'Brands’ New Authenticity Flex: ‘No AI’ Advertising Disclaimers'

See Brands Adopt ‘No AI’ Disclaimers to Stand Out Amid the Slop: Marketers move to get ahead of growing consumer skepticism by labeling content that doesn’t use AI by Patrick Coffee of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"As the AI-generated imagery and video colloquially called slop spreads across social media and video feeds, marketers are going out of their way to tell consumers they’re not to blame.

“We commit: No AI generated bodies or people,” promised a campaign last month from Aerie, the intimate apparel brand"

They are "building on its 2014 promise not to retouch people in its ads"

"“Our DNA is about realness, about not changing a person, you know, not erasing stretch marks,” McCormick said." (Chief Marketing Officer Stacey McCormick)

"Sixty-eight percent of consumers regularly question whether the content they see is real, and 50% would rather spend their money with brands that don’t use generative AI in marketing, according to a survey by market research firm Gartner. Another report from software firm Cint found that 63% of consumers think brands have a duty to disclose when they use AI in marketing."

"Major social-media platforms have struggled to detect and label AI-generated content."

"A number of brands are already on board."

"Aerie . . . isn’t averse to AI help with small changes like lighting adjustments after the fact"

"Budgetary concerns also play a role. Aerie spends more on production to avoid using AI-generated models" (does it cost more to be authentic? And will consumers being willing to pay more for authenticity)

"New York last year became the first state to pass a law requiring businesses to disclose the use of AI-generated humans in their marketing content."

Related posts (with some excerpts):

Photos show China's most surreal tourist spot— a fake Instagram-worthy town full of pretend farmers and phony fishermen (2021)

The Myth of Authenticity Or The Story Behind Products (2010)

"What do brands like Häagen Dazs, Baileys Original Irish Cream, Bombay Sapphire and Kerrygold all have in common? Each stretches the myth behind the brand to promote heritage and authenticity." 

Fake Authenticity (2011)

"Whenever you find something described as authentic, you know that you are already in the realm of fake authenticity," says Andrew Potter in his recent book "The Authenticity Hoax." It's not unlike the "right stuff" Tom Wolfe described: No fighter pilot who had that elusive quality would ever think to say so. "Authenticity is like authority or charisma," Mr. Potter writes. "If you have to tell people you have it, then you probably don't."" 

Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007)

This may sound surprising, but counselors advocate making a mistake on your college applications like an intentional typo. This makes you seem more "authentic." 

What if companies can't afford real models for their ads? Use AI generated fake pictures  (2020)

What’s Up, Doc? Chocolate Prices

See Why Filling Up Your Easter Basket Is So Expensive, Despite Much-Lower Cocoa Prices: Underpinning the surge in retail prices is a historical move seen in futures for cocoa by Kirk Maltais of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Global supply chain headaches have been hitting chocolate hard"

"The average cost for a package of chocolate candy through March 22 was $3.68 a unit"

"That’s up 10% from the same 52-week period last year."

"a shopper spending $20 on packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs at Target could buy five bags of the candy for $3.99 each in 2020. Those same packages are now $6.29"

"In 2024, prices for cocoa futures trading on the Intercontinental Exchange rose exponentially, going from around $4,200 a metric ton to start to year to peaking at more than $12,000 a ton by December."

"Prices have since tumbled back to historical norms, last month falling to below $3,000 a ton for the first time in nearly three years."

"What fueled the run-up in cocoa futures was poor weather in West African nations"

"the source of roughly 70% of the world’s cocoa beans. Excessive rainfall creating disease issues for beans limited the amount of cocoa coming out of West African ports."

"Pricing across consumer products tends to adjust with a lag, reflecting hedging practices and inventory cycles"

"World cocoa production is up 8% from last year"

Related posts:

Chocolate, nationality and price elasticity of demand (2025) 

Why Your Valentine’s Chocolate Is Getting More Expensive: Cocoa futures have climbed more than 80% since this time last year (2025) 

Chocolate Prices Have Soared. A New Law Threatens to Keep Them High: A European Union law that aims to make chocolate more sustainable has left farmers racing to map their plots (2024) 

Record Cocoa Prices Are Making Sweet Cravings Expensive (2024)

Cocoa Cartel Stirs Up Global Chocolate Market (2020)

What Chocolate Shortage? Cocoa Prices Steady as Record Output Projected  (2019) 

Economy Got You Down? Buy An $8 Chocolate Bar For A Little "Compensatory Consumption" (2008)

More Americans Are Breaking Into the Upper Middle Class

Research shows that ranks of higher earners have grown markedly over last 50 years, while lower rungs of middle class have shrunk

By Rachel Louise Ensign of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"America’s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scale the economic ladder into higher-earning groups. New research shows that the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so, while the lower rungs of the middle class have shrunk."

"In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979"

"There is no single, standard definition of middle class, or upper middle class, and what counts as a hefty income in one city can feel paltry in another. The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich. The analysis looked just at incomes, not assets such as stocks or real estate."

"The AEI report divided families into five different groups by income. Three groups were in the middle: lower middle class, core middle class and upper middle class. 

The authors found that more families now fall into the two highest-earning groups—upper middle class and rich—and fewer fall into the three lower-earning categories.

In 2024, about 19% of American families were considered “poor or near poor,” according to the AEI report, down from about 30% in 1979. The report defined that group as a family of three earning about $40,000 or less in 2024 dollars."

"The economists considered a family earning between five times and 15 times the poverty guideline to be in the upper middle class—thus their parameters of $133,000 to $400,000." 

"Upper-income groups are swelling because wages have grown faster than prices over time"

"More than 80% of people in the upper middle class and rich categories were in married or cohabitating households"

"A Pew Research Center analysis using a different methodology also discovered that the share of American families in the higher-income group is growing. The analysis found that in 2023, 19% of Americans fell into an “upper income” group, up from 11% in 1971.

"Pew classified upper income as those earning more than twice the median household income, so more than roughly $200,000 or more for a family of three in 2024."

 

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Related posts:

The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive (2025)

Wealth And The Middle Class (2019) "Counting all kinds of debt, including mortgages, consumers aren’t nearly as debt-burdened as they once were." 

The American middle class is shrinking because more people are becoming upper middle class and rich (2016)

Why Economics Is Really Called 'the Dismal Science': The (not-so-dismal) origin myth of a ubiquitous term

By Derek Thompson of The Atlantic Monthly. From 2013. 

"The story goes like this: Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer and philosopher, called economics "the dismal science" in reference to Thomas Malthus, that lugubrious economist who claimed humanity was trapped in a world where population growth would always strain natural resources and bring widespread misery. Dismal, indeed.

But this origin myth is, well, mythical. Carlyle did coin the phrase "the dismal science." And Malthus was, without question, dismal.

But Carlyle labeled the science "dismal" when writing about slavery in the West Indies. White plantation owners, he said, ought to force black plantation workers to be their servants.

Economics, somewhat inconveniently for Carlyle, didn't offer a hearty defense of slavery. Instead, the rules of supply and demand argued for "letting men alone" rather than thrashing them with whips for not being servile. Carlyle bashed political economy as "a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing [science]; what we might call ... the dismal science.”

Today, when we hear the term "the dismal science," it's typically in reference to economics' most depressing outcomes (e.g.: on globalization killing manufacturing jobs: "well, that's why they call it the dismal science," etc). In other words, we've tended to align ourselves with Carlyle to acknowledge that an inescapable element of economics is human misery.

But the right etymology turns that interpretation on its head. In fact, it aligns economics with morality, and against racism, rather than with misery, and against happiness. Carlyle couldn't find a justification for slavery in political economic thought, and he considered this fact to be "dismal." Students of economics should be proud: Their "science" was then (as it can be, today) a force for a more just and, crucially, less dismal world."

The Seasonally Adjusted CPI Was up 0.865% in March

Here are the changes in the seasonally adjusted CPI for the six months ending in Dec: 

Aug 0.3483%

Sept. 0.2951% (There was no report for October due to the government shutdown)

Nov. 0.2523% (change from Sept)

Dec. 0.2978%

Jan. 0.1708%

Feb. 0.2670

 

The last decline was March 2025 when it was -0.0500%. Before that it was June 2024 when it was -0.0029%.

See Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for data on the seasonally adjusted CPI.

That site shows a graph but if you click on the Download button you will get the actual numbers in Microsoft Excel.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCSL) was 327.460 in Feb. and 330.293 in March. Since 330.293/327.460 = 1.00865, that means it was up 0.865%. If we had that every month for 12 months it would be up 10.89%.

It was 319.785 in March 2025. Since 330.293/319.785 = 1.0329, that means it was up 3.29% over the last 12 months.

The non-seasonally adjusted CPI was 330.213 in March and 319.799 in March 2025. That was up 3.26%. So pretty close to the seasonally adjusted CPI. This is still above the Fed's target of 2.0% (although they prefer to use the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index which was 2.8% higher in Feb. 2026 than Feb. 2025). 

For more information see Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March, as energy prices spiked due to Iran conflict by Jeff Cox of CNBC. Excerpt: 

"The consumer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.3%, pushed by a 10.9% surge in energy costs. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus. The annual rate was the highest since April 2024 and up from 2.4% in February. 

However, excluding food and energy, core prices rose much less – just 0.2% for the month and 2.6% from a year ago, both 0.1 percentage point below forecast, indicating that underlying inflation was contained. There even were even pockets of outright price declines, as medical care, personal care, and used cars and trucks all fell during the month.

The Iran conflict was the story for the monthly inflation reading, as gasoline soared 21.2%, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the headline price increase, according to the BLS.

The article also discusses what types of products are going up in price and what is going down. There is a graph of the monthly year-over-year percent change in prices and core prices going back almost 4 years."  

The article also discusses what types of products are going up in price and what is going down. There is a graph of the monthly year-over-year percent change in prices and core prices going back almost 4 years.   

Related material: 

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food and Energy in U.S. City Average (CPILFESL) This is also from from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has the seasonally adjusted core CPI.

 

Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2025

 

Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index 

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics makes seasonal adjustments. See Consumer Price Index Summary.

 

The table below has the annual inflation rate since 1914 in the columns labeled CPI %Ch. or CPI percentage change. It is from Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2026 and is not seasonally adjusted. It is also the December to December change in the CPI. That site also looks at how the 12 month average for the CPI changed from one year to the next.

 

Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.		Year	CPI %Ch.
1914	1		1944	2.3		1974	12.3		2004	3.3
1915	2		1945	2.2		1975	6.9		2005	3.4
1916	12.6		1946	18.1		1976	4.9		2006	2.5
1917	18.1		1947	8.8		1977	6.7		2007	4.1
1918	20.4		1948	3		1978	9		2008	0.1
1919	14.5		1949	-2.1		1979	13.3		2009	2.7
1920	2.6		1950	5.9		1980	12.5		2010	1.5
1921	-10.8		1951	6		1981	8.9		2011	3
1922	-2.3		1952	0.8		1982	3.8		2012	1.7
1923	2.4		1953	0.7		1983	3.8		2013	1.5
1924	0		1954	-0.7		1984	3.9		2014	0.8
1925	3.5		1955	0.4		1985	3.8		2015	0.7
1926	-1.1		1956	3		1986	1.1		2016	2.1
1927	-2.3		1957	2.9		1987	4.4		2017	2.1
1928	-1.2		1958	1.8		1988	4.4		2018	1.9
1929	0.6		1959	1.7		1989	4.6		2019	2.3
1930	-6.4		1960	1.4		1990	6.1		2020	1.4
1931	-9.3		1961	0.7		1991	3.1		2021	7
1932	-10.3		1962	1.3		1992	2.9		2022	6.5
1933	0.8		1963	1.6		1993	2.7		2023	3.4
1934	1.5		1964	1		1994	2.7		2024	2.9
1935	3		1965	1.9		1995	2.5		2025	2.7
1936	1.4		1966	3.5		1996	3.3
1937	2.9		1967	3		1997	1.7
1938	-2.8		1968	4.7		1998	1.6
1939	0		1969	6.2		1999	2.7
1940	0.7		1970	5.6		2000	3.4
1941	9.9		1971	3.3		2001	1.6
1942	9		1972	3.4		2002	2.4
1943	3		1973	8.7		2003	1.9

 

Here is a timeline graph of this data: