Friday's Fast Five: Week of 7.28

Actors vs. AI: Strike brings focus to emerging use of advanced tech (NBC News): SAG-AFTRA has joined the Writer’s Guild of America in demanding a contract that explicitly demands AI regulations to protect writers and the works they create.

Fed approves hike that takes interest rates to highest level in more than 22 years (CNBC): In a move that financial markets had completely priced in, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee raised its funds rate by a quarter percentage point to a target range of 5.25%-5.5%. The midpoint of that target range would be the highest level for the benchmark rate since early 2001.

Taylor Swift Is Halfway Through Her Rerecording Project. It's Paid Off Big Time (Time): The 33-year-old pop star began releasing re-recordings of her back catalog in 2021 in an effort to reclaim her original music, after her initial label Big Machine Records sold her masters to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019. The remaking of Swift’s early discography, which includes her first six albums, has so far found success, with fans eager to listen to her new vocals, unpack its various easter eggs, and purchase new merchandise.

Why box office analysts predict another banner weekend for ‘Barbie,’ stronger legs for ‘Oppenheimer’ (Los Angeles Times): A strong second weekend for the films would be another triumph for the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, which saw viewers flock to theaters last weekend to watch the two wildly different films — one a fuschia daydream, the other a moody R-rated biopic — with some seeing the features in a back-to-back binge. Coming amid dual Tinseltown strikes — and with the future of the in-person theater-going experience looking shaky thanks to the rise of streaming and the pandemic’s knock-on effects — the outsized success of both movies signaled that audiences still have an appetite for auteur-driven event movies (and ones that don’t center on superheroes, to boot).

People Have Begun to Love Apple’s Most Hated Product (Wall Street Journal): Tim Cook once apologized for Apple Maps; now it is the preferred navigation app for some. Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a rare apology to customers and fired his head of software. The company then spent years trying to fix the service. Now, according to customers and user-experience analysts, it has.