Digital
Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger takes charge of Anthropic’s AI Labs
CALIFORNIA: Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, is stepping into a more experimental role at Anthropic, moving from chief product officer to lead the company’s newly expanded AI Labs group.
After two years overseeing product strategy, Krieger will now focus on building directly with Anthropic’s models, working hands-on inside Labs to explore what Claude can do at the edges. The move signals a return to a maker mindset, swapping polished roadmaps for prototypes, tests and early user feedback.
Anthropic says the shift reflects both the pace of AI development and Krieger’s strengths as a builder. Labs is designed to incubate experimental ideas, pressure-test new capabilities and shape early products before they are scaled for a wider audience.
Krieger joined Anthropic in 2024 after co-founding Artifact and spending nearly a decade building Instagram from a simple photo-sharing app into a global platform. His move into Labs echoes that early chapter, where curiosity, speed and iteration mattered more than certainty.
For Anthropic, placing one of Silicon Valley’s best-known product creators at the heart of experimentation underlines how central Labs is to its future. For Krieger, it is a shift back to the thrill of making, this time at the frontier of artificial intelligence.
Digital
India leads global adoption of ChatGPT Images 2.0 in first week
From anime avatars to fantasy covers, users turn AI visuals into culture
NEW DELHI: India has emerged as the largest user base for ChatGPT Images 2.0, just a week after its launch by OpenAI, underlining the country’s growing influence on global internet trends.
While the tool was introduced as an advanced image-generation upgrade within ChatGPT, Indian users are quickly reshaping its purpose. Instead of sticking to productivity-led use cases, many are embracing it as a creative playground for self-expression, storytelling and online identity.
From anime-style portraits and cinematic headshots to tarot-inspired visuals and fictional newspaper front pages, the model is being used to create highly stylised, shareable content. Features such as accurate text rendering, multilingual prompts and the ability to generate detailed visuals with minimal input have helped drive rapid adoption.
What sets the latest model apart is its ability to “think” through prompts, generating multiple outputs and adapting to context, including real-time web inputs. But the bigger story lies in how users are engaging with it.
In India, trends are already taking shape. Popular formats include dramatic studio-style lighting edits, LinkedIn-ready headshots, manga-inspired avatars, soft pastel “spring” aesthetics, AI-led fashion moodboards, paparazzi-style visuals and fantasy newspaper covers. Users are also restoring old photographs, creating tarot-style imagery and experimenting with futuristic design concepts.
Local flavour is adding another layer. Prompts such as cinematic portrait collages and Y2K-inspired romantic edits are gaining traction, blending global aesthetics with distinctly Indian internet culture.
The surge reflects a broader shift in how AI tools are being used in the country, moving beyond utility to creativity. As younger users, creators and social media enthusiasts experiment with new visual formats, AI-generated imagery is increasingly becoming part of everyday digital expression.
If early trends hold, ChatGPT Images 2.0 may not just be a tech upgrade but a cultural moment, giving millions a new visual language to play with online.
