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Prada is making a statement this Christmas, and it has nothing to do with fashion. Their new campaign, Drawing Prada: Animated By Hand, is a deliberate rejection of AI-generated imagery. In an era where synthetic content floods advertising, the luxury house is betting that human craftsmanship is itself the message — and increasingly, the market.
That tension between human and machine runs deeper than aesthetics. In the Netherlands, MP Barbara Kathmann has tabled legislation targeting the invisible architecture of the internet — endless scrolling, autoplay, and manipulative recommendation algorithms. Her proposal would ban these so-called addictive design features across social media, gaming, streaming, and dating platforms, arguing that digital products are being engineered to override user choice rather than serve it.
And in the world of decentralised finance, a company called Metals dot io has issued blockchain tokens backed by twenty-five tonnes of physical copper sitting in a warehouse in Germany. The total value is modest — around three hundred sixty-six thousand dollars — but the concept is pointed: bringing real-world commodities onto the chain in a way that investors can actually touch, in theory at least.
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