CEOs are reading fewer books because of AI—and it’s starting to worry them

In today’s CEO Daily: How leaders are contending with AI slop.

The big leadership story: Trump’s salary freeze prompts worries about worker retention.

The markets: Mixed globally amid more fighting between the U.S. and Iran.

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune .

Good morning.

What’s your take on AI slop? I now get multiple AI-generated PR pitches every day.

The format is comically uniform, from the greeting to the bullet-point topics, and I think it’s a disservice to the person being pitched.

We all crave that human touch.

More than 1 million people have clicked LinkedIn’s “seems like AI slop” button , and Graphite reports that AI now generates more online articles than humans do.

The explosion of AI-written content is sparking debates over how to handle op-eds like the one that investor Stan Druckenmiller wrote for the Wall Street Journal using AI, which sparked a response from his editor, and much debate about what’s appropriate. ( My take , with strong caveats, is that editors are to blame if a piece feels manufactured, predictable, and devoid of personality.

I also debated the topic yesterday on BBC’s The Media Show .) I’ve been asking people how AI is shaping what they consume and create.

At a party for David Booth’s terrific book Stay Calm earlier this week, a prominent academic told me he’s now using AI up to 10 hours every day, admitting he’s both obsessed and worried about what it can do.

But Booth, a pioneer of index investing and founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, is a fine example of what doesn’t change.

His book tells a story that only he can tell—how he went from a shoe salesman in Kansas to a $1 trillion asset manager—and it synthesizes a philosophy of investing that he’s discussed and shared for decades.