The dollar has its worst start to a year since 1973

RETAIL

Fashion “dupes,” or less expensive versions of high-end clothing and other accessories, are just about everywhere these days. They’re also drawing some businesses into legal battles. In the latest example, Lululemon slapped a lawsuit against Costco on Friday, accusing the wholesale club operator of selling lower-priced duplicates of some of its popular athleisure apparel. Across the retail industry, it’s far from a new phenomenon. But social media is pushing the culture of online dupe shopping to new heights as influencers direct their followers to where they can buy the knockoffs. Want a taste of Hermès’s $1,000 fuzzy slippers? Target has a version for $15. Looking for a $2,800 price Bottega Veneta hobo bag? There’s a version for $99 on online clothing and accessories upstart Quince, which has become a go-to for fashionistas. It’s not even the first time Lululemon has encountered what it says are knockoffs of its clothing, which often carry steep price tags of over $100 each for leggings and sporty zip-ups. Without specifying additional sellers beyond Costco in Friday’s complaint, Lululemon noted that a handful of companies have “replicated or copied” its apparel to sell cheaper offerings — including those popularized online through hashtags like “LululemonDupes” on TikTok and other social media platforms. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

TECH

Cloudflare, a tech company that helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, said Tuesday that it had rolled out a new permission-based setting that allows customers to automatically block artificial intelligence companies from collecting their digital data, a move that has implications for publishers and the race to build AI. With Cloudflare’s new setting, websites can block — by default — online bots that scrape their data, requiring the website owner to grant access for a bot to collect the content, the company said. In the past, those whom Cloudflare did not flag as a hacker or malicious actor could get through to a website to gather its information. “We’re changing the rules of the internet across all of Cloudflare,” said Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the company, which provides tools that protect websites from cyberattacks and helps them load content more efficiently. “If you’re a robot, now you have to go on the toll road in order to get the content of all of these publishers.” Cloudflare is making the change to protect original content on the internet, Prince said. If AI companies freely use data from various websites without permission or payment, people will be discouraged from creating new digital content, he said. The company, which says its network of servers handles about 20 percent of internet traffic, has seen a sharp increase in AI data crawlers on the web. Data for AI systems has become an increasingly contentious issue. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other companies building AI systems have amassed reams of information from across the internet to train their AI models. High-quality data is particularly prized because it helps AI models become more proficient in generating accurate answers, videos, and images. But website publishers, authors, news organizations, and other content creators have accused AI companies of using their material without permission and payment. — NEW YORK TIMES

ENTERTAINMENT

The third season of Netflix Inc.’s blockbuster series Squid Game racked up record viewership in its first three days, reinforcing the Korean survival drama’s status as a global cultural phenomenon. The final season of the dystopian thriller logged more than 60 million views in its first three days — the biggest debut in that time frame — and ranked No. 1 across all 93 countries with top 10 rankings, according to Netflix. That compares with the debut of the previous season, which drew 68 million views in the first four days. The runaway success of Squid Game highlights the enduring international appeal of Korean storytelling and Netflix’s pivotal role in amplifying it. The series reflects deep-seated social anxieties while spotlighting South Korea’s creative firepower. For Netflix, which has invested billions of dollars into Korean content, the challenge now is sustaining momentum with a pipeline strong enough to command global attention. Originally released in 2021, Squid Game was an instant hit and a cornerstone of Netflix’s local-for-local strategy. The series remains Netflix’s most-watched title of all time, amassing approximately 600 million views across its first two seasons to date. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

MEDIA

Lawyers for President Trump and the parent company of CBS News said in a legal filing Monday that the two sides were “engaged in good faith, advanced, settlement negotiations” over his suit against the company and requested that the court stay its proceedings until Thursday. Trump’s lawyers have argued that CBS News misleadingly edited a “60 Minutes” interview with former vice president Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign, tipping the scales toward the Democratic Party. CBS News has denied wrongdoing. The filing is the clearest sign yet that the two sides are nearing a settlement that they have discussed for several months. The lawsuit, which many legal experts have said was baseless, was viewed by some executives at Paramount, which owns CBS, as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance. Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, has said the president’s lawsuit against Paramount was not linked to the FCC’s review of the company’s merger with Skydance. Paramount has said that the lawsuit with Trump is “completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction.” — NEW YORK TIMES