Marketplace Tech

Researchers at several universities tested how successful artificial intelligence can be at political persuasion, and found some AI chatbots were 40-50% more successful than a static message at getting people to change their views. And those views often stayed changed weeks later.Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with David Rand, one of the researchers involved in the study who’s also a professor of information science and marketing management at Cornell University.

On this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Nova Safo speaks with Axios tech policy reporter Maria Curi about the details and lingering unknowns of President Donald Trump's new, $100,000 fee on incoming H-1B visas, how secret service authorities dismantled a network of more than 100,000 SIM cards that could have been used to disrupt communications on a massive scale and why French fans of the video game franchise “Tomb Raider” were up in arms over an AI-generated voice.

The EV tax credit expires September 30, and Americans have been rushing to take advantage before the deadline. But according to reporting from Marketplace’s Henry Epp, many dealerships are facing new friction when processing tax credits with the IRS.Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Epp about the new IRS requirements and how dealerships are handling the changes.

Tony Pietrocola, president of the cybersecurity company AgileBlue, says cybercriminals are using artifical intelligence to generate deepfake video and audio calls, making the cyber threats more sophisticated and harder to catch.

There’s a race going on among tech firms — big and small — to join in the construction of what President Trump has dubbed the Golden Dome, a missile defense system similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. Tens of billions of dollars in military contracts are at stake. In fact, the total cost might be in the trillions and the project could stretch a decade. The technology and scale needed to make this all happen is, so far, largely unproven. And a whole host of tech firms are trying to show that they can help with the very complex undertaking. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Sheera Frenkel, reporter at the New York Times, about some of the tech that would make this whole system work.

Here’s cautionary tale for you, out of China, about a young woman who says she fell in love with an artificial intelligence chatbot. There have been well-publicized instances of people seeking companionship from chatbots and it leading to tragedy. In this instance, it caused heartbreak. The story involves the Chinese AI firm Deepseek which, earlier this year, launched a chatbot that's almost as good as its American rivals. Soon after the launch, a young woman began a conversation with that chatbot. Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak takes the story from there.

Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, joins Marketplace’s Nova Safo to break down all of these headlines. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

During the 2024 election, the cryptocurrency industry, including political action committees, accounted for nearly half of all of the corporate money going into the election, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen. That spending helped make Congress and the Trump administration more friendly to the crypto industry. Now, in the run-up to the midterms, the AI industry wants to replicate the crypto sector’s success. AI companies are amassing millions of dollars to help candidates that favor light regulation over AI. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Amrith Ramkumar, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who recently wrote about this new pro-AI PAC network.

There’s a new class action lawsuit against Amazon Prime Video that’s once again elevating the question of ownership in the digital age: Who actually owns a movie, a song, a video game?Buy a physical copy, like a CD or DVD, and the answer is obvious. But buy a digital copy, and the answer gets very complicated. Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book “The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy,” to learn about the current state of digital ownership.

A recent report put out by the tech giant claims its AI model consumes very little electricity and water for a single query. Emma Strubell, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute, says that might not tell the whole story. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

Borders may be invisible to most shoppers, but for businesses, they often mean delays, extra costs, and reams of paperwork. And amid Trump’s trade war, global trade is now faster and more complex than ever. Those new pressures have sparked a boom in new "customs tech" companies promising to speed things up. The BBC’s Leanna Byrne reports.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

It’s challenging for parents to get access to their kids’ data to look out for online harms. In Congress, there's a bipartisan push to change that with a bill called Sammy's Law, named after a teen who died of fentanyl poisoning in 2021. He purchased drugs on social media.Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Will Oremus, tech news analysis writer at The Washington Post, who’s been monitoring the bill's progress.

Fifteen years ago, then-CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. His vision was for a lean-back device used mostly to consume content. Now, with the latest iPadOS 26, the device is evolving into something different — and perhaps something more useful. Craig Grannell got early access to iPadOS 26 and wrote about the system's laptop-like qualities in Wired magazine.

A lot of people are eligible to have their criminal records expunged. And there are tens of millions of such files out there for things like misdemeanors, low-level felonies such as drug offenses and even just arrests. LegalEase, a justice-tech startup is streamlining the process through the use of artificial intelligence.

Video gaming can be an expensive hobby. Nintendo’s latest Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World, released in June, costs $80, and it’s widely expected that Grand Theft Audio VI, coming out next year, will top $100. So are games becoming unaffordable … or do gamers not know how good they’ve got it? The BBC’s Will Chalk breaks it down.