If one company has its way, animal allergies could soon be a thing of the past. A biotech laboratory has developed gene-edited dogs that do not contain the allergy-causing proteins found in most pups, which they say marks a breakthrough in the pet industry. 

How were these dogs created?
Two beagles, Bailey and Alfie, were specifically bred with a “targeted genetic knockout” of Can f 1, the major allergy-causing protein in dogs, according to research published in The CRISPR Journal. Born in September 2024, the canines have shown “healthy growth and development,” said Kindred Companion Sciences, the company behind the research, in a press release.

Breeds like poodles are often recommended for their hypoallergenic coats. But these dogs “still produce allergy-causing proteins that end up in their saliva, hair and dander, so they can still make people sniffly,” said The Associated Press. In the case of Bailey and Alfie, scientists at Kindred used the DNA-altering technology CRISPR to eliminate the Can f 1 protein entirely. Tests of the two dogs thus showed “no detectable protein compared to samples from nonedited dogs,” said Wired.

How will this affect the pet industry?
Experts believe it could open the door to a new wave of adoptable pets. Gene editing “can and should be applied to solving legitimate problems that humanity has,” said Fyodor Urnov, a gene editing expert at the University of California, Berkeley, to Wired. About 10% to 20% of the world’s population have pet allergies, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Questions remain as to the viability of the genetic changes. For one, Can f 1 “isn’t the only protein in dogs that can trigger allergic reactions — there are also so-called minor allergens,” said New Scientist. There are also concerns about the long-term health of these animals, although “so far both dogs appear normal.” 

For some, the jury is still out. “It opens the door to a lot more people being able to own pets,” said New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan to the AP. But on the “negative side, it may discourage people from trying to use strays and unwanted animals that are not engineered to be allergy-free.”

Since videos of OpenAI’s first brand trip hosting business and tech influencers hit social media timelines, the backlash has been swift. Already facing scrutiny on multiple fronts, the company has likely seen any hope that this move would boost its reputation dashed.

Missing the mark
The high-end getaway, dubbed OpenAI Summer Camp, was held at Wildflower Farms, a “luxury resort in New York’s Hudson Valley,” where room rates can exceed $2,000 a night, said Business Insider. Creators were treated to an itinerary that included “lessons about OpenAI’s latest tools” and a “session with a beekeeper.”

The weekend's “pastoral content” swiftly drew criticism across social media, said Business Insider. Critics questioned why a company associated with “several energy- and water-intensive data centers” was treating influencers at a “nature-focused resort.”

As the influencers come under fire, OpenAI maintains that the content creators are an “important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products today,” said company spokesperson Drew Pusateri to Fast Company. The lab welcomes “healthy debate as AI becomes more prevalent.”

Why one company and not the others
OpenAI is not the only AI lab that has “worked with influencers,” said TechCrunch. Anthropic reportedly held a brand dinner for its app Claude, and Microsoft hosted a Super Bowl brand trip for influencers, according to tech newsletter Sarah and Kate. But none of the other AI-led trips seem to have “struck as big of a nerve as this OpenAI brand trip.”

A creator dinner with Claude does not “give me the same reaction as seeing a luxury resort for an OpenAI ChatGPT weekend,” said Meredith Lynch, a creator who covers politics and pop culture, to Inc. It felt like a “propaganda trip to take this technology that’s getting a lot of pushback and sanitize it through aesthetically beautiful content creation.” The problem is not the existence of an influencer trip but that the format “carries different implications” when used to “build trust in a technology facing criticism over job displacement and data centers’ energy and water use.”

A man walks on sandbanks exposed by the receding waters of the Danube in Batina, Croatia. The river’s “water levels have fallen as extreme heat” ravages Europe, said The New York Times, exposing “sunken German vessels from World War II” and “impeding navigation.”
Marko Perkov / Getty Images

The ’90s were a period of transition for the film industry, seeing the rise of both smaller, independent studios and the spectacular growth of home movie watching. Despite this tumult, the decade produced countless films of enduring artistic and commercial significance, including these memorable classics.

‘Big Night’ (1996)
Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci are brothers Primo and Secundo, immigrants operating a failing Jersey Shore restaurant during the 1950s. This film of “great wisdom and delight” is about “food not as a subject but as a language — the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Paramount+)

‘Breaking the Waves’ (1996)
A film that was a kind of spiritual precursor to the aesthetically austere and hugely influential Dogme 95 film movement, Danish director Lars von Trier’s haunting masterpiece (pictured above) also shaped a generation of independent filmmakers. A “raw, crazy tour-de-force,” it dares to “fuse true love with lurid exploitation and pure religious faith,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. (Mubi)

‘The Matrix’ (1999)
The brilliance of directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s “The Matrix” has been diluted over time by its inferior sequels and many imitators, but its inventively choreographed action sequences and dystopian narrative endure. It’s a movie of “immense scale and complexity” that “understood where things were headed far better than any film did at the time,” said Scott Tobias at The Guardian. (Peacock)