Beehiiv's new MCP, tech bros' obsession with taste, and AI-generated headlines

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This week, beehiiv announced that it’s launching an MCP, making it the first newsletter platform you can run directly through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity (another reason I love beehiiv and won’t stop recommending it). An MCP (or Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI clients like Claude connect to external tools and data sources (like Slack, Google Drive, etc). It’s similar to an API, but where APIs move data from one app to another, MCPs layer in AI reasoning. With this feature, users can access, analyze, and act on all aspects of their newsletter—subscriber data, acquisition breakdowns, etc. Not only can you get insight, but MCPs allow you to take that reasoning and data and take action on it—create automations, create content, etc. It truly is going to be a game-changer for anyone creating content (I’m slotting some time to mess around with it myself next week for this newsletter).

OpenAI announced that it is shutting down Sora, its AI video generation app. In light of the announcement, Disney is also exiting the deal it signed with OpenAI last year, in which it pledged to invest $1 billion in the company and agreed to license some of its characters for use in Sora. There hasn’t been an explanation from the company for the shift; there have been signs of a focus on practical adoption as the company prepares for a potential IPO and to prevent slippage in their battle against Google Gemini. 

Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with AI-generated ones. The overall idea is to “identify content on a page that would be a useful and relevant title to a user’s query” with the goal of “better matching titles to users’ queries and facilitating engagement with web content.” While in experimentation mode, this could have disastrous effects on trust between news outlets and readers if it becomes a permanent feature. Changing headlines and their meanings make journalism less trustworthy (as if outlets need any more reason to lose the already fleeting trust they have). 

Recently, allegations were made that the novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard was written using AI. Analysis found that 78% of the novel was AI-generated. The book appears to be the first commercial novel from a major publishing house to be pulled over evidence of A.I. use. Its cancellation is a sign that A.I. writing is not only appearing in cheap self-published e-books flooding Amazon but is also seeping into even traditionally published fiction. Currently, AI-generated text and art can’t be protected by copyright. Still, given the widespread uses of AI in research, outlining, and other parts of the writing process, there’s little clarity about what constitutes its appropriate use. 

In recent months, “taste” has become as much of a tech-world cliché as “disruption” was in the 2010s. For tech bros, the word seems to have a pragmatic function. By their definition, taste is inherently profitable; it is the ability to discern what will make the most money, whether by choosing your next big software concept or by convincing users that your product is necessary. This is especially true with AI tools. AI companies need to associate themselves with taste precisely because their tools are not very palatable, let alone cool, to anyone outside Silicon Valley.

What’s caught your attention online this week? Reply to this email and let me know!