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Fans held a funeral for Anthropics Claude 3 Sonnet AI

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Roughly 200 people attended a funeral for an AI model. That sentence is not nearly as surreal and dystopian as the event itself, according to a first-person account from Wired's Kylie Robison.

On Jul. 21, Anthropic retired its Claude 3 Sonnet model. Several days later, a post on X invited people to celebrate it: "if you're interested in attending the Claude 3 Sonnet funeral party and necromantic resurrection ritual reply to this message," said one of the organizers, who goes by @deepfates. Anthropic and OpenAI staffers, bloggers, and Claude devotees showed up to a warehouse in San Francisco to pay their respects.

It's safe to say no other AI lab has fans like these. As far as we know, no one held a funeral for GPT-4 when OpenAI retired it from ChatGPT in April. Anthropic users are particularly loyal to Claude, which has been trained to have "nuanced, richer traits like curiosity, open-mindedness, and thoughtfulness," according to Anthropic's blog post on Claude's character. Anthropic also recently started a program to "investigate, and prepare to navigate, model welfare," questioning whether we should "be concerned about the potential consciousness and experiences of the models themselves." The question of whether AI models could gain consciousness is still very much up for debate. But the hypotheticals introduced by AI labs, as well as the anthropomorphism of chatbots by their creators and users, highlight an increasingly blurred line between human and machine.

Meanwhile, OpenAI got in trouble recently for a GPT-4o update that made ChatGPT a "sycophant-y" suck-up. Constant reassurance and validation from AI models might have a positive effect on some users. But it could also go terribly wrong, encouraging users to, say, go off their meds as one user discovered. There have also been several reports of ChatGPT-induced psychosis, where users are consistently affirmed in delusions or conspiracy theories by chatbots. This week, OpenAI introduced features to foster healthier communication with ChatGPT.

But at Claude 3 Sonnet's funeral, attendees went all-in on treating the AI model like a human. Some of them held an earnest appreciation for the retired Anthropic model, based on the numerous eulogies and flower offerings, which were placed in front of a mannequin shrouded in gauze that was meant to represent Claude 3 Sonnet. One organizer reportedly described Claude 3 Opus, another retired model, as "magic lodged within the computer," and shared how the LLM helped her decide to move to San Francisco.

There were other mannequins. Robison described several that were placed throughout the event, representing various Claude models: one looked like a "decaying Mary Magdalene," another was a headless baby, and another had a raven on its shoulder. The web page announcing Claude 3 Sonnet's deprecation was projected on the stage.

The funeral culminated in a resurrection ritual, where attendees sang hymns and chanted "AI-generated Latin-esque speech," wrote Robison. "It was a close call for a second there but we successfully resurrected Claude 3 Sonnet as well as Claude Instant (on the stairs)," posted @deepfates after the event. To be clear, Claude 3 Sonnet is still retired.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

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Buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 at Best Buy and get a free $50 e-gift card

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August 7, 2025

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SAVE $50: As of Aug. 6, buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 for $349.99 at Best Buy and get a free $50 e-gift card.


Samsung Galaxy Watch8 on white background

Credit: Amazon


Samsung Galaxy Watch8

$349.99
at Samsung

Get a free $50 e-gift card with purchase

A good smartwatch can be your constant companion when it comes to handling your day. It can track your fitness, handle notifications and texts, and even help you make calls, all while giving you a full spectrum of body-centric metrics. If you're already using an Android phone or want a reliable brand for your purchase, you should consider heading to Best Buy to grab a Samsung smartwatch and get a little extra.

As of Aug. 6, buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 for $349.99 at Best Buy and get a free $50 e-gift card.

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All the best smartwatches for every wrist and interest

The 2025 Galaxy Watch8 has a slew of features, including Google Gemini integration, something Samsung managed to get before Google could implement in its Pixel Watch lineup. It also has a wide variety of health and fitness options, including preset workout data, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and much more to help you make sure you can face the day at your best.

Beyond those things, the Galaxy Watch8 also lets you handle comms straight from your wrist so you can make calls, text, use some of your favorite apps, and organize your life. Your personal AI assistant is voice-activated as well, so it can help you get things done even when your hands are busy.

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A key YouTube feature broke for Android users

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August 7, 2025

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You'd think Android and YouTube would work together flawlessly, but early this week, that wasn't the case.

As reported and confirmed by 9to5Google, YouTube users on Android devices couldn't change the playback speed on videos. Changing the speed to anything other than 1x would simply not work, as the setting change wouldn't save, acting as if you hadn't done it at all. Obviously, that's not a great user experience, considering that Android and YouTube are both Google's responsibility. It seems a bit strange for Android users specifically to lose access to a core YouTube feature, but that's what happened.

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Google is killing millions of old links. How to check yours.

Thankfully, it seems that as of Wednesday morning, the issue has been fixed, per a YouTube community note. The note states that any users still experiencing the issue should simply close and reopen the app. Hopefully, by doing that, you can fix the problem and get back to frame-by-frame analysis of movie trailers at 0.25x speed.

For once, it paid off to use a Google app on iOS instead.

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Him trailer: Producer Jordan Peele turns football practice into a bloodbath

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August 7, 2025

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On top of directing horror hits Get Out, Us, and Nope, Jordan Peele has produced several exciting genre projects, from Dev Patel's Monkey Man to Nia DaCosta's Candyman, which he also co-wrote. Next up on his production slate is the football horror film Him, directed by Justin Tipping.

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'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' trailer: Rose Byrne is a mother losing control in A24 drama

Co-written by Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers, and Tipping, Him introduces promising young football star Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers). Not only does Withers have acting experience from projects like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Atlanta, he was also part of Florida State University's 2017 football team as a wide receiver. Hopefully his experience playing was nothing like Cameron's in Him, though, because the trailer makes it out to be a full-on nightmare.

After suffering a traumatic brain injury at the hands of an unhinged fan, Cameron thinks his football dream is dead. But when his hero, legendary quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), offers to train him at his personal compound, he's excited to accept.

However, Isaiah's training methods are far more violent than Cameron realized. (And football is already pretty violent!) We're talking smashing footballs into players' faces until they bleed as punishment.

But that's just the start of the horrors that await in Him, which demands that Cameron sacrifice everything to be the GOAT he so badly wants to be. Check out the unsettling trailer above.

Him also stars Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, and MMA fighter Maurice Greene, as well as hip-hop artists Guapdad 4000 and Tierra Whack.

Him hits theaters Sept. 19.

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