Bohemian Rhapsody was never the most likely next token
Sascha van den Bloock, 1 October 2026 (AI Zeitgeist). Queen, 1975: opera inside a rock song, six minutes, no chorus. Models write the probable. Some songs need the improbable.
FAQ
What is this?
A wall of what the world says about artificial intelligence. Prognoses, warnings, ad slogans, politicians’ phrases, research jargon, single words. We call each of them a line. No commentary, no ranking. The only editorial act is putting them next to each other.
Who says these things?
CEOs, researchers, heads of state, senators, philosophers, essayists, anonymous engineers, marketing departments, and the models themselves. Every line in the archive links to its source, and wherever it can be found, that is the original: the speaker’s own post or essay, the interview, the transcript, the outlet that first reported it. Never a copy of a copy. Quotes are verbatim, shortened only by cutting at the edges, never rewritten.
How are lines chosen?
Two sets. The canon is curated by hand and meant to hold for years, though it does change: the classics, the slogans, the vocabulary. The news is distilled once a day from about 130 sources: media, company blogs, newsletters, philosophy magazines and research institutes, plus news searches for the people and topics that shape the field, from lab CEOs and heads of state to the philosophers asking what any of this means (the full list), by a language model working under fixed rules, then checked in code: length, no attribution on screen, no duplicates, and for quotes the exact wording must appear in the source. There is no daily quota: a quiet day adds nothing, a loud one adds a dozen. News lines leave the wall after 30 days and stay in the archive.
Is this written by AI?
Partly. The daily news lines are proposed by a model and filtered by code; a human reads the digest every day and can remove anything. The canon and everything on this page is written by people. Which is to say: the wall is about AI, made with AI, and the arguments on it are not the machine’s.
Why is nothing attributed on screen?
Because on screen the sentences should meet as equals. A slogan next to a warning next to a law. Who said what matters, and the archive tells you, one click away. On the wall it would only tell you whom to agree with.
What is the Time Machine?
On the first of every month, the previous month is frozen as a snapshot: the canon as it stood plus every news line of that month. The Time Machine lets you run the wall for any month or year back to November 2022, when ChatGPT launched. The months before September 2026 were filled in afterwards from the sources of the time, with the same rules as the daily update. It is the closest thing to a mood diary of the AI debate.
When does it update?
Once a day at noon Berlin time. The ring around the date fills over 24 hours; click it for the countdown. New quotes are marked in the archive for a day.
Can I use a line?
The lines belong to whoever said them; short quotes with attribution are fine under quotation rules. The wallpaper download and the embed code are for personal use. For anything else, write.
Who runs this?
Büro Bloock, a design studio in Cologne. AI Zeitgeist is an independent project, not funded by anyone on the wall. Errors, missing sources, a line that should not be here: hello@aizeitgeist.tv.
Is there an Easter egg?
Yes. We won’t say where, that would spoil it. It is off the record, it takes a little persistence, and so far it has mostly been found by people who click things they probably shouldn’t. If you find it, keep it to yourself. Or don’t: everything on this wall ends up quoted eventually.
Privacy
No ads, no profiles. Fonts are served from this site and your settings live in your browser. Likes are counted anonymously: one number per quote, nothing about you. We use Google Analytics to see which lines travel, but only if you allow it in the small note at the bottom. You can change that choice any time. See the privacy notice and imprint.