Reid Hoffman is leaving Microsoft’s board to go ‘founder mode’ with startup Manus | TechCrunch
After a very profitable decade on Microsoft’s board, Reid Hoffman is stepping down, the company announced Thursday. Hoffman joined the board after Microsoft bought his company LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016.
Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal.
Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst.
Hoffman is cited as a co-founder of Manus and chairman of the board, not the CEO, though. That job belongs to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 2011 book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Still, Hoffman said he’s excited to give Manus more attention.
“One of the things I realized over the last month was that, we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” he said. He believes the startup is making progress on “Move 37” AI, meaning AI that supersedes human creativity in chemistry, especially to combat various cancers, he added.
#Reid #Hoffman #leaving #Microsofts #board #founder #mode #startup #Manus #TechCrunchIn Brief,Manus AI,Microsoft,Reid Hoffman
After a very profitable decade on Microsoft’s board, Reid Hoffman is stepping down, the company announced Thursday. Hoffman joined the board after Microsoft bought his company LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016.
Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal.
Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst.
Hoffman is cited as a co-founder of Manus and chairman of the board, not the CEO, though. That job belongs to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician, biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 2011 book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Still, Hoffman said he’s excited to give Manus more attention.
“One of the things I realized over the last month was that, we’re seeing such progress with Manus. I need to get back to founder mode,” he said. He believes the startup is making progress on “Move 37” AI, meaning AI that supersedes human creativity in chemistry, especially to combat various cancers, he added.
![Here’s Your First Look at The Riddler, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, and Roxy Rocket in ‘Caped Crusader’ Season Two
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gets an “R” rating. Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man turns children into bloodsucking ghouls. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a longer running time than John Boorman’s Excalibur. Come fly the teeth of the wind, share my wings. It’s Morning Spoilers! The Guide Deadline reports James Badge Dale, Abigail Cowen, and Edouard Philipponnat will star in The Guide, a “psychological thriller” concerning psychotropic mushrooms from directors Inon and Natalie Shampanier. The film stars Cowen as “a young woman who enters a psilocybin mushroom retreat in an effort to heal past traumas, surrendering herself to the care of a psychedelic therapy guide (Badge Dale). As the guide’s motives come under suspicion, the past bleeds into the present and the session unravels into a psychedelic nightmare.” Spider-Man: Brand New Day According to Shaw Theaters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day runs an impressive two hours and twenty-five minutes long.
The Odyssey TLC Chinese Theaters suggests Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has been rated “R” and runs two-hours and fifty two-minutes long. As the film is budgeted at 0 million, World of Reel states this would officially make it the most expensive R-rated movie of all time.
Ray Gunn Empire Magazine has a new image from Brad Bird’s animated sci-fi noir, Ray Gunn, starring the voice of Sam Rockwell as a Chris Pine-esque detective. Ice Cream Man Demonically-tainted ice cream turns children into cannibalistic deviants in the “red band” (and very gory!) trailer for Eli Roth’s latest, Ice Cream Man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JeUjIqK_4c[/embed] Fall 2: Deadpoint Two young women are trapped on a plank instead of a pole in the first trailer for the horizontal sequel to Fall.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsztt5qDj_A[/embed] Ice Age: Boiling Point Elsewhere, the Ice Age cast is shot skyward by a volcanic geyser in the first teaser for Boiling Point. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWY_wCPfIIM[/embed] The Littlest Hobo According to Deadline, a live-action reboot of The Littlest Hobo is now in development at Lionsgate Canada from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company, Point Grey, in partnership with franchise rights holders New Hobo Productions, Inc. As always, the new series will follow a crime-fighting German Shepherd who wanders from town-to-town doing everything from solving domestic disputes to foiling jewel heists. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms During a recent interview with The Playlist, director Owen Harris provided a positive update on the troubled second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
I’m in Belfast. We are halfway through season 2, slugging away. We are about to go off to Gran Canaria to shoot a part of it, and we have been shooting. We started shooting in November, I think, end of November. We’ve shot it in chunks. Another six episodes, and I’m doing four of them. Batman: Caped Crusader Amazon and Warner Bros. Animation shared several new images from the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader, including our first looks at all-new incarnations of The Riddler, Scarecrow, The Mad Hatter, and Roxy Rocket. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds During her recent appearance at FedCon ’26 in Germany (via Instagram), Christina Chong teased the ninth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fourth season was “the hardest episode I’ve ever had to do,” because “someone I love very, very much is in it.”
Rick and Morty Finally, Rick tests the limits of the “Five Point Exploding Heart Technique” in a new clip from this week’s episode of Rick and Morty. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuqiI6mAIo[/embed] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Heres #Riddler #Mad #Hatter #Scarecrow #Roxy #Rocket #Caped #Crusader #SeasonBatman: Caped Crusader,Morning Spoilers,Rick and Morty,Spider-Man: Brand New Day,The Odyssey](https://i2.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/Morning-Spoilers-June-5-Caped-Crusader-1280x853.jpg?ssl=1 "Here’s Your First Look at The Riddler, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, and Roxy Rocket in ‘Caped Crusader’ Season Two
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gets an “R” rating. Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man turns children into bloodsucking ghouls. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a longer running time than John Boorman’s Excalibur. Come fly the teeth of the wind, share my wings. It’s Morning Spoilers! The Guide Deadline reports James Badge Dale, Abigail Cowen, and Edouard Philipponnat will star in The Guide, a “psychological thriller” concerning psychotropic mushrooms from directors Inon and Natalie Shampanier. The film stars Cowen as “a young woman who enters a psilocybin mushroom retreat in an effort to heal past traumas, surrendering herself to the care of a psychedelic therapy guide (Badge Dale). As the guide’s motives come under suspicion, the past bleeds into the present and the session unravels into a psychedelic nightmare.” Spider-Man: Brand New Day According to Shaw Theaters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day runs an impressive two hours and twenty-five minutes long.
The Odyssey TLC Chinese Theaters suggests Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has been rated “R” and runs two-hours and fifty two-minutes long. As the film is budgeted at 0 million, World of Reel states this would officially make it the most expensive R-rated movie of all time.
Ray Gunn Empire Magazine has a new image from Brad Bird’s animated sci-fi noir, Ray Gunn, starring the voice of Sam Rockwell as a Chris Pine-esque detective. Ice Cream Man Demonically-tainted ice cream turns children into cannibalistic deviants in the “red band” (and very gory!) trailer for Eli Roth’s latest, Ice Cream Man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JeUjIqK_4c[/embed] Fall 2: Deadpoint Two young women are trapped on a plank instead of a pole in the first trailer for the horizontal sequel to Fall.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsztt5qDj_A[/embed] Ice Age: Boiling Point Elsewhere, the Ice Age cast is shot skyward by a volcanic geyser in the first teaser for Boiling Point. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWY_wCPfIIM[/embed] The Littlest Hobo According to Deadline, a live-action reboot of The Littlest Hobo is now in development at Lionsgate Canada from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company, Point Grey, in partnership with franchise rights holders New Hobo Productions, Inc. As always, the new series will follow a crime-fighting German Shepherd who wanders from town-to-town doing everything from solving domestic disputes to foiling jewel heists. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms During a recent interview with The Playlist, director Owen Harris provided a positive update on the troubled second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
I’m in Belfast. We are halfway through season 2, slugging away. We are about to go off to Gran Canaria to shoot a part of it, and we have been shooting. We started shooting in November, I think, end of November. We’ve shot it in chunks. Another six episodes, and I’m doing four of them. Batman: Caped Crusader Amazon and Warner Bros. Animation shared several new images from the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader, including our first looks at all-new incarnations of The Riddler, Scarecrow, The Mad Hatter, and Roxy Rocket. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds During her recent appearance at FedCon ’26 in Germany (via Instagram), Christina Chong teased the ninth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fourth season was “the hardest episode I’ve ever had to do,” because “someone I love very, very much is in it.”
Rick and Morty Finally, Rick tests the limits of the “Five Point Exploding Heart Technique” in a new clip from this week’s episode of Rick and Morty. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuqiI6mAIo[/embed] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Heres #Riddler #Mad #Hatter #Scarecrow #Roxy #Rocket #Caped #Crusader #SeasonBatman: Caped Crusader,Morning Spoilers,Rick and Morty,Spider-Man: Brand New Day,The Odyssey")
![Here’s Your First Look at The Riddler, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, and Roxy Rocket in ‘Caped Crusader’ Season Two
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gets an “R” rating. Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man turns children into bloodsucking ghouls. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a longer running time than John Boorman’s Excalibur. Come fly the teeth of the wind, share my wings. It’s Morning Spoilers! The Guide Deadline reports James Badge Dale, Abigail Cowen, and Edouard Philipponnat will star in The Guide, a “psychological thriller” concerning psychotropic mushrooms from directors Inon and Natalie Shampanier. The film stars Cowen as “a young woman who enters a psilocybin mushroom retreat in an effort to heal past traumas, surrendering herself to the care of a psychedelic therapy guide (Badge Dale). As the guide’s motives come under suspicion, the past bleeds into the present and the session unravels into a psychedelic nightmare.” Spider-Man: Brand New Day According to Shaw Theaters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day runs an impressive two hours and twenty-five minutes long.
The Odyssey TLC Chinese Theaters suggests Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has been rated “R” and runs two-hours and fifty two-minutes long. As the film is budgeted at $250 million, World of Reel states this would officially make it the most expensive R-rated movie of all time.
Ray Gunn Empire Magazine has a new image from Brad Bird’s animated sci-fi noir, Ray Gunn, starring the voice of Sam Rockwell as a Chris Pine-esque detective. Ice Cream Man Demonically-tainted ice cream turns children into cannibalistic deviants in the “red band” (and very gory!) trailer for Eli Roth’s latest, Ice Cream Man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JeUjIqK_4c[/embed] Fall 2: Deadpoint Two young women are trapped on a plank instead of a pole in the first trailer for the horizontal sequel to Fall.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsztt5qDj_A[/embed] Ice Age: Boiling Point Elsewhere, the Ice Age cast is shot skyward by a volcanic geyser in the first teaser for Boiling Point. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWY_wCPfIIM[/embed] The Littlest Hobo According to Deadline, a live-action reboot of The Littlest Hobo is now in development at Lionsgate Canada from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company, Point Grey, in partnership with franchise rights holders New Hobo Productions, Inc. As always, the new series will follow a crime-fighting German Shepherd who wanders from town-to-town doing everything from solving domestic disputes to foiling jewel heists. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms During a recent interview with The Playlist, director Owen Harris provided a positive update on the troubled second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
I’m in Belfast. We are halfway through season 2, slugging away. We are about to go off to Gran Canaria to shoot a part of it, and we have been shooting. We started shooting in November, I think, end of November. We’ve shot it in chunks. Another six episodes, and I’m doing four of them. Batman: Caped Crusader Amazon and Warner Bros. Animation shared several new images from the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader, including our first looks at all-new incarnations of The Riddler, Scarecrow, The Mad Hatter, and Roxy Rocket. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds During her recent appearance at FedCon ’26 in Germany (via Instagram), Christina Chong teased the ninth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fourth season was “the hardest episode I’ve ever had to do,” because “someone I love very, very much is in it.”
Rick and Morty Finally, Rick tests the limits of the “Five Point Exploding Heart Technique” in a new clip from this week’s episode of Rick and Morty. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuqiI6mAIo[/embed] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Heres #Riddler #Mad #Hatter #Scarecrow #Roxy #Rocket #Caped #Crusader #SeasonBatman: Caped Crusader,Morning Spoilers,Rick and Morty,Spider-Man: Brand New Day,The Odyssey](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/Morning-Spoilers-June-5-Caped-Crusader-1280x853.jpg "Here’s Your First Look at The Riddler, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, and Roxy Rocket in ‘Caped Crusader’ Season Two
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gets an “R” rating. Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man turns children into bloodsucking ghouls. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a longer running time than John Boorman’s Excalibur. Come fly the teeth of the wind, share my wings. It’s Morning Spoilers! The Guide Deadline reports James Badge Dale, Abigail Cowen, and Edouard Philipponnat will star in The Guide, a “psychological thriller” concerning psychotropic mushrooms from directors Inon and Natalie Shampanier. The film stars Cowen as “a young woman who enters a psilocybin mushroom retreat in an effort to heal past traumas, surrendering herself to the care of a psychedelic therapy guide (Badge Dale). As the guide’s motives come under suspicion, the past bleeds into the present and the session unravels into a psychedelic nightmare.” Spider-Man: Brand New Day According to Shaw Theaters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day runs an impressive two hours and twenty-five minutes long.
The Odyssey TLC Chinese Theaters suggests Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has been rated “R” and runs two-hours and fifty two-minutes long. As the film is budgeted at $250 million, World of Reel states this would officially make it the most expensive R-rated movie of all time.
Ray Gunn Empire Magazine has a new image from Brad Bird’s animated sci-fi noir, Ray Gunn, starring the voice of Sam Rockwell as a Chris Pine-esque detective. Ice Cream Man Demonically-tainted ice cream turns children into cannibalistic deviants in the “red band” (and very gory!) trailer for Eli Roth’s latest, Ice Cream Man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JeUjIqK_4c[/embed] Fall 2: Deadpoint Two young women are trapped on a plank instead of a pole in the first trailer for the horizontal sequel to Fall.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsztt5qDj_A[/embed] Ice Age: Boiling Point Elsewhere, the Ice Age cast is shot skyward by a volcanic geyser in the first teaser for Boiling Point. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWY_wCPfIIM[/embed] The Littlest Hobo According to Deadline, a live-action reboot of The Littlest Hobo is now in development at Lionsgate Canada from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company, Point Grey, in partnership with franchise rights holders New Hobo Productions, Inc. As always, the new series will follow a crime-fighting German Shepherd who wanders from town-to-town doing everything from solving domestic disputes to foiling jewel heists. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms During a recent interview with The Playlist, director Owen Harris provided a positive update on the troubled second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
I’m in Belfast. We are halfway through season 2, slugging away. We are about to go off to Gran Canaria to shoot a part of it, and we have been shooting. We started shooting in November, I think, end of November. We’ve shot it in chunks. Another six episodes, and I’m doing four of them. Batman: Caped Crusader Amazon and Warner Bros. Animation shared several new images from the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader, including our first looks at all-new incarnations of The Riddler, Scarecrow, The Mad Hatter, and Roxy Rocket. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds During her recent appearance at FedCon ’26 in Germany (via Instagram), Christina Chong teased the ninth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fourth season was “the hardest episode I’ve ever had to do,” because “someone I love very, very much is in it.”
Rick and Morty Finally, Rick tests the limits of the “Five Point Exploding Heart Technique” in a new clip from this week’s episode of Rick and Morty. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuqiI6mAIo[/embed] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Heres #Riddler #Mad #Hatter #Scarecrow #Roxy #Rocket #Caped #Crusader #SeasonBatman: Caped Crusader,Morning Spoilers,Rick and Morty,Spider-Man: Brand New Day,The Odyssey")
![AI Has Come for Serif FontsAs public backlash to the seeming omnipresence of artificial intelligence intensifies, the collective quest to weed out—and reject—telltale signs of its use continues.One of the first casualties, to my dismay, was em dashes—which are a great, and very human form of punctuation, by the way! There’s also the “rule of threes,” which is meant to scan as rhythmic, but often comes across predictable, hackish, and stale. And, of course, there are the clunky grammatical constructions of the “not X, but Y” variety.Now certain fonts and typefaces—specifically serifs—seem to be defining (and giving away) AI, both in actual software, and in vibe-coded design boilerplates. Some are calling it “tasteslop,” the results of the effort to make generative AI designs seem superficially sophisticated or distinguished.The shift away from slicker, more conspicuously computerized typefaces is something the San Francisco Bay Area writer, designer, and type practitioner Keya Vadgama has termed “the serif renaissance.” In a recent newsletter, published on her Substack, Vadgama suggests the move is a bid for companies to project more “personality and warmth.”“It’s not that difficult to discern why AI-native companies in particular are being drawn to serif fonts: AI is inherently cold and without opinion,” she writes. “[Using serifs] signals ‘We’re AI! But real humans use (and made) our product! We swear!’”“Serifs have an origin in calligraphy,” Vadgama tells WIRED. “It connotes a very human, fluid way of making letterforms.” Vadgama has noticed that Anthropic’s Claude was defaulting to serifs. Other AI companies—Runway, Perplexity, Manus—had also adopted similar typefaces in their UX and branding.Reached for comment, Perplexity chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer tells WIRED: “Why wouldn’t we have human design? Perplexity is for people.”Vadgama believes the use of serifs is as much about aesthetics as building confidence between users and brands. Certain font choices signal, even at some preconscious psychological level, trust. Sans serifs (your Arials, Calibiris, Helviticas) are too clean, too computer-y. Good old Times New Roman, and similar typographic designs, can feel a bit more dignified. Recently, Vadgama was doing some branding work with a (since-shuttered) AI startup, which favored the serif text. “A big part of it,” she says, “is, ‘How do we position ourselves in a way that people are not afraid of us?’”Serifs can help build that conviction, or at least the illusion of it. Times New Roman itself was commissioned in the 1930s by Britain’s Times newspaper. The typeface carries a certain authoritative heft. Books and newspapers are printed using it. It was all but standardized in the decades before screen reading. Perhaps most famously, the Encyclopedia Brittanica—arguably the authoritative compendium of human knowledge, at least pre-World Wide Web—was set in Times.“In the broad public, a serif carries connotations of scholarship,” says Ali S. Qadeer, chair of graphic design at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. “Claude is interesting. It’s using this slightly brown background to mirror a book page. It’s sort of emulating the feeling of reading print. And print has deeper associations with trust.”As reported by The New York Times, even the US State Department has returned to using Times New Roman after Secretary of State Marco Rubio decried Calibri as “informal,” pegging the department’s adoption of the sans serif typeface on some wider, Biden-era DEI initiative.Both Qadeer and Vadgama see the trend toward serifs as a rejoinder to AI’s perceived (and, indeed, literal) lack of soul, and the wider public suspicion of the technology. They’re not the only ones. Alongside the “tasteslop” discourse, people online have criticized the serification of AI aesthetics as “generic” and “very ugly.”#Serif #Fontsartificial intelligence,design,ux/ui,art,typography,fonts,chatbots,claude,chatgpt](https://i3.wp.com/media.wired.com/photos/6a20d5436a7879400ec4323c/191:100/w_1280,c_limit/culture_ai_serif_font.jpg?ssl=1 "AI Has Come for Serif FontsAs public backlash to the seeming omnipresence of artificial intelligence intensifies, the collective quest to weed out—and reject—telltale signs of its use continues.One of the first casualties, to my dismay, was em dashes—which are a great, and very human form of punctuation, by the way! There’s also the “rule of threes,” which is meant to scan as rhythmic, but often comes across predictable, hackish, and stale. And, of course, there are the clunky grammatical constructions of the “not X, but Y” variety.Now certain fonts and typefaces—specifically serifs—seem to be defining (and giving away) AI, both in actual software, and in vibe-coded design boilerplates. Some are calling it “tasteslop,” the results of the effort to make generative AI designs seem superficially sophisticated or distinguished.The shift away from slicker, more conspicuously computerized typefaces is something the San Francisco Bay Area writer, designer, and type practitioner Keya Vadgama has termed “the serif renaissance.” In a recent newsletter, published on her Substack, Vadgama suggests the move is a bid for companies to project more “personality and warmth.”“It’s not that difficult to discern why AI-native companies in particular are being drawn to serif fonts: AI is inherently cold and without opinion,” she writes. “[Using serifs] signals ‘We’re AI! But real humans use (and made) our product! We swear!’”“Serifs have an origin in calligraphy,” Vadgama tells WIRED. “It connotes a very human, fluid way of making letterforms.” Vadgama has noticed that Anthropic’s Claude was defaulting to serifs. Other AI companies—Runway, Perplexity, Manus—had also adopted similar typefaces in their UX and branding.Reached for comment, Perplexity chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer tells WIRED: “Why wouldn’t we have human design? Perplexity is for people.”Vadgama believes the use of serifs is as much about aesthetics as building confidence between users and brands. Certain font choices signal, even at some preconscious psychological level, trust. Sans serifs (your Arials, Calibiris, Helviticas) are too clean, too computer-y. Good old Times New Roman, and similar typographic designs, can feel a bit more dignified. Recently, Vadgama was doing some branding work with a (since-shuttered) AI startup, which favored the serif text. “A big part of it,” she says, “is, ‘How do we position ourselves in a way that people are not afraid of us?’”Serifs can help build that conviction, or at least the illusion of it. Times New Roman itself was commissioned in the 1930s by Britain’s Times newspaper. The typeface carries a certain authoritative heft. Books and newspapers are printed using it. It was all but standardized in the decades before screen reading. Perhaps most famously, the Encyclopedia Brittanica—arguably the authoritative compendium of human knowledge, at least pre-World Wide Web—was set in Times.“In the broad public, a serif carries connotations of scholarship,” says Ali S. Qadeer, chair of graphic design at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. “Claude is interesting. It’s using this slightly brown background to mirror a book page. It’s sort of emulating the feeling of reading print. And print has deeper associations with trust.”As reported by The New York Times, even the US State Department has returned to using Times New Roman after Secretary of State Marco Rubio decried Calibri as “informal,” pegging the department’s adoption of the sans serif typeface on some wider, Biden-era DEI initiative.Both Qadeer and Vadgama see the trend toward serifs as a rejoinder to AI’s perceived (and, indeed, literal) lack of soul, and the wider public suspicion of the technology. They’re not the only ones. Alongside the “tasteslop” discourse, people online have criticized the serification of AI aesthetics as “generic” and “very ugly.”#Serif #Fontsartificial intelligence,design,ux/ui,art,typography,fonts,chatbots,claude,chatgpt")
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