said. “’60 Minutes’ will be here if he ever wants to return.”His exit comes at a time of unease at the Sunday night newsmagazine known for its ticking stopwatch. At Weiss’ direction, the show in December held off at the last minute showing a report from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the Trump administration’s immigration policy. She said a greater effort was needed to get an interview with administration officials, while Alfonsi complained privately that the decision was political in nature. The story aired a month later with additional administration comments, but no on-camera interviews.President Donald Trump sued “60 Minutes” for how it handled an interview with his 2024 election opponent, Kamala Harris. Much to the consternation of many at the broadcast, CBS’s parent company Paramount Global settled with Trump out-of-court.Cooper’s exit from CBS was first reported by the online news site Breaker. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social. David Bauder, AP Media Writer
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