To start, a drool-worthy carpaccio made from vine-ripe tomatoes. Though traditionally meat based, carpaccio, said to have been named for Vittore Carpaccio, the Venetian painter known for his use of deep red, can refer to any dish that is presented thinly sliced and spread across the plate. But the recipe here is much more than a mere plate of sliced tomatoes. The key is using truly ripe ones, no matter what color they are, but large red ones are ideal.

Use your best extra-virgin olive oil for the dressing, which also features briny shallots and capers, a whiff of garlic and a touch of anchovy. Finish with a handful of torn basil leaves for an easily executed first course.

For a seasonal main, firm, meaty fish like striped bass or halibut makes a good choice for pairing with the sweet pepper harvest. It’s fine to use standard bell peppers, but preferably, find some wonderful shapely variety like the curvy corno di toro, available in shades of red, yellow and orange. An assortment of colors makes for a dramatic rendition. Cooking all of the peppers slowly in olive oil, with onion and garlic, punched up with cayenne and smoked paprika, intensifies their sweetness.

To maximize the peppers and avoid any odd scraps, cut them in half lengthwise, right through the stem, then remove the stems, veins and seeds (as opposed to cutting off the tops and bottoms first, as some recipes advise).

I recommend making the pepper mixture well in advance, even a day ahead, so the only cooked-to-order parts of the dish will be preparing the fish and any last-minute herb chopping.

To finish, enter those late-summer plums — especially the small dark purple, yellow-fleshed Italian ones, which are a delight, and highly recommended. (If you can’t find them, other types of plum or even pluots will work for this dessert.)

Simply split them in half and arrange them cut side up in a pie plate, then scatter with a crunchy almond-scented, streusel-like topping and bake. Serve warm or at room temperature, with a dollop of crème fraîche or barely sweetened softly whipped cream for the final exercise in simple seasonal cooking, delivering real flavor with ease.

Recipe: Tomato Carpaccio

By David Tanis

Really not much more than a plate of sliced tomatoes, the key to this dish is truly ripe tomatoes, the kind you get at the farmers’ market at summer’s end. It doesn’t matter what color they are, though large red ones are ideal. Use your best extra-virgin oil for the dressing, which also features briny shallots and capers, a whiff of garlic and a touch of anchovy. Finish with a handful of basil leaves.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 to 6 large tomatoes on the vine (about 3 pounds)
• 4 anchovy fillets, rinsed and roughly chopped
• 2 teaspoons capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
• 1 large shallot, finely diced
• 1 small garlic clove, grated
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Basil leaves, for garnish

Preparation:

1. Wash and core the tomatoes. With a serrated knife, slice them as thinly as possible, then cover a platter edge to edge with a single layer of slices.

2. In a small bowl, combine anchovy, capers, shallot and garlic. Add a good pinch of salt and stir to combine. Add vinegar and let steep for 10 minutes, then whisk in olive oil. Taste and adjust seasoning.

3. To serve, sprinkle tomatoes lightly with salt, then spoon the dressing generously and evenly over everything. Grind pepper over the platter and garnish with basil leaves.

Recipe: Baked Fish With Slow-Cooked Peppers

By David Tanis

Meaty fish like striped bass, swordfish and halibut make good choices for pairing with the late-season vegetable harvest, specifically sweet peppers. Whether you use standard bell peppers, Italian “frying” peppers or some wonderful shapely variety, like corno di toro, cut them in half vertically, right through the stem, then remove the veins and seeds (as opposed to cutting off the tops first). That way, you’ll be able to make long slices, without any oddly sized leftover bits.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

For the Fish:

• 4 boneless (skin-on or skinless) fillets of striped bass or halibut (about 2 pounds)
• Salt and black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, for greasing the pan

For the Peppers:

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick half-moons
• 6 bell peppers in a mix of colors, sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne
• 1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley
• 1 tablespoon snipped chives

Preparation:

1. Season fish on both sides with salt and pepper. Using a spice mill or a mortar and pestle, grind coriander and fennel seeds to a powder. Combine with lemon zest, then rub mixture into each fillet. (At this point, you can cook right away or refrigerate for up to 4 hours, then bring to room temperature to cook.)

2. Prepare the peppers: Set a Dutch oven or wide, heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil. When the oil looks wavy, add onion and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until onion begins to brown and soften, about 5 minutes. Add the sliced peppers with a good pinch of salt and the garlic, paprika and cayenne, and turn heat to medium. Simmer with lid ajar, stirring occasionally, until mixture thickens, about 15 minutes more. (Peppers should be quite soft and cooking them down may take up to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning along the way.) Set aside and let steep. (You can make the peppers hours or up to a day ahead and keep refrigerated.)

3. To cook fish, heat oven to 375 degrees and set a large cast-iron pan over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Lay fish in pan in one layer and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. Flip fillets with a spatula and carefully set the pan in the oven, uncovered. Bake for 3 to 5 minutes, until the fish is firm and beginning to flake. Sprinkle fish with parsley and chives, and serve with the peppers.

Recipe: Plum-Almond Crumble

By David Tanis

Late-summer plums, especially the small dark purple, yellow-fleshed ones called Italian prunes, are a delight. They are handy for cakes and tarts, but here, they are baked with an almond-scented, streusel-like topping.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Total time: 55 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 pounds small purple plums (about 12)
• Granulated sugar, for sprinkling
• 1 cup/128 grams all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup/110 grams packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup/113 grams unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup/54 grams slivered almonds
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• Pinch of salt
• Crème fraîche or barely sweetened softly whipped cream (optional)

Preparation:

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Wash plums and cut in half with a paring knife. Remove and discard pits. (Larger plums may be quartered.)

2. Place plums cut side up in a deep 9- or 10-inch pie pan. (It’s fine if they don’t all fit in one layer.) Sprinkle lightly with granulated sugar.

3. Make the topping: In a medium bowl, place flour, brown sugar, butter, almonds, almond extract and salt. Using your fingertips, work the mixture until it resembles rough pea-size crumbs.

4. Mound the topping loosely over the plums, covering the entire surface. Bake for about 40 minutes, until nicely browned and oozing.

5. Let cool slightly, or serve at room temperature, with a dollop of crème fraîche or softly whipped cream.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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I’m guessing the last thing you want to do is figure out those meal plans (and don’t even get me started on those lunchboxes). Maybe you even want to reboot your cooking altogether? Let me help you.

I write a newsletter for New York Times Cooking called Five Weeknight Dishes, and last September, I created a list of 100 dinner recipes for you to try. Now I’m back with a whole new list for you to make in the months ahead, in honor of the back-to-school energy that rolls off Labor Day weekend and propels you through the months ahead. This article includes seven recipes, but you’ll find a full list of 100 at nytcooking.com.

The thing all these recipes have in common — aside from their fast cook times and streamlined approaches to ingredients — is that they are all delicious.

Skillet Chicken With Mushrooms and Caramelized Onions

This comforting one-pot dinner is reminiscent of a rich French onion soup, but made in less time and with lighter ingredients. Cooking the onions in a hot, dry pan forces them to release their moisture, so that they shrink and become silky and sweet in 30 minutes. Serve everything directly from the pan, with some crusty bread to soak up all the juices, or shred the chicken and pile it on top of buttered noodles. For something green, stir in some spinach to wilt at the end or serve alongside a simple green salad or roasted broccoli.

By Yasmin Fahr

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
• Kosher salt and black pepper
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 3-inch pieces
• 2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 3/4 pound cremini mushrooms, stems removed and thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley or dill leaves and fine stems, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan or pecorino (optional)
• Bread or cooked pasta, for serving

Preparation:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 tablespoons oil, 2 tablespoons vinegar, the honey, mustard, red-pepper flakes and 1 teaspoon salt; whisk until smooth. Pat the chicken dry and season with salt and pepper, then add to the mixture, coating it well. Set aside at room temperature, stirring it once while you make the onions.

2. Heat a 12-inch cast-iron or heavy skillet over medium-high until very hot, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, then add the onions in an even layer. Season with salt, then cook, mostly undisturbed, for 4 minutes more, stirring every minute or so. Add the mushrooms, season with salt, and stir to combine. (It will look crowded, and that’s OK.) Allow to cook mostly undisturbed until the mushrooms shrink and start to brown, about 4 minutes, stirring every minute or so.

3. Stir in the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil and allow the onions to cook until they start to color, stirring and lowering the heat as necessary to avoid burning, about 2 minutes. Push the onions and mushrooms to the edges of the skillet, then add the chicken pieces to the center. Pour any remaining marinade (there will be very little) over the onions and mushrooms. Cook undisturbed for 4 to 5 minutes, then combine the chicken and vegetables and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes more. (Reduce the heat to medium if the onions look like they are burning at any point.)

4. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar, stirring and scraping up anything on the bottom of the skillet. Season to taste with salt.

5. Remove from the heat and top with the parsley and cheese, if using. Serve with bread or pasta.

Lentils Cacciatore

Chicken cacciatore is an Italian hunter’s stew that’s made by braising chicken with tomato, aromatics and vegetables, like red peppers, onions, carrots, rosemary, olives and so on. This braise’s cozy, deep flavors are equally tasty with red lentils in place of the poultry. In less than half an hour, red lentils break down to create a creamy, rich vegetarian stew. Carrots and red peppers make it a hearty meal, but you could also eat it over pasta, polenta or farro. If serving with pasta, thin the cacciatore with a little pasta water before tossing with the noodles.

By Ali Slagle

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Total time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 red bell pepper, stems and seeds removed, thinly sliced lengthwise
• Kosher salt and black pepper
• 1/4 cup capers, drained
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1/2 cup red wine or stock (or 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or sherry vinegar)
• 1 (14-ounce) can crushed or diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup red lentils (see Tip)

Preparation:

1. In a large Dutch oven or pot, heat the oil over medium-high. Add the carrots and bell pepper, season with salt and pepper, and cook until just softened, 3 minutes.

2. Add the capers, tomato paste, garlic and rosemary and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomato paste begins to stick to the bottom of the pot, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Add the wine, season with salt and pepper, and cook until nearly all the liquid has evaporated, 2 to 3 minutes.

4. Add the tomatoes, red lentils and 2 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil, partly cover, then reduce the heat and simmer until the lentils start to break down and lose their shape, 20 to 25 minutes. Stir vigorously from time to time to scrape any stuck lentils from the bottom of the pot. Season generously with salt and pepper.

Tips: You could also use canned white beans, or dried brown lentils, which won’t break down as much as red lentils.

Dumpling Noodle Soup

Keep a package or two of frozen dumplings in your freezer for this warming weeknight meal. This recipe is loosely inspired by wonton noodle soup, but replaces homemade wontons with store-bought frozen dumplings for a quick alternative. The soup base, which comes together in just 10 minutes, is surprisingly rich and full-bodied, thanks to the trio of ginger, garlic and turmeric. Miso paste brings extra savoriness, but you could substitute soy sauce or tamari. Scale up on veggies if you like; carrots, peas, snow peas or mushrooms would be excellent additions. Any type of frozen dumpling works in this dish, making it easy to adapt for vegan, vegetarian or meat-loving diners.

By Hetty Lui McKinnon

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• Kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
• 6 ounces thin dried wheat, egg or rice noodles
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 (2-inch) piece ginger, grated
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and grated
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• 2 tablespoon white miso paste
• 16 ounces frozen dumplings (not thawed)
• 4 baby bok choy (about 12 ounces), trimmed and each cut into 4 pieces through the stem
• 1 small head broccoli (about 9 ounces), cut into bite-size florets
• Handful of cilantro or chopped scallions, for serving

Preparation:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook according to package instructions, until the noodles are just tender. Drain, rinse with cold water and drain well again. Divide them among four serving bowls.

2. Place the same large pot over medium heat, and add sesame oil, ginger and garlic. Stir and cook for 30 seconds, until aromatic. Add turmeric, and stir for 15 seconds, until fragrant.

3. Pour the vegetable stock into the pot, then season with 1 teaspoon of salt. Cover and cook for 8 to 10 minutes on medium heat, to allow flavors to meld.

4. Remove the lid and add the miso paste, stirring constantly until it is dissolved. Taste, and season with more salt, if needed.

5. Increase the heat to medium-high, and carefully drop the dumplings into the broth. When they float to the top, add the baby bok choy and broccoli, and cook for about 2 minutes, just until the broccoli is crisp-tender.

6. Ladle the broth, dumplings, baby bok choy and broccoli into the four bowls over the noodles. To serve, top with cilantro or chopped scallions.

Sticky Miso Salmon Bowl

Miso salmon is an easy meal for any night of the week but it gets taken to a whole other level here with the additions of grapefruit and honey. Combining the zest and juice from the grapefruit with honey, miso and a bit of ginger gives the fish a sticky-tangy finish when broiled. The sushi rice is mixed with a humble pat of butter and some sliced scallions, making it a comforting counterpart to this simple fish for an elegant weeknight dinner.

By Andy Baraghani

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sushi rice
• 3 tablespoons white miso
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 2 teaspoons fresh grapefruit zest plus 1 tablespoon juice
• 4 (6- to 8-ounce) skinless salmon fillets, patted dry
• Salt and pepper
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cubed
• Any combination of kimchi, chile crisp, toasted nori sheets, and sliced cucumber, avocado or radish, for serving

Preparation:

1. Put the rice in a medium bowl and fill with cool tap water. Run your fingers through the rice, gently swooshing the grains around to loosen the starch. Dump out as much water as you can and repeat until the water runs slightly more clear, another two to three rinses.

2. Drain the rice and transfer to a small or medium saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid. Pour in 2 1/4 cups cool water and bring to a boil over medium-high. Give the rice a stir to help keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot, then cover and decrease heat to low. Cook without lifting the lid for 18 minutes. (Set your timer!)

3. While the rice is cooking, place a rack about 5 inches from the broiler heat source and set the broiler to high. Whisk the miso, honey, oil, ginger and grapefruit zest and juice in a large bowl. Season the salmon lightly with salt and add to the bowl. Gently toss to coat. Marinate at room temperature until the timer for the rice goes off.

4. Remove the pot of rice from the heat and let steam, covered, for 10 minutes, while you cook the salmon.

5. Using tongs, arrange the salmon on a foil-lined rimmed sheet tray. Make sure to leave the marinade on and spread any excess on top of the fillets. (This step will make for better browning.) Broil the salmon until glossy and charred in most spots, about 5 minutes for medium-rare or 7 minutes for medium. Your timing will also depend on whether or not you’d like a little char on top.

6. Uncover the rice and add the scallions and butter. Season with salt and several grinds of pepper. Fluff the rice with a rubber spatula until each grain is coated. Serve the salmon over the rice and add any of the toppings you desire.

Sausage Smash Burgers

The delightful characteristics of a beef smash burger — thin, quick-cooking patties with a superbly caramelized ragged edge — are applied here to Italian-style sausage. (The stress relief from smashing food is yet another smash burger perk.) Mayo smeared on soft brioche buns along with a tangle of sautéed sweet peppers and onions top the patties, making this a bit like the sausage and peppers of the burger world. Optional oregano adds a fresh herbal accent. Each bite is savory, rich, sweet and smashingly craveable. These sandwiches are delicious all by themselves, but if you’d like a side, serve with a green salad or French fries.

By Christian Reynoso

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 pound loose pork sausage, such as mild or hot Italian sausage
• 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons neutral oil, plus more if needed
• 2 small yellow, orange or red bell peppers (about 10 ounces total), halved, stemmed and thinly sliced
• 1/2 large red or yellow onion (about 5 ounces), thinly sliced from root to stem
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• Salt and pepper
• 2 teaspoons red or white wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 4 brioche or burger buns, split and lightly toasted
• 2 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves (optional)

Preparation:

1. Form the sausage into 4 roughly shaped spheres and set aside.

2. In a large skillet, preferably cast-iron, heat 2 tablespoons of oil over medium-high. Add the peppers, onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 6 to 8 minutes. (Cook in batches, if the pan seems crowded.) Transfer to a medium bowl, add the vinegar, toss and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

3. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons oil to the same skillet and heat on high. Once very hot, add 2 sausage portions to the pan, then smash them down with a spatula or metal press into 1/2-inch-thick patties. Cook, undisturbed, until deeply browned and caramelized on the bottom, about 2 minutes, then flip over and cook until just cooked through, 1 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and repeat with the remaining sausage, adding more oil if necessary.

4. While the burgers are cooking, spread the mayonnaise on the inside of each piece of brioche, and, if using, sprinkle the oregano over. Top bottom buns with sausage patties, sautéed peppers and onions, then top buns, and serve.

Eggplant Adobo

This superpunchy, one-skillet vegetarian meal is inspired by chicken adobo, a beloved Filipino dish. Here, eggplant cooks in rich, tangy adobo sauce — a blend of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, black pepper and bay leaf — absorbing the savory flavors as it simmers. Coconut milk is added in some versions of adobo, creating a rich, silky texture to balance out the sauce’s tart notes. This recipe includes a shower of fragrant basil, which brings a fresh hit that lifts the dish. (Thinly sliced scallions would also be great.) Serve the eggplant over rice to catch all of its flavorful drippings.

By Kay Chun

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

• 5 tablespoons neutral oil, such as canola or safflower
• 1 1/2 pounds eggplant (preferably small Italian eggplant), cut into 1-inch cubes (about 8 cups)
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon turbinado or light brown sugar
• 1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 fresh or dried bay leaf
• 1/4 cup chopped basil, plus additional small leaves for garnish
• Steamed jasmine rice, for serving

Preparation:

1. In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium. Add half of the eggplant, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate and repeat with 2 tablespoons of the oil and the remaining eggplant.

2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine soy sauce, coconut milk, vinegar, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and 2 tablespoons of water; mix well.

3. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and the onion to the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly golden, 3 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant, 1 minute.

4. Add the browned eggplant, soy sauce mixture and bay leaf and toss to evenly coat. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook, stirring every 5 minutes, until the eggplant is tender but still has structure, about 10 minutes. Uncover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens and nicely coats the eggplant, about 2 minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the chopped basil.

5. Divide the eggplant mixture over rice among bowls. Garnish with basil leaves and serve warm.

Peanut Butter Noodles

This nutty midnight pasta is a dream to cook, as it requires just a handful of pantry staples and one pot. Peanut butter (the less fancy, the better) anchors a creamy sauce swathed in umami. Accentuated by a good, salty Parmesan, these noodles recall those cheesy peanut butter sandwich crackers. They make an ideal dinner for one, but the amounts can easily be doubled or quadrupled as needed. For an equally gripping vegan alternative, try swapping out the butter for olive oil and the cheese for nutritional yeast.

By Eric Kim

Yield: 1 serving

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• Salt
• 4 ounces spaghetti or 1 individual package instant ramen (seasoning packet saved for another use)
• 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon finely grated Parmesan, plus more for serving
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce

Preparation:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil (and salt it, if using spaghetti). Cook the noodles according to package instructions. Reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water, then drain the noodles and return to the pot. Turn off the heat.

2. Add the peanut butter, butter, Parmesan and soy sauce. Vigorously stir the noodles for a minute, adding some reserved cooking water, a tablespoon or two at a time, until the sauce is glossy and clings to the noodles. Season to taste with salt.

3. Top with more cheese, if you’d like, and serve immediately.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Boys were using “nudification” apps to turn photos of their female classmates into deepfake pornography, using images of the girls’ faces, from photos in which they were fully clothed, and superimposing them onto images of naked bodies generated by artificial intelligence.

But unlike many parents who worry about the threats posed to their children in a world of ever-changing technology, Meré, the mother of a 16-year-old girl, had the power to do something about it. As the chief deputy city attorney in San Francisco, Meré rallied her co-workers to craft a lawsuit, filed in state court Wednesday night, that seeks to shut down the 16 most popular websites used to create these deepfakes.

The legal team said it appeared to be the first government lawsuit of its kind aimed at quashing the sites that promote the opportunity to digitally “undress” women and girls without their consent.

After reading a New York Times article about the tremendous damage done when such deepfake images are created and shared, Meré texted Sara Eisenberg, the mother of a 9-year-old girl and the head of the unit in the city attorney’s office that identifies major social problems and tries to solve them through legal action. The two of them then reached out to the office’s top lawyer, City Attorney David Chiu.

“The article is flying around our office, and we were like, ‘What can we do about this?’” Chiu recalled in an interview. “No one has tried to hold these companies accountable.”

Several states have enacted measures criminalizing AI-generated sexually explicit depictions of minors, but Chiu said that requires going after the people creating and distributing the images, one by one. The new lawsuit out of San Francisco asks a judge to order the sites used to create the content to shut down altogether.

Chiu acknowledged that this strategy could be viewed as a Whac-a-Mole approach, since more sites could crop up. But the suit proposes to add more sites as the office learns about them.

The 16 sites targeted in the lawsuit were visited a combined 200 million times in the first six months of this year, he said. The entities behind the sites include individuals and companies in California, New Mexico, the United Kingdom and Estonia. Representatives of the websites either could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment.

One site promotes its services by asking, “Have someone to undress?” Another reads, “Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates,” when users can, it says, use the website “to get her nudes.” Some of the websites allow users to create images for free before charging for more images — usually using cryptocurrency, but sometimes credit cards.

The sites’ AI models have been trained using real pornography and images depicting child abuse to create the deepfakes, Chiu said. In mere seconds, the sites can make authentic-looking images of breasts and genitalia under real faces.

The technology has been used to create deepfake nudes of everyone from Taylor Swift to ordinary middle-school girls with few apparent repercussions. The images are sometimes used to extort victims for money or humiliate and harass them. Experts have warned that they can harm the victims’ mental health, reputations and physical safety, and damage their college and job prospects.

Yet it is not a problem that can be tackled simply by having conversations with teenagers about smart technology usage, since any photo of them, including prom and sports photos, can be snatched and manipulated without their consent.

“You can be as internet-savvy and social media-savvy as you want, and you can teach your kids all the ways to protect themselves online, but none of that can protect them from somebody using these sites to do really awful, harmful things,” Eisenberg said.

Once the images are circulating, it is nearly impossible to determine which website created them, making it very difficult for the women to successfully sue the companies, Chiu said.

Instead, the lawsuit seeks to shutter the sites and permanently restrain those operating them from creating deepfake pornography in the future, and assess civil penalties and attorneys’ fees. On the question of jurisdiction, the suit argues that the sites violate state and federal revenge-pornography laws; state and federal child-pornography laws; and the California Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits unlawful and unfair business practices.

San Francisco is a fitting venue, the lawyers argued, as it is ground zero for the growing artificial intelligence industry. Already, people in the city can order driverless vehicles from their phones to whisk them around town, and the industry’s leaders, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are based there.

Chiu says he thinks the industry has largely had a positive effect on society, but the issue of deepfake pornography has highlighted one of its “dark sides.”

Keeping pace with the rapidly changing industry as a government lawyer is daunting, he said. “But that doesn’t meant we shouldn’t try.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Laying in a hospital bed after multiple surgeries, de Lagarde, who just a month earlier had hiked Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband, Jeremy, wondered what the rest of her life would be like.

“I had thought I was invincible,” de Lagarde, a public relations executive at an investment firm in London, said in an interview.

She began thinking about what she could do. “I said, ‘OK, I lost this, I need a replacement, and it’s not going to be like some dud that has no function,’” she said.

Eighteen months later, de Lagarde, now 44, has regained some sense of normalcy thanks to major advancements in prosthetics that incorporate artificial intelligence. She has a new arm and hand, which she uses confidently to open containers, make morning coffee, water plants and put her clothes on hangers. Her 9-year-old daughter, Daphne, will sometimes hold the hand as they walk down the street.

The prosthetic hand, the most important and intricate piece, is powered by machine learning, a form of AI that excels at pattern recognition and making predictions based on past behavior. TikTok uses machine learning for its recommendation algorithm.

The advancements show how AI is seeping further into fields like health care. While many have raised alarms about AI’s risks, researchers said those concerns must be weighed against the technology’s potential to improve lives.

“When we get the opportunity to show people AI that is truly assistive for helping somebody, that’s positive,” said Blair Lock, co-founder and chief executive of Coapt, which made the machine learning software used in de Lagarde’s arm. “Health care is a good place to look for the sunny side of AI.”

Before being fitted with her prosthetic last year, de Lagarde spent months regularly visiting a London clinic to help train the software that would eventually power her arm. With electrodes attached to the end of her remaining limb, which was amputated at her biceps, technicians told her to think about making basic movements like picking up a glass or turning a door handle. The process triggered her muscles as if her arm was still there and provided data to teach her prosthetic how to react when she made certain actions or gestures.

Now when de Lagarde moves, sensors embedded in the arm send a signal to her hand to perform the job. The more she uses the arm, the better the software gets at predicting what she’s trying to accomplish.

“It would take me like 10 seconds and a lot of brain power to complete a movement like opening my hand,” she said. “Now I just open up the hand, and I realize I didn’t even think about it.”

The technology is not perfect. The arm weighs a lot, causing de Lagarde’s shoulder and back to hurt, and it has to be charged at least once a day. When the weather is hot, it is uncomfortable.

There is also no tactile function so that de Lagarde can feel what she touches. She has dropped her phone several times after forgetting that she held it in her right hand. Any hardware or software glitches can affect her.

“Every day, there is a moment where I think, oh my gosh, I miss my arm so much,” she said. “It makes you realize, as sophisticated as this is, our bodies are incredible.”

Cost is also an issue. The arm, elbow, hand and AI software are made by separate companies, driving up the expense. A full prosthetic arm like de Lagarde’s can cost more than 100,000 pounds, or about $125,000.

She paid for it in part by raising more than 30,000 pounds, or about $38,000, through a crowdfunding website. Covvi, the British maker of her hand, donated that portion of her new limb for free after reading about her accident.

Simon Pollard, chief executive of Covvi, said de Lagarde’s arm points to further advancements to come, which will affect people coming out of conflict zones, diabetes patients and victims of tragic accidents. Researchers are examining how to embed micro sensors directly into a person’s arm to provide even richer data for the AI systems to improve.

De Lagarde is closely watching the latest advances in hopes that she can be among those who benefit. “This technology is the silver lining for what happened to me,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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The song has been used in more than 8,500 TikTok videos since two independent music producers created it in July. Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris have seized on it, wagging their fingers and swinging their arms to it, some hoping to create its official dance. It was also reposted by @KamalaHQ, the campaign’s official TikTok account. Videos with the sound have racked up more than 40 million views overall, according to Zelf, a social video analytics company focused on TikTok.

It’s a marquee example of a new genre of political memes finding an audience on the short-form video app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

Politically minded Americans are increasingly embracing TikTok to make videos and trends out of snippets of songs and speeches in this election cycle. The app — a pandemic-fueled curiosity during the last presidential election — has since exploded its user base to 170 million Americans. About half of users younger than 30 say they use TikTok to help them keep up with politics and political issues, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.

“People are still doing dances to random songs, but now people are doing dances to remixes of rap with Kamala Harris speeches over it,” said Emma Mont, a digital creator and administrator of @OrganizerMemes, a liberal meme account.

While TikTok prohibits political advertising, unpaid political content is thriving on the platform — Vance, Trump, Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, each had verified accounts there as of last week. Users have also flocked to a remix of Harris quoting her mother in a speech last year, saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” and laughing, and to a clip that starts with Harris speaking and ends with a hip-hop song repeating, “Trump 2024.”

Seth Schuster, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said the team was tapping into viral trends both to “bring the conversation about the stakes of this election to the places a lot of our voters are getting their news from” and to expand its supporter network.

In response to the TikTok video, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said: “Cringe.”

Song snippets and catchphrases from pop culture are a core part of using TikTok. Users can select from a library of popular sounds when they make TikToks and search for songs and sounds related to topics that they’re interested in. Searching “Trump” or “Kamala” in the app’s sounds yields dozens of results, which have been used in tens of thousands of videos.

If users like a particular sound, TikTok is likely to serve them additional videos that include it — which is how it can seem that the entire internet is suddenly using a phrase like “very demure, very mindful.” (That meme sprang from a TikTok creator’s playful descriptions of how to behave in a variety of places, from work to drag shows.)

The “never Trump guy” song was created by Carl Dixon and Steve Terrell, two 34-year-old music producers with a company called House of Evo. They regularly make sounds on TikTok, including a popular remix of an evangelical sermon about margaritas last year, but they hadn’t dabbled much in politics until now.

Dixon, also known as Casa Di, and Terrell saw the footage of Vance’s comments in a post on the Harris campaign’s TikTok account that compared them with newer footage of him expressing support for Trump.

The two found Vance’s manner of speech “sort of melodic in a sense,” Terrell said. Dixon said, “We were like, what if we put this to a catchy beat or something?” The process took the pair under three hours, they said.

Their video started with footage of a member of the Harris campaign staff saying, “So this is really who Donald Trump chose as his running mate?” A different voice then says, “Drop the beat,” after which a sample of Petey Pablo’s “Freek-a-Leek” plays, remixed with Vance saying, “I’m a never Trump guy” and “I never liked him.”

“When Kamala decided to start running, me and Steve were figuring out ways to encourage people to vote or be aware of what’s going on,” Dixon said. “This is our first time doing something as politically charged,” he added.

Sounds like this one allow people to profess their political opinions, or share what they view as the stakes of the election, without having to formally expound on their beliefs, Terrell said.

TikTok is one of the few social media sites showing a sharp increase “in the percent of adults getting news there and an increase in just the newsiness of the platform,” said Elisa Shearer, a senior researcher at Pew. “A lot of that is opinion- and humor-based,” she added.

Sasha Khatami, a 24-year-old digital marketing coordinator from Alexandria, Virginia, said she had come across the song while browsing popular sounds on TikTok in July, soon after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

“Sounds are the number-one way to express your opinions,” Khatami said. “I don’t think people are sharing their feelings anymore. I think they’re making TikTok sounds and TikTok dances.”

Khatami, who said her earlier videos on TikTok typically received between 300 and 1,000 views, made up a dance to the “never Trump guy” song — and was startled and thrilled to see her post rack up hundreds of thousands of views as TikTok’s algorithm served it to other users.

Since then, she has performed the dance in front of iconic locations in the nation’s capital, including the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and has been tickled to see other TikTok users perform their own version of her shimmy.

While Khatami has been enjoying her newfound success on TikTok, she has been surprised by the volume of angry comments from supporters of Trump and Vance on many of her videos. She said she had sought to “turn that backlash into motivation,” like when a commenter declared, “Can we find this ladies dad so he can teach her about what the consequences are for what she’s doing?”

She put text from that comment onto a separate TikTok featuring her father and boyfriend, who had also learned the dance, posting it with the caption: “My dad is a never Trump guy.”

Khatami, who recently made her first political donation to Harris, said she planned to canvas soon, too.

“I feel so inspired by her campaign and what her being president could mean that I feel like I have to get more involved,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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I’m also sentimental for the staccato sounds and movements of cooking at this time of year. The chop-chop-chopping. Sizzles. Searing. As Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer, gets closer and my recipe-development docket fills with Thanksgiving dishes and holiday cookies, the stirring of steamy pots and hoisting of heavy sheet pans have started again — and I’m not ready.

So this is my scrapbook of the season. All of the recipes memorialize the speed and style of warm-weather cooking — each takes around 20 minutes — but don’t rely on fleeting summer produce. In the dead of winter, when you’re nostalgic for brighter times, return to these recipes for dinner.

1. Chilaquiles Verdes

Chilaquiles are beloved all over Mexico and across the U.S. Southwest. Tortillas are fried, simmered in salsa and adorned with a multitude of herbs and proteins that vary with the chefs cooking them. Some folks prefer their totopos (tortilla chips) crisper, while some like them softer. Chilaquiles can be doused in salsa, but just a bit can yield a meal just as delicious. Though it really is worth stretching for the best quality tortillas you can find and frying them to your liking, in a pinch, buying the best tortilla chips you can works, too. Bottled salsa will do, if absolutely necessary, but a quick homemade salsa will produce dividends in taste with relatively little labor.

By Bryan Washington

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

For the roasted salsa verde: (optional; see Tip below)

• 4 medium tomatillos, husks removed
• 1/2 small onion
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 to 2 small serrano chiles, stems removed
• 1 cilantro sprig
• Salt

For the tortilla chips: (optional; see Tip below)

• 5 tablespoons neutral oil (such as sunflower or grapeseed)
• 8 corn tortillas, each sliced into 6 wedges
• Salt
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder

For the chilaquiles:

• 3 tablespoons neutral oil (such as sunflower or grapeseed)
• 1 small onion, sliced into rings
• 3/4 cup/3 ounces crumbled queso fresco
• Salt and black pepper
• 8 large eggs
• 1/2 cup Mexican crema or sour cream
• 1/2 cup cilantro leaves

Directions:

1. Prepare the salsa verde (optional): Arrange a rack 6 inches from the broiler and set the broiler to high. Set a half-sheet pan lined with foil on the rack. Heat for 5 minutes.

2. Carefully add tomatillos, onion, garlic and chiles to the pan. Broil until blistered and charred, 10 to 14 minutes, turning once halfway through.

3. Transfer mixture to a blender. Add cilantro sprig and puree until almost smooth, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt.

4. Prepare the tortilla chips (optional): Heat a medium cast-iron or nonstick skillet over medium and add 5 tablespoons oil. Cook tortillas in batches, frying until golden and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes per batch.

5. Transfer tortillas to a wire rack or paper towels to drain, then place in a medium bowl. Season with salt and chili powder and toss. Taste and season accordingly. Once the oil has cooled, wipe out and reserve the skillet.

6. Prepare the chilaquiles: In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium, then add the salsa verde. (It should simmer upon making contact with the pan.) Simmer for 2 minutes, then taste and season with salt to your preference.

7. Stir in the onion, then add half of the tortilla chips and half of the queso fresco and toss to combine. Taste and season with salt, then add the remaining tortilla chips and toss again. Lower heat and cook until heated through.

8. In the reserved medium skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium. Working in batches, fry the eggs, cooking to preferred doneness.

9. Divide chilaquiles among plates. Top each with the remaining queso fresco, 2 fried eggs, 2 dollops of crema and cilantro leaves.

Tips:

If you are short on time, use 1 cup store-bought salsa verde and 6 ounces sturdy, thick-cut tortilla chips instead of making your own.

2. Shrimp Bathed in Olive Oil and Lemon

A simple but lavish bath of olive oil and lemon juice is the Italian way of showing off superfresh seafood. The key, according to Marcella Hazan, is that the dish should never see the inside of a refrigerator, which changes the texture of the seafood and the flavor of the olive oil. She calls for shrimp in this recipe, but the formula also works with squid, clams and meaty fish fillets.

Recipe from Marcella Hazan

Adapted by Julia Moskin

Yield: 8 to 10 servings as an appetizer, 4 to 6 servings as an entree

Total time: 20 minutes, plus cooling

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1 to 2 lemons)
• 2 pounds medium-large shrimp (about 26 to 30 per pound), peeled and deveined (tails optional)
• Flaky sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 large pinch freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Torn or sliced crusty bread, for serving

Preparation:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil, preferably not too deep, so you can watch the shrimp as they cook. Pour the olive oil and lemon juice into a baking or serving dish, preferably a white one to show off the colors of the finished dish.

2. Working in a few batches to prevent overcooking, boil the shrimp over high until just firm and opaque, 2 to 3 minutes, removing them to a colander with a slotted spoon. When all the shrimp are cooked, transfer them to the olive oil-lemon bath and gently mix to coat. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. The shrimp should be just covered with liquid; pour in more oil as needed. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

3. Just before serving, taste and adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with bread, spooning some liquid over each serving.

3. Thai Larb Gai (Chicken With Lime, Chili and Fresh Herbs)

Larb gai is a dish of browned ground chicken, mint, basil and red onions dressed with lime juice and ground red chiles that’s popular in Laos and Isan, neighboring rural sections of Thailand. (The dish is sometimes spelled laab, lob or lop.) It’s perfect hot weather food: spicy, crunchy and light, but rich in flavors and contrasts. Traditionally, this dish is made with a roasted rice powder that’s prepared by toasting raw rice in a wok, then grounding it to a powder, but you can find premade roasted rice powder at Asian markets. Whatever you do, don’t skip it — it adds a nuttiness that’s essential to the authentic flavor of the dish.

Recipe from Kwan Bellhouse

Adapted by Julia Moskin

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup raw sticky rice (see Tip below) or 2 tablespoons roasted rice powder (available at Asian markets)
• 16 ounces coarsely ground or finely chopped white- or dark-meat chicken (lean beef, such as sirloin, can be substituted)
• 1/2 teaspoon hot chile powder, preferably Thai or Lao
• 4 teaspoons fish sauce (nam pla)
• 5 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1/4 cup slivered red onions
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 2 tablespoons sliced scallions
• 10 whole mint leaves, more for serving
• Lettuce leaves
• Cucumber spears, for serving
• 4 cups cooked sticky or jasmine rice, for serving

Preparation:

1. To make roasted rice powder, heat a wok or skillet over high heat. Add raw rice and cook, stirring often, until rice is toasted and dark brown, but not black, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from wok and set aside to cool. Grind to a coarse powder in a mortar, blender or coffee grinder; set aside.

2. To cook chicken, heat a wok or skillet over medium-high heat. When very hot, add 2 tablespoons water, then add chicken, stirring constantly to break up any lumps. Cook just until cooked through, about two minutes, then transfer to mixing bowl. While chicken is just warm, add remaining ingredients (except for garnishes) and roasted rice powder. Mix gently but thoroughly. Taste and adjust seasonings. Mixture should be tangy, salty and lightly spicy.

3. Spoon onto serving plate and surround with mint, lettuce and cucumber. Serve with rice. If serving with sticky rice, pinch some off, mold into a small ball and dip into larb, scooping up a little of each ingredient. Or scoop larb into lettuce leaves.

Tips:

Larb gai is traditionally served with long-grain Thai or Lao sticky rice, sometimes labeled “glutinous.” It is not the same as Japanese short-grain rice.

4. Cumin and Cashew Yogurt Rice

Yogurt rice is a nostalgic dish for many South Asians and especially South Indians. It’s the ultimate comfort food and a no-fuss dinner that’s easy to put together. Cool, creamy yogurt and crunchy, warm spices create a dreamy contrast that makes this dish feel more whole meal-worthy than snack-friendly (though it’ll serve you well for both). Traditional versions include mustard seeds, curry leaves and urad dal, but this variation includes a different set of pantry staples: cumin seeds, cashews and red chile powder. The trio, plus fresh green chiles, gets sizzled in ghee, enhancing all the rich, smoky, spicy flavors, then gets poured directly over the yogurt rice. Add grated carrots and zucchini to give the rice more heft, or try it with a different combination of spices.

By Priya Krishna

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 3 cups cooked long-grain basmati rice, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger (from about a 1-inch piece, peeled)
• 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt (such as Morton)
• 2 1/2 cups full-fat plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons ghee (or unsalted butter)
• 1/4 cup raw, unsalted cashews
• 1 Indian green chile or serrano chile, minced
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon red chile powder (such as Kashmiri chile powder or ground cayenne)
• 1/4 teaspoon asafetida (optional)
• 2 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro

Preparation:

1. In a bowl, combine the cooked rice, ginger and salt. Fold in the yogurt. The yogurt should evenly coat the rice, so that it resembles a thick rice pudding.

2. In a small saucepan on medium heat, melt the ghee. Add the cashews and chile, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cashews are lightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Shift the cashews and chile to the side of the pan, and add the cumin seeds, toasting until they are slightly browned, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Stir in red chile powder and asafetida (if using), then turn off the heat.

3. Pour the spice mixture over the rice and garnish with cilantro.

5. Sardines on Buttered Brown Bread

In addition to celebrating the star, sardines, these open-faced sandwiches should be a celebration of good bread and butter. Choose a dense, dark European-style rye, thinly sliced or a rustic whole-wheat bread. They look nice open-faced, but they could, of course, be made in a two-slice format.

By David Tanis

Yield: 2 to 4 servings

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 small slices dark, dense European-style rye bread
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 (4.5-ounce) tin oil-packed sardines
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 tablespoon chopped dill
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced scallions or chives
• Arugula, for serving
• Cornichons or other pickles, for serving
• Lemon wedges, for serving

Preparation:

1. Lightly toast the bread, then cool to room temperature. Spread each toast generously with butter.

2. Distribute the sardines among the toasts. (Cut large sardines in half lengthwise; leave small sardines whole.)

3. Sprinkle each toast lightly with salt and grind pepper directly over the sandwiches. Garnish with chopped dill and slivered scallions.

4. Serve sandwiches open-faced, with arugula, cornichons and a lemon wedge.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Making sure the two don’t mix has become a fraught exercise in the growing, and often unpredictable, influencer industry.

With the presidential election looming, some marketing agencies have started to pitch advertisers on new tools that grade the so-called brand safety of social media personalities. Some of the tools even use artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood that a particular influencer will discuss politics in the future.

A tool recently introduced by Captiv8, a marketing firm that helps advertisers such as Walmart and Kraft Heinz connect with influencers, uses AI to analyze mentions of social media stars in online articles and then determines whether they are likely to discuss elections or “political hot topics.” The firm also assigns letter grades to creators based on their posts, comments and media coverage, where an “A” means very safe and a “C” signals caution. The grades incorporate categories such as “sensitive social issues,” death and war, hate speech or explicit content.

Viral Nation, another influencer agency, also offers marketers a product that makes “risk profiles” for creators. The tool, which the company has been using for more than year, assesses years of posts — including hours of dialogue from videos — and can detect whether people are holding weapons or protest signs in their content, even if those elements aren’t mentioned in captions or audio.

“Brands are definitely asking for this,” Krishna Subramanian, a founder of Captiv8, said. “We noticed from the election before, people wanted to know — have creators talked about the election and talked about the president? Because they don’t want to be in that conversation.”

The way marketers gauge suitability online directs billions of dollars in spending and helps shape discourse on the internet. After many major brands faced consumer boycotts during Donald Trump’s presidency for inadvertently running digital ads alongside conspiracy theories and terrorist propaganda, companies created new industry guidelines to help them avoid funding harmful content on social media. Since then, many advertisers have also stopped running messages in news outlets in the name of brand safety.

Some conservatives say the industrywide definitions have unfairly dinged right-wing sites.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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“Let’s not go overboard on this,” he said during a media briefing on the sidelines of an event he was hosting in London.

AI data centers represent a relatively small additional load on the grid, Gates said. What’s more, he predicted that insights gleaned from AI would deliver gains in efficiency that would more than make up for that additional demand.

In short, Gates said, the stunning rise of AI will not stand in the way of combating climate change. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, no, we can’t do it because we’re addicted to doing chat sessions,’” he said.

That’s an upbeat assessment from a billionaire with a vested interest in the matter. Gates is a big-time climate investor, and is the former head of Microsoft and remains a major stockholder in the company, which is at the center of the AI revolution.

And while it’s too early to draw a definitive conclusion on the issue, a few things are already clear: AI is having a profound impact on energy demand around the world, it’s often leading to an uptick in planet-warming emissions, and there’s no end in sight.

AI data centers have a big appetite for electricity. The so-called graphic processing units, or GPUs, used to train large language models and respond to ChatGPT queries, require more energy than your average microchip and give off more heat.

With more data centers coming online almost every week, projections about how much energy will be required to power the AI boom are soaring.

One peer-reviewed study suggested AI could make up 0.5% of worldwide electricity use by 2027, or roughly what Argentina uses in a year. Analysts at Wells Fargo suggested that U.S. electricity demand could jump 20% by 2030, driven in part to AI.

And Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers would account for 8% of U.S. energy usage in 2030, up from just 3% today.

“It’s truly astronomical potential load growth,” said Ben Inskeep, the program director at Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer watchdog group based in Indiana that is tracking the energy impact of data centers.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have all recently announced plans to build new data centers in Indiana, developments that Inskeep said would strain the grid.

“We don’t have enough power to meet the projected needs of data centers over the next five to 10 years,” he said. “We would need a massive build-out of additional resources.”

Tech giants are scrambling to get a grip on their energy usage. For a decade now, those same four companies have been at the forefront of corporate efforts to embrace sustainability.

But in a matter of months, the energy demands from AI have complicated that narrative. Google’s emissions last year were 50% higher than in 2019, largely because of data centers and the rise of AI. Microsoft’s emissions also jumped for the same reasons, up 29% last year from 2020. And Meta’s emissions jumped 66% from 2021 to 2023.

In statements, Google and Microsoft both said that AI would ultimately prove crucial to addressing the climate crisis, and that they were working to reduce their carbon footprints and bring more clean energy online. Amazon pointed to a statement detailing its sustainability efforts.

There are two ways for tech companies to meet the demand: tap the existing grid, or build new power plants. Each poses its own challenges.

In West Virginia, coal-fired power plants that had been scheduled to retire are being kept online to meet the energy needs of new data centers across the border in Virginia.

And across the country, utilities are building new natural-gas infrastructure to support data centers. Goldman Sachs anticipates that “incremental data center power consumption in the U.S. will drive around 3.3 billion cubic feet per day of new natural gas demand by 2030, which will require new pipeline capacity to be built.”

At the same time, the tech giants are working to secure a lot more power to fuel the growth of AI.

Microsoft is working on a $10 billion plan to develop renewable energy to power data centers. Amazon has said it used 100% clean energy last year, though experts have questioned whether the company’s accounting was too lenient.

All that new low carbon power is great. But when the tech companies themselves are consuming all that electricity to power new AI data centers, pushing up energy demand, it isn’t making the grid overall any cleaner.

The energy demands from AI are only getting more intense. Microsoft and OpenAI are planning on building a $100 billion data center, according to reports. Initial reporting suggests it may require 5 gigawatts of power, or roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors.

And at the same time that companies are building more data centers, many of the chips at the heart of the AI revolution are getting more and more power hungry. Nvidia, the leader in AI chips, recently unveiled new products that would draw exponentially more energy from the grid.

The AI boom is generating big profits for some companies. And it may yet deliver breakthroughs that help reduce emissions. But, at least for now, data centers are doing more harm than good for the climate.

“It’s definitely very concerning as we’re trying to transition our current grid to renewable energy,” Inskeep said. “Adding a massive amount of new load on top of that poses a grave threat to that transition.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Generally filled with bubbling fruit nestled into a buttery, sugary foundation, cobblers are beloved in the canon of homey desserts. The problem is, there’s no consensus about what, exactly, they are.

For some cooking authorities, like Virginia-born chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis, cobblers are baked summer peaches layered with raw pie dough to help thicken the juices, then topped with a flaky crust.

Others prefer syrupy berries covered in fluffy biscuits shaped like golden cobblestones, a likeness that may have inspired the name (or not; there’s no definitive etymology).

Then there are those who believe that cobblers consist of batter strewed with fruit, which bake up solid and caky with jammy pockets throughout.

Finding my own place on this spectrum was the first step for the final episode of my YouTube series, “Shortcut vs. Showstopper.”

All three of the aforementioned cobbler styles are fairly simple, but the batter version is the easiest. It’s made with melted butter, so there’s no need to worry about keeping the fat cold and using a gentle touch when working it into the flour — steps essential for light, flaky pie and biscuit doughs. So it was exactly the style I gravitated toward.

Standard batter cobbler recipes are so straightforward that they hardly need streamlining. But I did make one big edit: cooking everything in one skillet to reduce cleanup.

Then I made two tweaks to add depth but not work. The first was to simmer the peaches in a brown sugar and lemon juice instead of regular sugar to lend caramel notes and tang. I took it one step further by letting the butter brown after melting it, which gives the cobbler a nutty, toasty character.

Creating anything more elaborate for a showstopping recipe was a bigger challenge. After all, the point of cobbler is a fuss-free, casual and delectable dessert. I’d need a compelling reason to complicate it.

The answer was right in front of me, or rather behind me, in an upside-down peach cobbler, which I wrote about last summer. The idea here is that French apple tarte Tatin meets biscuit-topped peach cobbler, and both go head over heels.

To make it, I use peaches instead of the usual apples, letting them simmer in caramel and their own juices until they turn translucent and candied. Crunchy-topped sour cream biscuits stand in for the usual puff pastry.

Though you can make both cobblers year-round with frozen or out-of-season fruit, fresh peaches and their stone fruit cousins (nectarines, apricots and plums) are all at their peak right now and can stand in for one another depending on what you’ve got. You don’t even need pristine fruit. Cobblers are a perfect place to use up the overripe specimens that are starting to weep juices all over your fruit bowl — before you get a chance to eat them over the sink.

Instead, let those juices burble and concentrate in the oven’s high heat, imbuing your cobbler with an inimitable perfume — no matter what version you decide to make.

Recipe: Easy Buttermilk Peach Cobbler

By Melissa Clark

This easy peach cobbler is made by layering ripe, juicy fruit over batter rather than nestling it under biscuits or pie dough, giving it a tender, cakelike texture. Browning the butter before merging it with the batter adds nutty, caramelized notes, while buttermilk gives it a lovely tang. Fresh summer peaches (or other stone fruit like nectarines, apricots and plums) are ideal here, but frozen fruit also works well. Serve this warm or at room temperature, preferably on the same day as baking.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Total time: 70 to 80 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 pounds fresh peaches, pitted and sliced (peeling is optional), or 6 cups frozen peach slices
• 1/2 cup/110 grams packed dark brown sugar
• 2 to 3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup/113 grams unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups/187 grams all-purpose flour
• 1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar, more for sprinkling
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups/355 milliliters buttermilk
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavoring, such as freshly grated nutmeg, citrus zest, ground cinnamon, ginger or vanilla, or 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Preparation

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or nonstick pan over medium heat, combine the peaches, brown sugar and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring constantly, until the sugar melts and the liquid thickens slightly, 2 to 4 minutes. Pour peaches and liquid into a bowl and set aside. Taste a peach slice; if it seems flat, add another squeeze or two of lemon until bright and lively.

2. Using the same pan (you don’t need to wipe it out), melt the butter over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally, and let it cook until it smells very nutty, turns golden brown and flecks of dark amber appear, 2 to 4 minutes. Turn off the heat and reserve the brown butter in the pan.

3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour in buttermilk and any flavorings you like, and mix just until combined.

4. Scrape the batter on top of the brown butter in the pan, but don’t mix it in. The butter will rise and cover some of the batter at the pan’s edges, and this is good. Scatter the peach slices and their juices on top of the batter without stirring. Sprinkle with a little more sugar if you like, for crunch.

5. Bake until the cobbler is golden brown on top, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Recipe: Upside-Down Peach Cobbler

By Melissa Clark

This juicy pastry crosses a peach cobbler with a caramel-coated apple tarte Tatin. To make it, the peaches are caramelized with sugar in a skillet just like apples are in a classic tarte Tatin. But then, instead of being covered with pie dough or puff pastry, the fruit is topped with fluffy biscuit dough. While baking, the biscuits rise and brown, creating a golden, tender pillow on which the jammy fruit lands when it’s all unmolded. The whole thing is a bit more cakey in texture than the usual crisp-crusted Tatin, with the allure of fresh ripe peaches.

Yield: 8 servings

Total time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Ingredients

For the Biscuits:

• 1 3/4 cups/225 grams all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup/50 grams granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 6 tablespoons/85 grams cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon/192 milliliters sour cream, more for serving
• 1 tablespoon Demerara or raw sugar

For the Filling:

• 3/4 cup/150 grams granulated sugar
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 4 tablespoons/56 grams unsalted butter, cut into pieces, at room temperature
• 2 pounds small peaches or nectarines (8 to 10), halved and pitted (if using large fruit, quarter instead of halving)
• Sour cream, crème fraîche or whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preparation

1. Place a piece of parchment or wax paper on a small rimmed baking sheet or a large plate.

2. To prepare the biscuits, in a food processor, pulse together flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pulse in butter just until the mixture looks like lima beans. Add 3/4 cup sour cream and pulse just to combine. Alternatively, you can do this in a bowl, cutting the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or two knives, then mixing in the sour cream. If the mixture is still too crumbly to hold together, add a tablespoon or two of water (or even a bit more: It should hold together as a crumbly, but not floury, dough).

3. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and pat dough together, incorporating any stray or dry pieces. Divide the dough into 9 equal pieces and roll them into balls. Transfer to the parchment paper-lined baking pan or plate, and flatten balls into 1/2-inch-thick disks; wrap loosely with plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes or up to 24 hours.

4. Heat oven to 350 degrees. To prepare the filling, in a 10-inch nonstick skillet, combine 1/4 cup water, sugar, salt and honey. Bring to boil, stirring. Stop stirring and continue to simmer until the caramel is the deep amber brown color of an Irish setter (it may be difficult to see with the skillet), 6 to 10 minutes.

5. Remove from heat and whisk in butter (stand back, the caramel may bubble up and splatter).

6. Arrange peaches, cut side down, as close together as possible in the skillet. Return to heat and simmer the peaches in the caramel for 5 minutes, then carefully flip the peaches to cut side up. Simmer for another 5 minutes to condense the juices.

7. Top peaches with biscuits. Brush the biscuits with remaining 1 tablespoon sour cream, then sprinkle with Demerara sugar.

8. Place skillet on a rimmed baking sheet to catch any overflowing filling, and bake until biscuits are golden brown, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool slightly (about 10 to 15 minutes but no longer), then carefully flip onto a serving platter, replacing any peaches that stick to the pan back onto the crust. It may look runny, but the caramel and juices will continue to set as they cool. Serve warm with sour cream, crème fraîche or whipped cream.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — With a swift flick of the wrist, Gennet Wondimu, owner of Ye Geny Injera & Mini Market in Inglewood, California, slipped a woven mat, called a sefed, under a freshly prepared injera and transferred it from the hot mitad, or griddle, to a long table to cool. Tiny holes covering the surface of the bread stared back invitingly.

“Aino k’onijo, ‘beautiful eyes,’ that’s what we call the injera eyes,” Wondimu said of the holes. “But sometimes the eyes are flat. That means the injera is no good.”

An assertively sour, spongy flatbread, injera is ubiquitous in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisines. Often, the nutrient-rich staple serves as plate and utensil. A variety of stews (such as alitcha kik, shiro, doro wat) and vegetable-based dishes (like tikel gomen) are eaten directly from the bread instead of a plate or bowl. The eyes soak up the sauces, while injera’s requisite tang balances the rich, bold flavors. The malleable texture of injera makes it easy to tear off a piece with one hand and scoop bites.

Necessity shaped Wondimu’s injera. After her husband’s death, she started a catering and injera business out of her home. Her son’s restrictive diet prompted her to use teff flour, which is traditional to the recipe and happens to be gluten-free, rather than the mix of teff and other grains, such as wheat, barley and buckwheat, that many in the diaspora use. Soon, demand grew, and, in 2018, she opened Ye Geny, where she sells injera made exclusively from teff flour and prepares it for various Ethiopian restaurants in the Los Angeles area.

Because injera can be challenging to make, the task is sometimes outsourced to people who do it especially well. Growing up, Genet Agonafer, chef and owner of Meals by Genet, a popular Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles, recalled how an “injera gagari,” as these experts are known, would regularly come to her home in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and prepare stacks in advance, stored in a beautiful woven basket called a mesob.

“In Ethiopia, injera is your breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she said. “We eat that every single day around the clock. So you make enough for days.”

In 1981, when Agonafer moved from Addis Ababa to the United States, teff was not available. Accordingly, the Ethiopian diaspora did what diaspora communities do: They adapted. Self-rising flour (a combination of all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt) stepped in as a substitute. But, while many in the diaspora took to this new style, Agonafer said that she never really got used to the texture or taste, far less sour than the original. Now, Wondimu provides the injera for her restaurant.

To prepare injera traditionally, a starter made of teff flour and water ferments naturally for days. Part of the batter, called leet, is then cooked in boiling water until it forms a thick smooth paste called absit, to ensure the injera is spongy and doesn’t crack. The absit is mixed with the remaining batter until smooth and pourable. Getting this consistency right is one of the many variables that can make or break your injera.

For the novice, homemade injera can take a lot of practice and the right environment for proper fermentation. And batter based on teff flour alone can be expensive and tricky to work with. The version here, not traditional like Wondimu’s, and not as sour but streamlined, is a good introduction to working with teff.

For Wondimu, working with teff is second nature. “People know it’s my injera,” she said as she poured the batter on the mitad in one thin spiral. Immediately, tiny holes popped up across the bread.

Like the individual notes of a rousing sonata, a thousand beautiful eyes gazed back in affirmation of a well-made injera.

Recipe: Quick Injera

Recipe from Steven May

Adapted by Naz Deravian

Assertively sour, injera is a spongy, round flatbread that serves as a nutrient-rich staple of the Ethiopian diet, as well as a serving plate and utensil. Preparing injera in the traditional method takes a lot of practice and just the right set of circumstances for the days’ long fermentation of the batter. This version uses 100% teff flour, but streamlines the fermentation process for the novice. It is not quite as sour and shortens the fermentation time with the addition of baking powder. The hallmark of a well-made injera is the “eyes,” the tiny holes that pop up on the surface of the batter as soon as it hits the hot pan. Ideally, you want many eyes to pop up on the top, plus a smooth surface underneath. (If you have eyes underneath, it’s a sign that your heat is too high.) The consistency of the batter should be somewhere between a pancake batter and crepe batter, and, ideally, you don’t want the injera to crack. You will need a 12-inch nonstick pan to mimic the mitad, the griddle injera is typically prepared on. Be patient and don’t worry if your injera is a little finicky at first. It can take some practice to get the heat and consistency just right. Place injera on a plate and spoon dishes such as alitcha kik, tikel gomen, shiro and doro wat on top. Tear off a piece of injera and scoop up its toppings.

Yield: 5 (10-inch) injera

Total time: 25 minutes, plus 48 hours’ fermenting

Ingredients

• 2 cups/280 grams teff flour (ivory or brown)
• 2 cups filtered water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons/6 grams baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon/1 gram fine sea salt

Preparation

1. Place the teff flour in a large, non-reactive glass or plastic bowl. Slowly whisk in the filtered water until the batter looks completely smooth and is the consistency of pancake batter. Make sure to incorporate any batter clinging to the sides of the bowl. If you rub the batter between your fingers it will feel a little gritty.

2. Cover the batter with a clean kitchen towel and leave in a cool spot out of the sun, like a pantry, to ferment at room temperature for 48 hours. Do not touch or move the bowl. After 48 hours, the batter should smell distinctly sour, the top should look puffy and cracked (a bit like a brain), and the mixture should separate, with liquid sitting in the bottom of the bowl.

3. Spread a couple of clean kitchen towels on a work surface for the injera to cool on, and prepare pieces of parchment paper to slip between the injera to stack them when cool.

4. With a soft cloth or paper towel, wipe the surface of a large (12-inch) nonstick pan (with a lid) to remove any residual oils. Heat the pan over medium-high for 2 minutes. While the pan is heating, stir in the baking powder and sea salt into the teff flour mixture until the batter comes together. It will deflate as you stir, and the sour smell will intensify.

5. Using a spouted 1-cup measuring cup, scoop out about 1/2 cup of the batter. Pour the batter in a thin stream into the center of the hot pan, then quickly tilt and rotate the pan to disperse the batter and evenly cover the entire surface of the pan. Try not to have any areas that are too thick.

6. Cook until the eyes (tiny holes) pop up and cover about 75% of the surface of the injera, and the edges begin to curl, about 1 minute. Cover and finish cooking through, about 30 seconds. Use a towel to wipe away any condensation that accumulates on the inside of the lid. (You don’t want the condensation to drip onto the injera.)

7. Remove the pan from the heat and, with the help of a spatula, gently slip the injera off the pan and onto a towel to cool. (Do not lift the injera off the pan with a spatula, it will break. Just nudge it off the pan.) Check the underside of the injera. Ideally, injera should consistently have eyes on the top and be smooth on the bottom. If there are eyes on the bottom, turn down the heat a little.

8. Carefully wipe the pan clean with a soft cloth or paper towel, and wipe any condensation from the inside of the lid. Repeat with the remaining batter, wiping both the pan and the lid between each injera. Take note of the heat and adjust to medium if necessary. If injera are cracked or dry, try placing the lid on sooner than 1 minute after pouring the batter.

9. When the injera is cool, stack on top of each other with parchment paper in between. Place injera in a large resealable bag and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. To serve, reheat in the microwave for 30 to 45 seconds. (Alternatively, you may wrap the injera tightly in foil and reheat in a low oven.)

Recipe: Alitcha Kik (Stewed Yellow Split Peas)

Recipe from Genet Agonafer

Adapted by Naz Deravian

Genet Agonafer, chef owner of Meals by Genet, offers an array of dishes using a variety of legumes at her award-winning Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles. Alitcha kik is a comforting, protein-packed yellow split pea dish that is spiced and tinted with turmeric. Alitcha refers to a meat or vegetable stew prepared without berbere, the fragrant, chile-based spice mix widely used in Ethiopian cuisine. According to Agonafer, the foundation of most Ethiopian dishes is onion. To properly cook down the finely chopped onion, she quickly boils it and then cooks it in oil with crushed garlic and the rest of the ingredients. Yellow split peas need plenty of water to soften. Alitcha kik shouldn’t be too thick; add water as necessary for a creamy consistency. Alitcha kik is traditionally served with injera, but it also pairs well with rice or bread of choice.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups/8 ounces yellow split peas (not quick cooking), sorted through, rinsed
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons grated garlic (from 5 to 6 garlic cloves)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• Kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)

Preparation

1. Combine the split peas with 4 cups of water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Adjust heat to medium and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the peas are completely soft but not mushy and almost all of the water has been absorbed, 40 to 45 minutes. Add more water, 1/2 cup at a time, to keep cooking the peas if necessary. Test multiple peas to make sure they’re cooked through. The mixture should be somewhat loose; if it’s not, add more water.

2. Meanwhile, place the onion in a large pot (the same pot you’ll use to make alitcha kik). Cover with 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Adjust heat to medium-high and boil, uncovered, until the onion is just softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.

3. Strain and return the onion to the pot over medium heat; add the oil and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, until completely softened and fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. You don’t want the onion and garlic to take on any color; turn down the heat if necessary.

4. Add the split peas, turmeric and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Adjust heat to low and gently simmer, stirring frequently and making sure nothing is burning or sticking to the pot, 25 to 30 minutes. Add a little more water as necessary; the consistency should be creamy and scoopable but not too thick. Taste, add salt if desired and serve.

Recipe: Tikel Gomen (Cabbage and Carrots)

Recipe from Genet Agonafer

Adapted by Naz Deravian

Vegetarian Ethiopian dishes are a hallmark of Genet Agonafer’s menu at her acclaimed restaurant in Los Angeles, Meals by Genet. Tikel gomen, a flavorful, turmeric-tinged cabbage dish, is simple to prepare without compromising on taste. Agonafer prepares her tikel gomen (meaning cabbage in Amharic) with fork-tender carrots; other versions may also include potatoes. The cabbage is silky without being mushy and stands up well to the pronounced garlic. To achieve just the right texture and flavor, Agonafer first boils the finely chopped onion before cooking it in oil with the rest of the ingredients. Tikel gomen is typically served with injera; while not traditional, it can also be served with rice or any bread of choice.

Yield: 6 servings

Total time: 1 hour

Ingredients

• 1 large green cabbage (about 2 pounds), cored and chopped into 1-inch pieces (about 12 cups)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons grated garlic (from 6 to 7 garlic cloves)
• 3 large carrots, scrubbed or peeled, then sliced into 2-inch sticks
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground turmeric
• Salt

Preparation

1. In a large pot, bring 10 cups of water to a boil. Add the cabbage, adjust heat to medium-high and boil until slightly softened but still with bite, about 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. Meanwhile, place the onion in a large (12-inch) pan with deep sides and a lid (the same pan you’ll use to make tikel gomen). Cover with 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Adjust heat to medium-high and boil, uncovered, until the onion is just softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.

3. Strain and return the onion to the pan over medium heat; add the oil and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, until completely softened and fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. You don’t want the onion and garlic to take on any color; turn down the heat if necessary.

4. Add the carrots, cabbage and turmeric, and season with salt. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are fork-tender but keep their shape, about 20 minutes. Taste for salt and serve.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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