Day: October 23, 2025

• Nicole Shirvani is a full-time doctor and part-time real estate investor.
• She added short-term rentals to her portfolio for diversification and tax benefits.
• Before buying a short-term rental, she asks a few questions about the location and Airbnb rules.

Nicole Shirvani owns a combination of long- and short-term rentals, and is currently renovating a triplex that she plans to turn into a mid-term rental.

There are pros and cons that come with each type of rental.

Short-term rentals typically cash flow more, “but you do have more involvement,” Shirvani, a full-time psychologist who invests in real estate on the side, told Business Insider. “There are guests coming in and out, so there are just so many different logistics.”

With mid- and long-term rentals, “once you find an appropriate tenant and the place is doing well and the maintenance is all done, you don’t really get involved as much, but the rental income is generally going to be lower,” she added.

Shirvani, who manages three vacation rentals — one in Florida, where she resides, and two in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia — added short-term rentals to her portfolio for various reasons: diversification, tax benefits, and her own personal interest in design.

“There are some very legitimate tax benefits that you could take, and so I wanted to be able to take advantage of that,” she said, referring to the short-term rental tax “loophole” that allows investors to use property-related losses to offset their taxable income. “And, I just enjoy design and being a little more hands-on. I like to create those nice spaces for people and families to stay at.”

The vacation rentals have also provided an additional income stream, allowing her to boost her nest egg and save for her daughter’s future. Since January 2024, Shirvani’s short-term rentals have brought in six figures, according to her Guesty dashboard.

She asks herself various questions before investing in any short-term rental property.

1. What’s nearby?

First and foremost, Shirvani follows the age-old real estate rule of “location, location, location.”

“I’m looking at what’s near there that people are attracted to,” she said. “Is there a National Park that a lot of people love to go hiking in? Is it near major cities where you can get in the car, be at my place in two or three hours, and get out of the busy city for a quick weekend trip?”

For example, her two properties in the Shenandoah Valley are less than three hours by car from DC. One is located on the river, while the other is nestled in the woods in a ski resort area, making them excellent getaway spots for city dwellers.

2. Would I enjoy staying here?

Next, she asks if the location appeals to her. If not, she’ll likely pass.

With her Virginia properties, “I thought of areas that I would also enjoy staying at, and what appeals to me,” she said.

Investing out of state isn’t necessarily complicated, she added: “A lot of people find it nerve-racking — the uncertainty, not having potentially seen the property yourself and not being familiar with the area. And what I say to that is, the more research you do, the more you familiarize yourself with the area, the more comfort you will feel.”

3. What are the short-term rental rules?

This one may seem obvious, but it’s necessary to ask, “Is the area open to short-term rentals? Are there any rules against them?” she said, noting that short-term rental rules can vary significantly by region.

To succeed on Airbnb, “you definitely have to know your market,” said Shirvani. “You have to know what demands are there and what people need; you want a place that’s beautifully designed; and you want to have a strong team on the ground in case there are any issues or concerns, so you are able to address them right away, because with a short-term rental, you’re really in hospitality. You have to have that mindset and be willing to go the extra mile.”

• You win for now, AI haters. Some big brands are declaring their allegiance.
• Heineken and Aerie are the most recent to have joined the anti-AI trend.
• Humans are really good at detecting inauthenticity — and can easily get the ick.

Within throwing distance of Apple stores around Manhattan and Google’s New York HQ, bus stop posters teased the Big Tech giants.

“AI can’t generate sand between your toes,” one read. “No one on their deathbed ever said: I wish I’d spent more time on my phone,” said another.

The ribbing came from Polaroid, promoting its point-and-click Flip camera.

“We are such an analog brand that basically gave us the permission: We can own that conversation,” said Patricia Varella, Polaroid’s creative director.

It has some competition. A wave of anti-AI ads is appearing on TV screens, billboards, and social media feeds worldwide, as big brands tap into consumers’ weariness with the technology.

Heineken joined New Yorkers’ disdain for AI wearable Friend with a billboard campaign declaring “The best way to make a friend is over a beer.” Aerie’s promise not to use AI in its ads was the brand’s most popular Instagram post in the past year. In India, the candy brand Cadbury 5 Star ran a campaign entitled “Make AI Mediocre Again,” a fictional movement to flood the internet with nonsensical websites to trick content-scrapers. And DC Comics’ Jim Lee said the company will “not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork.”

It’s all in response to increasingly vocal AI haters. Never-AI Gen Zers cite reasons like the environment and mental health for eschewing the tech. Workers in Corporate America are mounting a resistance to pressure to use AI at work. Still, the incentive for companies is strong if the tech fulfills its promise of saving time and money.

For some brands, it’s time to pick a side.

AI ads give customers the ick

Ads generated by AI tools have also courted their fair share of controversy.

Coca-Cola rang in the holidays last year with a campaign depicting a fleet of lit-up trucks, polar bear families, and smiling faces — all AI-generated. In summer 2024, Toys “R” Us released an ad created by OpenAI’s Sora that showed its founder, Charles Lazarus, as a boy. Both ads were widely panned online as soulless and criticized for replacing human-made creativity with automation. H&M, Skechers, and Guess have also taken heat for using AI brand ambassadors instead of human models.

In contrast, some brands are eager to signal authenticity, said Haley Hunter, cofounder at the comedy-focused ad agency Party Land, whose client roster includes Liquid Death, Men’s Wearhouse, and Twitch. That’s especially important for younger people.

“They want unpolished, unpretentious, undeniably real,” Hunter said. “They care if the work feels honest, and we’ve yet to feel that true on-screen connection to an AI brand.”

A Pew Research study published in September found that 50% of Americans were more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021. More than half (57%) of those surveyed rated the societal risks of AI as “high,” with the potential weakening of human skills and connections the most common concern cited. And while most Americans said it was important to be able to tell the difference between AI- and human-generated content, 12% of those polled said they were confident they could.

That’s part of why clothing retailer Aerie is making it clear that its ads will only feature real humans. As an extension of the brand’s promise more than 10 years ago that it would no longer retouch photos of models, it told its Instagram followers this month that it’s committed to using “real people only” in ads.

Stacey McCormick, chief marketing officer, said she’s observed strong reactions to AI-generated content in other brands’ comment sections. It’s Aerie’s hope that with its anti-AI stance, companies are “a little inspired to do the same as far as building transparency.”

AI grabs attention, but that’s not always a good thing

Ian Forrester, CEO of DAIVID, a creative testing platform that measures viewer emotions, said the beef with AI-generated ads is that “they are a little cold; a little too bloodless to really move people in any way.”

His company evaluated the effectiveness of 21 ads, either entirely or partly AI-generated, and from the likes of Volvo, Microsoft, and Puma. They induced slightly more emotional engagement, attention, and brand recall from viewers than the industry average. However, they were 3% less likely to generate intense positive emotions than the industry norm and 12% more likely to generate feelings of distrust.

NielsenIQ found similar results in 2024: Even the best-quality AI-generated ads weren’t good at triggering memories in the brain.

“Brains have a prototype or a blueprint for everything we experience. If there’s something slightly different in that blueprint, it sends a signal to us that something’s just off,” said Megan Belden, global practice lead for ad effectiveness at NielsenIQ. The area where that was found to be most sensitive was in ads that featured human faces, human motion, and human connection.

“We’re really good at detecting authenticity in expression,” Belden added.

While entirely AI-driven ads may still be in their uncanny valley era, there’s no escaping that AI and the ad industry have become intertwined. Large agency groups from UK-based WPP to French holding company Publicis and US ad giant Omnicom have each pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in AI over the next few years. The pitch to clients is that agencies can act as a consultative partner to marketers trying to figure out how to use AI within their own businesses, while also harnessing the tech themselves to free up time for human creatives to do what they do best.

Companies across industries will weigh this balance since ditching AI altogether could put businesses at a major disadvantage. For now, at least, the AI haters are winning with some brands that are promoting their plans to keep it real.

“There’s always something in our nature, the analog element of us,” said Polaroid’s Varella, “that layer of imperfection that makes us human and beautifully imperfect — something we think is important to remind people.”

• Plastic surgeries, particularly facelifts, are on the rise.
• However, plastic surgeries aren’t always regulated — or safe.
• A plastic surgeon shared red flags to look out for, from a surgeon’s credentials to their marketing.

Plastic surgery has become both a Gen Z status symbol and a way to get ahead in corporate America.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, procedures like facelifts are on the rise, especially among younger patients seeking to slow down the signs of aging, and people who have lost weight through weight-loss medication and want to remove excess skin.

Finding a great surgeon isn’t so simple, Dr. Daniel Gould, a board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon in Beverly Hills, told Business Insider.

“Nowadays, everyone gets so caught up in technique — ‘oh, you had a deep plane, you had a SMAS,'” he said. “But the main factor is actually the surgeon.” He said he’s seen huge disparities in facelift results, for example, even if the procedure itself is the same.

Not everyone is qualified to perform plastic surgery, making it trickier to find a good surgeon.

To become a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, one needs to be certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons, a medical board that requires a medical school degree, about five years of general surgery training, and a minimum of three years of plastic surgery residency training (though some programs require six).

It requires much less time and training to be certified as a cosmetic surgeon. Doctors with prior medical board certification, such as being licensed as an OB-GYN or bariatric surgeon, can get certified through the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, which is not a medical board; it focuses solely on elective cosmetic surgery. They must complete a minimum of one year of cosmetic surgery training, perform 300 individual procedures, and pass an exam.

To the average consumer, both can appear to be “board-certified” surgeons. But it’s crucial to understand the difference and spot potential red flags to get great results.

“It’s like the ‘Wizard of Oz,'” Gould said. “You need to pull back the curtain, see who’s standing there.”

Be wary of ‘triple-board-certified’ surgeons

Gould said the “biggest red flag” is if the surgeon misrepresents their qualifications, something he said is very easy to figure out by looking at their website. If they’re board-certified, you should easily be able to see who certified them. Look for the American Board of Plastic Surgeons (ABPS), not the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery (ABCS).

He also said that even the best plastic surgeons only need one board certification from the ABPS, but some surgeons boast being double- or triple-board-certified from other boards, including the ABCS.

“Why do you need three board certifications to do a facelift?” Gould said. “Why don’t you just say you’re a plastic surgeon?” Adding more board certifications can sometimes mean that they didn’t do a multi-year plastic surgery residency, he said, the gold standard of plastic surgery.

Look for videos of their patients — not just photos

If a plastic surgeon offers great work, they should have an impressive portfolio, Gould said.

Ideally, that should also include videos of post-op patients.

“I’ve seen patients in my office; they have a beautiful before-and-after posted on the surgeon’s website,” Gould said. “But when you see them move, something’s off, something’s not right.” Certain parts of the face may appear overly tightened and may require additional surgery to correct.

There’s no such thing as ‘micro’ plastic surgery

Going under the knife and needing recovery time can sound intimidating. Gould said there are no shortcuts around those things if you want plastic surgery.

While terms like “micro-tox” signal less intense Botox injections (involving injections into the facial fibers instead of the muscles to achieve a less frozen appearance), Gould said the same doesn’t apply to surgery.

“A ‘micro-lift’ or a ‘mini-lift’ is just a marketing thing,” he said. “It’s like, what’s the difference between a snack and a meal?”

Often, micro-facelifts get pitches as doing “just a little” bit of tightening and requiring lower downtime. “But the truth is, it’s the same incisions,” Gould said. “It’s really just to address patients’ fear of surgery. We’re going to do the big thing, but we’re going to call it something small.”

It’s just not something high-in-demand surgeons need to do in the first place. “If you look at the most famous surgeons with the best-looking results, almost none of them advertise a mini- or micro-lift,” Gould said. They quell their patients’ nerves by showing them their prior work, not by “psychologically tricking them” into surgery.

Simple language can signal low-quality work

The best plastic surgery looks natural, Gould said. A facelift that aggressively tightens the skin can age poorly, making the face “look like a jar with the wrong top.”

To gauge the quality, Gould said to watch out for how the surgeon explains the surgery, both in person and in their marketing.

“You’re going to see how complex and educational the language is,” he said. “If it’s just really simple, that’s going to be your facelift.”

For example, he said some surgeons market “vertical facelifts” to explain how gravity ages the skin. But that’s an oversimplification, he said — faces also move forward as we age, the results varying based on the face shape.

Sometimes, surgeons are just trying to break it down to consumers who aren’t surgeons themselves, Gould said, adding that many patients are more nuanced and want to know more.

The best-case scenario is having a long consultation with the surgeon to ask detailed questions about how the procedure works. If they know their stuff, they should demonstrate it.

Don’t fall for big promises — or discounts

Gould said that patients sometimes have unrealistic expectations about plastic surgery, thinking a great facelift will last forever. It’s the surgeon’s job to also manage those expectations, he said.

“If you look at how many years you think a facelift took off, that’s probably how long it’s going to last,” he said, noting to be skeptical of surgeons who say otherwise.

The other red flag is the cost. The average price of a facelift is $18,474, but it can range from $50,000 to $100,000, depending on the surgeon.

“Not every expensive surgery is a good one, but I’m just saying there’s a big differentiator,” Gould said. If you magically find an incredible “deal” on a facelift, it probably isn’t.

“That’s something that everybody kind of knows, but they kind of try to fool themselves,” Gould said. ” If someone’s a high-level surgeon and they’ve done high-level work for a long time, that’s why they cost more.”

• Elon Musk said xAI’s chatbot Grok will release “watchable” full-length films next year.
• XAI tutors have annotated short videos to train the AI, including Hollywood films, workers say.
• XAI is one of many AI companies that are navigating complex copyright concerns.

Elon Musk wants Grok’s name in lights.

Grok Imagine, an image and video generation tool, debuted in July. Musk said earlier this month that the company plans to release a “watchable” full-length film by the end of 2026, and “really good movies” in 2027. He has hyped up the chatbot’s image generation skills, from reenactments of the final scene of “King Kong” to a version of “Iron Man” in which he plays Tony Stark.

Over the past few months, employees at the AI company have worked on multiple internal video annotation projects.

In August, dozens of AI tutors began painstakingly annotating short video clips for a project internally referred to as “Vision,” three people with knowledge of the initiative said. Vision’s onboarding process had workers label footage from Universal Pictures’ “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider.

Workers were instructed to perform a detailed labeling process on five- to 10-second video clips, the people said. They labeled shot composition, camera depth and view, cinematography style, and lighting, the documents show. Workers also provided in-depth breakdowns of the scene’s setting and each object in the field of view.

Like much of the AI industry, the use of copyrighted material to train models is fluid and complex. Some Hollywood studios and other rights-holders argue such training could infringe on copyright, while some tech companies contend it’s necessary to build sophisticated products.

Whatever side wins out will help determine how AI tools like Grok evolve, and who will profit from the creative work that feeds the system.

“At every stage of the process — downloading the data, storing the data, filtering, then with outputs, at every stage there is possible infringement,” Matt Blaszczyk, a research fellow at the University of Michigan Law School, told Business Insider. “The question is if they’re doing it for the machine to learn or to generate outputs.”

In response to a detailed list of emailed questions about this story, xAI wrote, “Legacy Media Lies.” The company responded with the same message to multiple follow-up emails requesting clarification.

Spokespeople for Universal Pictures did not respond to a request for comment. (In August, Universal Pictures began adding warnings to its films that the content “may not be used to train AI.”)

Two workers said they recalled annotating clips from other Hollywood films and TV shows as part of their work on Vision. The project also involved annotating creator-made videos and foreign films, workers said.

Two workers described Vision as similar to an exercise they’d expect to see in film school, and more detailed than most projects they’d worked on at xAI.

Employees also worked on a separate video project referred to as “Moongazer,” which involved identifying individual elements of the clips, like transitions, captions, and infographics. They said video clips included news segments, amateur videos, tutorials, and foreign films.

‘Heckboy’

XAI is one of many AI companies attempting to produce its own videos — and walking a fine legal line in the process.

Mark Lemley, the director of Stanford University’s Program in Law, Science and Technology, told Business Insider that Hollywood studios need to find a balance between protecting their work and encouraging technology that could benefit them in the future.

“Part of finding that balance is that if we want the technology to work well, it has to be trained on quality work,” he added. “You’ll get worse AI if you’re only using amateur videos or if you’re limited to a small subset of licensed material.”

OpenAI expressed a similar sentiment in a submission to the House of Lords communications and digital select committee last year.

“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression — including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents — it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” the company wrote.

In June, Disney and Universal filed a joint copyright infringement lawsuit against text-to-image AI company Midjourney, which has said it plans to release an AI video service. The complaint alleges the company trained its AI models on copyrighted material from movies. Midjourney said in a court filing that AI training is a form of “fair use” and is protected by copyright law.

Anthropic settled a copyright infringement lawsuit for $1.5 billion last month. The company was accused of using pirated books to train its large language model. Several news agencies have also pursued lawsuits against AI companies. In February, Business Insider joined several other news organizations in suing the AI company Cohere over claims of copyright infringement. (Cohere has filed a motion to dismiss the suit and has argued the content is fair use.)

Hayleigh Bosher, an intellectual property researcher at Brunel University, told Business Insider that the legal industry is still rushing to keep up with the rapid pace of AI innovation.

“The key factor seems to be whether the output will compete commercially with the original work and what that means for the market,” Bosher said.

Some AI companies have implemented guardrails to prevent the AI models from spitting out copyrighted materials.

When OpenAI released the newest version of Sora, its AI video generation app, it allowed users to create videos featuring characters from their favorite films and TV shows. A few days later, the company restricted users’ ability to generate copyrighted characters.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post that the company planned to “give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.” The company also said on Monday that it is working with actor Bryan Cranston to limit deepfakes on its video app.

In a handful of tests, chatbots with image generation capabilities and AI image generation tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Gemini were inconsistent when it came to restricting production of copyrighted images.

When Business Insider initially asked ChatGPT to create an image of Hellboy, the large language model said it “can’t create or modify copyrighted characters like Hellboy directly.” The bot offered to make “something inspired by Hellboy” instead.

The result: a red-skinned and horned demon named “Heckboy.”

In later tests, the chatbot offered to create “a lookalike homage” and later agreed to add the title “Hellboy” to the image.

xAI’s Grok chatbot provided an image of Hellboy, and its Grok Imagine feature gave dozens of options for images and short clips of AI-generated Hellboy when Business Insider tested it.

Spokespeople for OpenAI, Google, Midjourney, and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

Lemley said it is risky for models to generate copyrighted content and added that “the suggestion of how to create something similar to Hellboy seems particularly problematic.”

Yelena Ambartsumian, an AI governance and intellectual property lawyer, told Business Insider that she expects many AI companies to try to train on as much high-quality content as possible.

“Their bet is: ‘We’re going to develop this and claim it’s transformative, so we don’t have to pay for the work. Our company will be a success and we can afford to pay for it later, or our company will fail and it won’t matter,'” she said.

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