Marketplace Tech

Apple's long-awaited iPhone Duo launched this week, and everyone has the same question: can you see a crease? Joanna Stern, founder of media company New Things, has been putting it to the test for her newsletter. She's tried apps, phone calls, cameras. But, she really wanted to know if the much-hyped folding phone would stand the test of time. She hired a hardware designer to build a machine that opened and closed the iPhone Duo over and over while she slept — more than 32,000 times. Stern joins joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino on this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

Plus, Elon Musk says there could be a merger between SpaceX and Tesla. And, recent court documents reveal internal warnings about child safety issues were ignored by TikTok executives.

More on this:

“iPhone Duo Review: The Good, The Bad, and The Buggy” from New Things

“Apple announces product launch event for Oct. 28. Analysts expect touchscreen laptop” from CNBC

“SpaceX and Tesla Are Already Joined at the Hip. What a Formal Merger Would Mean.” from The Wall Street Journal

“Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown That Blindsided Ukraine” from The Wall Street Journal

“TikTok staff raised child safety concerns, but executives reportedly failed to act” from TechCrunch

At Alaska News, you can find stories about the new summer sales tax rate in Juneau, a man ticketed for killing a bull moose out of season and about 20 other hyperlocal items a day.

Much of the coverage is generated by an AI agent called Walter, as in Cronkite, the famous newsman.

Nathaniel Herz, a human executive editor at the local alt weekly the Anchorage Press, wanted to learn more. So, he asked for an interview.

More on this:

This AI agent has written thousands of Alaska news articles. We interviewed it. — Anchorage Press

Entravision Introduces an AI Latina News Anchor—and Sparks Debate — HipLatina

KSAT's new afternoon show won’t have traditional anchors. What we know — My San Antonio

After 78 Years on Air, This Baltimore TV Station Cut Its Anchors. What Replaced Them Has Critics Worried — Inc

When Bumble went public five years ago, the dating app known for being a friendlier place for women was valued at $14 billion. But the dating business, the tech industry and the stock market have changed a lot since then. And shares declined 90% from their peak.

Now, the company is going private again. It's being acquired by private equity firm Ithaca Holdings, with two new CEOs taking the helm. Sarah Kunst, managing director at the venture firm Cleo Capital and former senior advisor at Bumble, explains what this all means.

More on this:

“Bumble bought for $1.3bn in 'bet on the future of humanity'“ from BBC

“Here's what happens to Twitter's stock now that it's a private company” from NBC News

“EA is now a private company” from The Verge

More and more people are turning to chatbots to search the web.

But researchers are finding these systems can be gamed.

We wanted to understand more about how AI chatbot search results can be manipulated, so we called up someone who studies these things for a living: Xiyang Hu, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, where he leads the Generative Learning and Augmented Decision Lab.

More on this

``Someone Hid It!'': Query-Agnostic Black-Box Attacks on LLM-Based Retrieval — a study published for the International Conference on Machine Learning

Reddit comments are 'foundational' to training AI models, COO says — from Business Insider

Language Models Often Favor Their Own Text, Revealing a New Bias in AI — NYU Center for Data Science

You might say the 2026 midterms are the first big AI election. The technology has become a key political issue, it’s a significant source of fundraising and it’s also helping power campaign ads.

Plus, generative AI is being looked to by voters as a tool for sorting through the deluge of information, especially in places like California where there are 14 ballot propositions to research.

Marketplace's senior correspondent for Future Effects, David Brancaccio, put three AI chatbots to the test.

More on this:

“Electoral Hallucinations: Safeguarding UK elections in the world of LLMs and AI chatbots” from Demos

“AI chatbots can effectively sway voters – in either direction” from Cornell Chronicle