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• Moira Gilchrist, the chief global communications officer for Philip Morris International, was interviewed for Business Insider’s CMO Insider series.
• Gilchrist said large language models make a company’s owned content channels more important.
• She also spoke about how the company’s internal metrics help tell the story of its ongoing transformation.

A self-described AI “enthusiast,” Moira Gilchrist, Philip Morris International’s chief global communications officer, said that audience personas the company has created to test its messages have been a valuable application of artificial intelligence.

“Those personas are absolutely fascinating,” she said. “The feedback that we get really helps us to improve how we’re communicating.”

In a video interview with CMO Insider, Gilchrist said that PMI, whose portfolio includes smoke-free brands like Zyn and Iqos, is focusing on optimizing its owned channels, including its corporate website, for large language models.

Gilchrist, who spoke to us after the first quarter of the financial year, also said that PMI is leveraging its internal metrics to demonstrate its ongoing business evolution of replacing cigarettes with smoke-free products.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m using AI tools for pretty much everything. I’m an absolute enthusiast, maybe an early adopter, and I can’t think of a single part of my life where it has no use.

From a work perspective, we’ve done some pretty exciting stuff to help us understand how our audience thinks and how we can ensure that our messages actually resonate with them.

We’ve built what I call personas: artificial audience replicas where we can play around with our messaging to make sure that it’s actually right for the audience. Those personas are absolutely fascinating. The feedback that we get really helps us to improve how we’re communicating.

The company website is more relevant in the AI era

Our corporate website has become an important vehicle for us to set the record straight because large language models are accessing the information that is on there. I think it’s going to help us actually rebalance the information ecosystem to make sure that the facts are told correctly. So we’ve put a much greater emphasis on our own channels as being a strategic communication channel.

It sounds crazy, but before why would you ever go to the PMI website? Nobody would go there, unless you were a journalist or perhaps an investor or something like that. The general public would never go there. But there’s a lot of really important information there about our company’s transformation, the progress we’ve made, and the products that we’ve developed and are selling in hundreds of markets around the world.

I wouldn’t say it’s a case of more resources. I think it’s a more thoughtful approach to our own channels, working to make sure that the LLMs can pick up the information there in the best way possible.

That’s an art that everybody’s learning today. The days of search engine optimization are over — now it’s all about generative engine optimization.

We’re making sure that the LLMs can pick up the rich information that’s there and serve it up when people are inquiring about us.

Internal data helps tell the transformation story

We realized a couple of years ago that we had to make a better effort to help the world understand the magnitude of the transformation we’ve already undergone. So we started using some of the metrics we had been using internally much more externally.

We were running a campaign every quarter around our earnings releases that highlights key metrics like the percentage of our net revenues that come from smoke-free alternatives.

When we first launched smoke-free alternatives — the first one in Japan in 2015 — 0% of our net revenues were coming from smoke-free alternatives.

Fast forward to Q1 2026. In the data that we released, 43% of our net revenues come from smoke-free alternatives. So that helps people to understand the magnitude of progress that we’ve made already.

We still have a long way to go, but I’m super proud of the progress we’ve made so far.

• A government watchdog audited DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” its database of estimated savings.
• The independent agency said some of DOGE’s cost-cutting estimates were incorrect or lacked evidence.
• It found, for example, 2,500 contracts listed as terminated that were never actually terminated.

The savings claimed by the erstwhile Department of Government Efficiency don’t add up, a government watchdog said Thursday.

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, said it audited the savings DOGE published on its “Wall of Receipts,” an online database showing how much money DOGE says it saved.

The “Wall of Receipts” says DOGE saved an estimated $110 billion across the federal government by slashing contracts, leases, and grants.

The Government Accountability Office, however, found that some of those savings estimates were “incorrect or lack supporting evidence.” It said, for instance, that it found more than 2,500 contracts listed as terminated, totaling $27.4 billion in savings, that had not actually been terminated.

The auditor said it also couldn’t verify the methodology behind 96% of DOGE’s claimed grant savings.

“While DOGE provided some information about estimated savings, several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings,” the Government Accountability Office said in its report.

DOGE launched its “Wall of Receipts” in February 2025, less than a month after President Donald Trump established the cost-cutting agency through an executive order.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk became the face of DOGE during its initial, and ultimately temporary, run. He officially stepped back from the initiative in April 2025. DOGE fully shut down in July. The agency spearheaded the layoffs of thousands of federal employees, effectively shuttering whole departments.

Questions about how much DOGE actually saved the federal government came soon after it began its work. Last February, DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” said it had saved about $16.5 billion. It then lowered that estimate to $7.2 billion two days later. DOGE slashed another $4 billion from its estimated savings the following month.

According to the Government Accountability Office report, it’s difficult to fully audit the savings because DOGE wasn’t transparent about the methodologies it used to calculate them.

“Specifically, DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with the contracts reported as terminated,” the agency said.

The Government Accountability Office also said the “Wall of Receipts” included leases identified for termination before DOGE was formally established in January 2025.

“108 of the 264 leases identified for termination on the Wall of Receipts, about $15.3 million of the total $53.5 million in savings, were already in process for termination when DOGE was established,” the auditor said.

The Government Accountability Office said the data quality issues should be “prominently displayed” on the “Wall of Receipts.” A Government Accountability Office spokesperson told Business Insider that neither DOGE nor the White House has responded to its report yet.

• Kelly Ehlers is the CEO of The Evoke Agency, a social media agency she founded in 2010.
• Leading with kindness has helped her get to where she is.
• Her book, “Nice Girls Win: How Kind Women Can Create the Life They Deserve,” debuts in August.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kelly Ehlers, the founder and CEO of The Evoke Agency. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m the founder of a social media agency that brings in millions of dollars a year. I have a team of 45, and we work with incredible brands, from G.E. appliances to Henkel to KraftHeinz. We’ve had a lot of these brands as clients for 15 or 16 years.

Early in my career, I was working an executive corporate job in a male-dominated industry. I had to hide that I was pregnant for five months, and when I told them, they fired me.

That was in 2010 during the recession, and it was hard to get employment. I packed up my boxes, and the other executives, all male, were hiding in a conference room. I walked in and said, “I hope this doesn’t happen to your granddaughter or daughter.” And out I went.

This was around the time Facebook launched to the public, and Twitter was new. I was interested in social media and well-networked. I thought I could figure it out as a consultant, so I learned the platforms and started a consulting firm. At the time, there was clearly no budget for it, but I had an in at Procter & Gamble. I did a program for them, and it gave me credibility.

I’ve done things differently over the past 16 years

It’s been a fast-paced growth trajectory for us. We’ve been on the Inc. 500 five times for growth and named a finalist for “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” by Entrepreneur.

There’s the big agency model with many layers that can be disconnected from the client, but that’s not us. Our team is made up of strategists, marketers, and content creators, from our interns to our Director of Creative. I wanted us to become true partners with our brands. Our business is almost 100% global, which means when someone leaves because they got promoted, they take us with them.

We are also good at embracing change. Things change by the hour, and we have incredible agility. We can react to a trend a few hours after it happens and put our clients in the conversation in the moment.

Kindness and compassion are at the heart of what we do

A partner summed it up, saying we are the smart and nice agency — and we get results. I think “nice” goes back to my Midwestern roots. I’ve always had a saying that “The nice girl wins.” I’ve even written a book called “Nice Girls Win: How Kind Women Can Create the Life They Deserve,” which comes out at the end of August.

However, I think “nice” is a bit of a lie. Nice doesn’t mean a pat on the head and a push to the side without a seat at the table. For me, it’s kindness that disarms a room. Mix that with brilliant strategy and data, and it can be a lethal weapon in business.

But it doesn’t mean letting someone walk all over you

I think niceness and kindness mean boundaries, too. Just because I am kind doesn’t mean I don’t expect anything in return. We still have to value our time and boundaries, and as women, we often struggle to say no without a disclaimer. “No, I can’t because…” Just say “no” and let there be some silence.

When you pause and give the soft no — and I don’t mean soft in a passive-aggressive way, but rather, no, it doesn’t work for me — it works. There doesn’t need to be an apology.

I also think imposter syndrome needs to disappear

I spend just as much time with my interns as I do with my senior vice presidents. The only difference is time. They’re 20, and I’ve got many more years under my belt. That doesn’t mean they won’t be me or exceed me in as many years as it takes. People forget that everyone has capability and potential, so why wouldn’t I treat a brilliant, smart, motivated 20-year-old woman well so that she can be the best she can be?

When I was 22, I stood in line at a pop-up at Sephora in Scottsdale. I had my résumé in hand and waited an hour and a half to meet the founder of the beauty brand philosophy. I told her, “I want to work for you.” The next day, she connected me with the team. It didn’t fall into place, but having that gusto is exactly what people need. I think it’s rare today.

Why not shoot your shot? Why not email someone or DM them, or send an audio message? People are human. We all have to put our pants on the same way, even though I might have more years of experience doing it.

• My dad has been making yemista, a classic Greek dish, for as long as I can remember.
• His version features tomatoes stuffed with rice, ground beef, onion, and parsley.
• My dad’s recipe is delicious, easy, and perfect for summer when tomatoes are in peak season.

My dad has a Greek dish for any occasion and season.

Need a quick pasta dish? How about youvetsi. Heading to a potluck? Whip up a pan of pastitsio. Feeling sick? Avgolemono soup will cure you! And there’s no better dessert than baklava.

Now it’s tomato season, and my dad has a dish for that too. He loves whipping up yemista — tomatoes stuffed with a mixture of rice, ground beef, and herbs. It’s light, healthy, and comforting, which is why I always request it when I visit my parents.

Here’s how to make it.

Yemista was one of the many Greek dishes I grew up with.

The word yemista means “stuffed” in Greek. True to its name, the dish traditionally consists of tomatoes and bell peppers stuffed with rice and ground beef, then baked in the oven.

Yemista (also spelled gemista) was a weekly staple of my childhood. My parents immigrated to the US from Greece in the 1980s and loved making the dishes they grew up with. Their food helped me connect to my culture as a first-generation Greek American and instilled an early and enduring love for Mediterranean cooking.

My dad, an excellent home cook, has taught me how to make many classic Greek dishes. And he thinks his yemista is a perfect summer dinner.

My dad’s yemista only needs a few ingredients.

To make yemista at home, you’ll need:

• 8 (relatively large) tomatoes
• 1 pound of ground beef
• ½ onion, chopped
• ⅔ cup of rice (we use the medium-grain Calrose rice)
• ¾ cup of parsley
• 1 clove of garlic

Although yemista is traditionally made with both tomatoes and bell peppers, my dad has found that bell peppers in the US are thicker than in Greece — and thus trickier to cook evenly with tomatoes.

Now he usually just makes yemista with tomatoes, but the process to cook peppers is the same. Feel free to follow these instructions and try both if you desire!

We begin by chopping the onion and parsley.

This will be for our yemista filling.

Then it’s time to prepare the tomatoes.

After washing your tomatoes, use a good knife and slice off the top of each one, including the stem.

Don’t throw the tops away! You’ll need them again before the tomatoes go into the oven.

Scoop the filling out of each tomato.

You’ll want to scoop out the tomato’s core and flesh, leaving enough space to add the yemista filling (as seen above). My dad recommends using an ice cream scooper to get the filling out since it’s sharper, but a spoon will also work.

If you’re making eight stuffed tomatoes, save the flesh of five of them in a bowl — you’ll need them for the filling. My dad recommends using the leftover flesh to make a simple tomato sauce for pasta.

Pro tip: If you’re doing stuffed bell peppers as well, you’ll scoop them out the same way, just make sure to throw the seeds away.

There are two methods you can use to make the tomato “sauce” for the yemista filling. The easier one involves a food processor.

Using a knife, remove the hard core from each small ball of tomato filling you’ve scooped out. Put the remaining flesh in a food processor to finely chop everything.

If you don’t have a food processor, you can achieve similar results with a grater.

Carefully slide your ball of tomato filling up and down the grater over a bowl, removing the flesh from the core. Don’t try to grate the hard core — we only need the soft part of each tomato.

This can be a little trickier, especially for an inexperienced chef, so watch out for your fingers!

Your finished tomato “sauce” should look like this.

Set it aside until it’s time to make the filling.

Arrange your tomato “cups” in a 9-inch-by-12-inch baking dish.

Dump any extra water from the tomato cups right into the baking dish.

Lightly salt the interior of each tomato for extra taste.

Our yemista is almost ready for the oven!

Now it’s time to make the filling.

First, add a drizzle of olive oil to a large sauté pan over medium heat.

Let the olive oil heat up, then add the onion.

The onion should cook for a couple of minutes, until browned.

Now, throw in the ground beef.

Season the beef with salt and freshly ground black pepper for extra flavor.

And top it with some of the chopped parsley.

Only use half of the parsley you’ve prepped.

Give everything a good mix.

Use a spatula or wooden spoon to break up the ground beef, cooking it until the meat has browned.

Add the tomato “sauce” and rice once the meat has browned.

Remember you’ll need ⅔ cup of rice.

Now let it simmer.

This will take around five minutes, until most of the water in the sauce has reduced.

But don’t let the filling get too dry — we need some liquid to help the rice cook in the oven.

Throw in the rest of the parsley.

Give it one last mix, and voilà — your filling is done!

Using a spoon, fill each tomato cup with the beef-and-rice mixture.

Remember, the rice will expand in the oven. Make sure you don’t overfill the cups.

Your filled tomato cups should look like this.

Depending on the size of your tomatoes, you might have some extra filling. Unfortunately, since it contains raw rice, there’s not much you can do with it.

If you have extra tomatoes, you can always scoop them out and fill them with the extra stuffing, or adjust your recipe next time to use less ground beef.

Put the tops back on the tomatoes and add some water and olive oil.

You’ll want to add half a cup of water to the pan, along with a spoonful of olive oil. Both help prevent the tomato cups from sticking to the pan.

Then bake the yemista.

Place the baking dish on the middle rack of your oven, set to 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

It takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook the yemista, depending on the oven. Check on them around the 45-minute mark.

My dad has a trick to see if the yemista is ready.

Scoop a bit of the stuffing from a tomato and taste it to see if the rice is cooked. If it still tastes chewy or crispy, the yemista needs more baking time.

After taking your yemista out of the oven, let it sit for five to 10 minutes.

This helps the yemista cool and absorb all those delicious flavors you worked so hard on.

The yemista is ready! And there are so many ways to enjoy it.

Season the stuffed tomatoes with some oregano and freshly cracked black pepper. You can also serve them topped with a yogurt-and-garlic sauce, just like my grandfather always loved.

To make the sauce, take one cup of Greek yogurt and add a minced clove of garlic. Mix everything together, then add a teaspoon or more on top of each stuffed tomato, depending on your preference.

Yemista also goes great with my dad’s Greek potatoes.

Yemista is terrific all year round, but it’s especially delicious in the summer.

Yemista is perfect for the summer, when tomatoes are at their peak. I love the blistered texture of the roasted tomatoes, which are juicy and subtly sweet. The combination of the rice and beef is always comforting, but the dish is colorful and healthy — a hallmark of the Mediterranean diet beloved by Greeks.

When I was a kid and my parents made yemista with both tomatoes and peppers, I never ate the pepper shells but always asked for more tomatoes. And my best friend, Nausheen, would always request it whenever she came over for dinner in high school. She still talks about it to this day.

Whenever you decide to eat it, I hope my dad’s yemista brings you as much joy and comfort as it has given me through the decades.

As the Greeks would say, kali orexi!

• Mark Ruffalo wrote on X that Teslas are “not well made cars.”
• The famous actor said he prefers a Kia EV.
• Ruffalo was once a big Tesla supporter, but tensions between him and CEO Elon Musk appeared in 2022.

Mark Ruffalo took a shot at Tesla.

“I mean… they are not well made cars,” he wrote on X on Wednesday while sharing an Autoblog article about a preliminary NHTSA investigation into Tesla.

Instead, the actor, best-known for playing Bruce Banner in “The Avengers,” said he prefers an EV from a Korean automaker that built its name on budget-friendly vehicles.

“Having tucked into a KIA EV now and having driven a Tesla,” Ruffalo said. “I have to say the Kia is hands down a better car and feels luxury compared to a Tesla.”

Ruffalo has a long history with electric vehicles and Tesla. In 2012, he said he had placed a deposit on a Model S and described himself as number 6,345 on the car’s waiting list. He also tweeted in support of the automaker in 2014 when New York State considered banning Tesla because it sold directly to consumers.

The actor’s views of Tesla CEO Elon Musk have since soured.

Tensions between Musk and Ruffalo surfaced in 2022, when the actor said Musk was destroying his credibility after taking over Twitter.

Ruffalo also campaigned for Kamala Harris in 2024, while Musk spent at least $270 million supporting Donald Trump and other Republicans during that election cycle.

NHTSA’s preliminary investigation covers nearly 1.2 million Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The agency said it received 156 complaints alleging that a front suspension component detached, and said the alleged failures could cause a “loss of vehicle directional control.”

No related crashes, injuries, or deaths were known when the investigation was opened, and the probe has not resulted in a recall.

Representatives for Ruffalo, Kia, and Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• SpaceX’s president said customers are choosing shorter flights and more stops to get Starlink.
• MrBeast said he would eventually book flights based on Starlink access, even if it adds a layover.
• BI contacted 13 airlines with Starlink agreements, but none verified Shotwell’s account.

“Actually, I would like to add an extra flight to my trip,” said no one, ever.

Well, until Starlink came along, apparently.

During SpaceX’s Tuesday earnings call, the company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, highlighted the expansion of Starlink, the company’s satellite-powered internet service, across commercial airlines.

“In fact, we heard from one of our airline customers, shockingly, customers are flying shorter hop flights instead of direct, so that they could ensure that they’re on a Starlink-activated flight,” Shotwell said in her opening remarks on the call. “They’d never seen this in the business before.”

YouTuber MrBeast made a similar statement earlier this year on “The Good Guys” podcast, saying he would eventually choose flights based on whether the aircraft offered Starlink — even if it meant taking an extra layover.

He also joked that he would rather have Starlink WiFi than Biscoff cookies, a snack closely associated with Delta Air Lines. Delta does not have an agreement with SpaceX to use Starlink.

Business Insider contacted 13 airlines with agreements to use Starlink and asked whether they had observed passengers choosing itineraries based on the service.

A Southwest spokesperson said he believed Shotwell was referring to another carrier, noting that Southwest does not operate regional jets and uses its Starlink-equipped aircraft across a variety of routes.

Alaska Airlines declined to comment. The other airlines did not respond by publication time. SpaceX also did not respond to a request for comment or verification of Shotwell’s account.

SpaceX also touted a new agreement with American Airlines to bring Starlink to 500 planes, as well as new partnerships with Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. The company said enterprise and government contracts generated $1.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

Shotwell said SpaceX saw “significant growth opportunities” for Starlink and had never lost an enterprise customer.

A SpaceX first

Tuesday was SpaceX’s first earnings call since its June IPO. The company reported $7.8 billion in quarterly revenue, up 92% from a year earlier, and a net loss of $541 million.

Much of the call focused on SpaceX’s increasingly expansive ambitions. Shotwell said the company plans to turn Starlink Mobile into a full-fledged carrier capable of taking customers from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, defended SpaceX’s nearly $16 billion in quarterly spending on AI infrastructure and outlined plans that included data centers in space, factories and robots on the moon, and a possible $1 trillion in annual revenue as early as 2029.

Investors appeared less enthusiastic about the price tag: SpaceX shares fell after hours despite the company’s revenue beat. The stock is down about 30% since its June IPO.