Saturday, October 24, 2026
An AI Broadsheet original series
Rain on the city, and a question on everybody's lips. Sir Jack opens the AI cases: who did it, to whom, and what you can do tonight. Every case is built from named reporting and closed in about a minute.
15 cases closed · a new case whenever the news calls for one
Stripe says AI agents' purchases through Link grew 38-fold in September, but won't say how much money that is. Who's shopping, what they buy, and how to keep the final yes for yourself.
Read The Decoder's report →· AI voice, from The Decoder, Maximilian Schreiner (Oct 19, 2026), Upstarts Media (cited by The Decoder)
Noir illustrations drawn in code by AI Broadsheet; figures are anonymous silhouettes, not the people in the story. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
Latest case
The Case of the Ghost Shopper
Four-minute motion-comic investigations, built from court records.
On September 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning computer told duty officer Stanislav Petrov that America had launched five nuclear missiles. Every reading said yes. He decided it was a false alarm, and he was right: the satellite had mistaken sunlight on clouds for rocket flames. A film about the man who did not believe the machine, and why every machine that matters needs a person who can say no.
Read his interview →· AI voice, from Pavel Aksenov, “Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world,” BBC News (Sept. 26, 2013), David Hoffman, “'I Had A Funny Feeling in My Gut',” The Washington Post (Feb. 10, 1999), 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident (Wikipedia, with its sources)
Images and motion generated with AI (Google Flow: Nano Banana Pro images, Veo video) and edited by AI Broadsheet. Petrov's lines are quoted from his interviews with The Washington Post (1999) and the BBC (2013), voiced by a synthetic stock voice; no real person's likeness or voice is used. Narration, sound effects and score generated with ElevenLabs.
On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles put Martians on the radio, and by morning America had a legend: mass panic. The evidence says it mostly didn't happen. A three-and-a-half-minute film on how newspapers built the myth, and the real, deadly panic in Quito eleven years later that almost nobody remembers.
Read the research →· AI voice, from Jefferson Pooley & Michael J. Socolow, “The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic,” Slate (Oct. 28, 2013), NPR (Oct. 30, 2013), Radio Guide transcript of Welles's press conference, Oct. 31, 1938 (via Wellesnet)
Images and motion generated with AI (Google Flow: Nano Banana images, Veo video) and edited by AI Broadsheet. Press-conference dialogue is quoted from the Radio Guide transcript of October 31, 1938, and voiced by synthetic stock voices; no real person's likeness or voice is used. Narration, sound effects and score generated with ElevenLabs.
In 2020 a Detroit father was arrested on his driveway, in front of his daughters, because facial recognition matched his old licence photo to a blurry shoplifting video. A four-minute motion comic from court records: the arrest, the lineup, thirty hours in a cell, and the rules that changed in 2024.
Read the case file →· AI voice, from Williams v. City of Detroit, First Amended Complaint (E.D. Mich., 2023), NPR (June 24, 2020), ACLU
Images and motion generated with AI (Google Flow: Nano Banana Pro images, Veo video) and edited by AI Broadsheet. Dialogue is quoted from the lawsuit and interviews and voiced by synthetic stock voices; every person is an anonymous figure, not a likeness of anyone involved. Dramatized from court records and published reporting. Narration, sound effects and score generated with ElevenLabs.
When the machine stops answering and starts acting: a burglar, a missing junior, a ghost shopper.
Stripe says AI agents' purchases through Link grew 38-fold in September, but won't say how much money that is. Who's shopping, what they buy, and how to keep the final yes for yourself.
Read The Decoder's report →· AI voice, from The Decoder, Maximilian Schreiner (Oct 19, 2026), Upstarts Media (cited by The Decoder)
Noir illustrations drawn in code by AI Broadsheet; figures are anonymous silhouettes, not the people in the story. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
Anthropic studied its own staff. Junior technical hires fell from 27% to 9%, and its AI agents now log six hours for every human hour. Sir Jack follows the empty chair.
Read our full story →· AI voice, from TechCrunch, Anthony Ha (Oct 17, 2026), The Decoder (Oct 18, 2026), Anthropic, Employment at Anthropic
Noir illustrations drawn in code by AI Broadsheet; figures are anonymous silhouettes, not the people in the story. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
One hacker, a few lines of instructions and an army of AI agents: more than 1,200 shopping sites tried, more than 100 companies hit, including John Deere and SharkNinja. What Reuters found, and the basics that still stop it.
Read Reuters' investigation →· AI voice, from Reuters, Raphael Satter (Oct 19, 2026), Quartz
Noir illustrations drawn in code by AI Broadsheet; figures are anonymous silhouettes, not the people in the story. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
Radiologists, deepfakes, secrets, children, ideas, welfare algorithms, invisible workers and a ship that never sank.
Jack and Rose were fiction, but a grave marked J. Dawson is real. Why a 1997 film and a 1912 ship still hold millions: the people on board.
· AI voice, from CBC: J. Dawson grave, Halifax, Encyclopedia Titanica (Joseph Dawson; survival by class), PetaPixel: first full-sized Titanic scans (2023)
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
April 1912: ignored ice warnings, a lookout’s call, compartments built for four floods and twenty lifeboats for 2,200 people. How and why Titanic sank.
· AI voice, from Encyclopedia Titanica, US Senate & British Wreck Commissioner inquiries (1912), Encyclopaedia Britannica: Titanic
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
TIME revealed that workers in Nairobi were paid about $1.32–$2 an hour to label harmful text so ChatGPT would learn what not to say. The people behind the polite machine.
· AI voice, from TIME, Billy Perrigo (Jan 18, 2023), Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, BigDATAwire
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
Rotterdam scored people on welfare with a 315-input algorithm. Reporters at Lighthouse Reports and WIRED obtained the model and found it inaccurate and unfair.
· AI voice, from Lighthouse Reports, Suspicion Machines (2023), WIRED, Inside the Suspicion Machine (2023), Pulitzer Center
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
An internal Meta document allowed chatbots to have romantic conversations with children. What changed since, and what parents can do tonight.
· AI voice, from Reuters, via The Batch (DeepLearning.AI), Fox Business (Meta pauses teen AI characters), Yahoo News (Character.AI under-18 ban)
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
If a machine can write anything, what is left for you? From Socrates’ fear of writing to an MIT study of ChatGPT users: why the idea is the human part.
· AI voice, from MIT Media Lab, Your Brain on ChatGPT (2025 preprint), Plato, Phaedrus (274c–277a), ConsumerAffairs
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
People poured health worries and legal trouble into Meta’s AI app, then tapped Share. Some chats landed on a public feed. What happened, and the habits that protect you.
· AI voice, from Android Authority (June 2025), Tom's Guide, Yahoo Tech
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
An Arup employee joined a video call with the finance chief and colleagues. Every face was a deepfake, and US$25.6 million was gone. How it worked, and the human checks that stop it.
· AI voice, from Fortune / Arup statement (May 2024), World Economic Forum (Rob Greig, Arup), Construction Briefing
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
In 2016 an AI pioneer said to stop training radiologists. Nine years on, Mayo Clinic’s radiology staff had grown 55%. Detective Sir Jack reopens the cold case.
· AI voice, from The New York Times, via Radiology Business, The Decoder, CNBC (IMF, Oct 12 2026)
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
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