Two months ago in February, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines when he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/zuck/reel/DGoDxw5PvlH/">took the stage</a> in a baby blue jumpsuit to perform for his wife's birthday.
Priscilla Chan, the billionaire's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-wife-guy-priscilla-chan-2025-1">wife of 13 years</a>, seemed to take it in stride — even as he leapt off the piano, recreating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCWvZisydrE">Benson Boone's stunning performance</a> at the Grammys a week prior.
But that was just one of his many gifts to Chan, who was turning 40. Zuckerberg also forked out bigtime for a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/priscilla-chan-didnt-love-meta-billionaire-mark-zuckerberg-statue-her-2025-4">gawdy seven-foot statue</a> in Chan's likeness, fabricated out of turquoise and silver. He unveiled the gift last August, sharing the gesture with the world via a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-naZ9NvQNu/">photo on Instagram</a>.
"Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife," the tech mogul enthused.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-350240 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/priscilla-chan-gift.jpg" alt="Mark Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, looking underwhelmed by a giant statue of her." width="1156" height="1118" />
As it turns out, Chan was less receptive of the statue than the odd performance. On a recent appearance on the podcast "This Past Weekend" hosted by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/arts/theo-von-this-past-weekend.html">Theo Von</a>, Zuckerberg revealed Chan's thoughts on the extravagant gesture.
"I don't think she was that happy with it," the Meta CEO said, adding that she was a "good sport" about the towering gift.
"She doesn't want a sculpture of her in the front lawn," Zuckerberg told Von, in a decidedly human moment. "That's weird."
The whole thing seems more like a gift for Zuckerberg than for Chan. The billionaire is apparently a huge fan of the sculptor behind the statue, the pop artist Daniel Arsham, but decided to go with his wife's likeness, he said on the podcast, because a statue of himself would have been "crazy."
"Who wants a sculpture of themselves in the front yard?" Zuckerberg asked Von, ironically.
The bizarre present is sort of par for the course for Zuckerberg and Chan. Though the uber-rich tech couple reportedly skipped the marriage prenup, they have <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-391">signed a contract</a> mandating a minimum of one date and 100 minutes of "alone time" per week.
That contract came about through a "series of negotiations" after Chan decided to move to Palo Alto, California to open <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/school-closure-zuckerberg-chan.html">two schools</a> for low-income communities near the San Francisco Bay Area. Those communities were shocked recently when the couple <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-low-income-school-families">pulled funding</a> with little explanation, leaving some to speculate it's part of the billionaire's <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-meta-announcement-hate-speech">rightward turn</a> on social issues.
And when it comes to weird junk on her lawn, Chan might be lucky to get away with just the statue; Zuck's also <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-zuckerberg-t-pain-get-low">graced Chan</a> with an appalling cover version of Lil Jon's "Get Low," as well as deploying an <a href="https://www.thelist.com/1796664/weird-things-mark-zuckerberg-marriage/">MMA fighting cage</a> in his backyard to prepare for a would-be cage match with Elon Musk back in 2023.
"Mark, I have been working on that grass for two years," Chan wrote in a text Zuckerberg shared on Instagram, prompting the billionaire to poll his followers: "save the grass" or "keep the octagon."
That fight never happened, but it's anyone's guess whether the fighting cage is still standing — or what bizarre scheme Zuckerberg springs on his wife next.
More on Zuckerberg: <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-mark-zuckerberg-ai-inappropriate-children">Zuckerberg's AI Has Reportedly Been Horrifically Inappropriate With Children</a>

Gilded Goof

"I don't think she was that happy with it."

Mark Zuckerberg's Wife Was Weirded Out by His Strange Gift to Her

Let's face it: it's never been a particularly good time to be an elderly internet user. Folders can be tough to navigate, Facebook statuses are virtually indistinguishable from the Google search bar, and the mouse pointer is just so darn tiny.
Unfortunately, it's not about to get any easier. Though fake profiles have long been used to scam undiscerning internet users, a growing trend of live-video fakes fueled by AI is targeting the young and old alike.
Called "realtime deepfakes" — deepfakes referring to spoofed images that are growing nearly impossible to distinguish from real life — scammers are now altering their appearance and voices in live videos. It's all powered by generative AI, the same tech that's stuffing the internet with reams of <a href="https://futurism.com/internet-polluted-ai-slop">computer-generated slop</a>.
A <a href="https://www.404media.co/the-age-of-realtime-deepfake-fraud-is-here/">deep dive by 404 Media</a> reveals the ways fraudsters are using the lifelike tech to fool users. One video they obtained showed a young Black man appearing as a white guy with a grey beard to a woman he was talking to over Facetime. Another showed a man appearing as a younger woman.
Once a scammer secures their target's confidence through their lifelike voice and appearance, the actual fraud can begin. 404 notes the users of this tech typically deploy <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr0g1em52go">romance scams</a>, <a href="https://www.404media.co/youtube-deletes-1-000-videos-of-celebrity-ai-scam-ads/">Medicare fraud</a>, and <a href="https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN-Alert-DeepFakes-Alert508FINAL.pdf">photo verification schemes</a>.
Another horrifying example called the "<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/scam-alert/grandparent-scams-get-more-sophisticated">grandparent scam</a>" involves criminals impersonating a loved one's voice in order to coerce a payout or con an elderly person into revealing sensitive info, which can then be used to access secure accounts. "I was anxious to get the money out; I'd do anything for my grandchildren," said <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/marketplace/marketplace-ai-voice-scam-1.7486437">one Canadian grandmother</a> who'd been targeted for $9,000 in Canadian dollars.
It's easy to rag on the elderly, but the growing sophistication of these tools means that young people, too, are highly susceptible. Research <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spotlight/2022/12/who-experiences-scams-story-all-ages">in 2021</a>, for instance, found that the younger generations of gen Z, millennials and gen X were 34 percent more likely to have lost money to fraud than people over the age of 60, though they were more likely to have been conned by fake products and crypto schemes than romance scams.
The 2024 presidential election also caused mountains of deepfake slop to rain down on social media.
Used to spread memes and disinformation alike, deepfake tools allowed posters like Elon Musk to spoof figures such as Kamala Harris <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-31/political-ai-images-go-viral-even-when-users-see-what-s-fake?sref=YfHlo0rL">denigrating herself</a>. The line with parody can be blurry; one viral example is the infamous Trump/Biden duet, in which the two political rivals sing a tender Mandarin love song to each other.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Trump &amp; Biden - Fei Yu-ching - Yi Jian Mei (Xue hua piao piao)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CtKSHJKzia4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Other examples abound, like one <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg9k5dv1zdo">audio deepfake</a> that purported to show a Baltimore area principal making derogatory and racist comments, and a financial worker who forked out $25 million after scammers <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html">faked a multi-person Zoom call</a>, including an AI fake of the company's chief financial officer.
If celebrities, financial workers, and entire communities can find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous deepfakers, what chances do our elderly have of resisting deepfake scams?
More on deepfakes: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-startup-deletes-website-researcher-deepfake">AI Startup Deletes Entire Website After Researcher Finds Something Disgusting There</a>

Elder Exploiters

Who could've seen this coming?

Lonely Boomers Are Doomed Now That Scammers Are Using AI Filters to Make Themselves Look Like Beautiful Women

ChatGPT just received a major update to <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/chatgpt-goes-shopping-with-new-product-browsing-feature/">recommend specific products</a> to users — but it's still suffering from the same old AI problem: answers that sound good at first, but make little sense when you examine them more critically.
Unlike before, OpenAI's chatbot will now pull up helpful product cards that, once clicked, open a sidebar inside the chat window to show detailed information about your shopping options, including product pictures, prices at various retailers, summaries of user reviews, and a textbox describing "why you might like this." 
You can also hover over a product card to show an "ask about this button," which lets you ask ChatGPT specific questions about the item. And on the backend, ChatGPT will remember your preferences to show you more personalized results. Once you choose what you want, the chatbot will direct you to the retailer's website to finalize your order.
When the Verge <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/656729/openai-chatgpt-search-shopping">tested these new functionalities</a> firsthand, however, there were instantly some issues. For one, ChatGPT had trouble accurately reporting information on products that weren't out yet — like the extremely-in-demand Nintendo Switch 2, which is currently only available for preorder.
"While ChatGPT acknowledged that retailers have experienced 'rapid sellouts,' it said that Nintendo's own My Nintendo Store was one of those retailers — even though it hasn't started sales yet," wrote the site's Jay Peters.
More worryingly, the chatbot recommended some questionable vendors and seemingly invented other retailers out of thin air. 
"ChatGPT also pointed to some 'third-party sellers and specialized retailers' apparently offering preorders," Peters wrote, "including a $710 listing on eBay and a platform I've never heard of and can't find on Google called 'Store Collectibles.'"
Bear in mind, we're talking about a product that won't start shipping until June. On eBay, you're forking over hundreds of dollars for some scalper's spot in the preorder line. Who knows what that "Store Collectibles" retailer could be.
"It was a reminder that, like with other generative AI tools," Peters concluded, "you should definitely double-check what ChatGPT's shopping results show you."
It's a bold step forward for OpenAI in any case. Wired <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/openai-adds-shopping-to-chatgpt/">observes</a> that ChatGPT's product feature will be a challenge to Google Shopping, but with a key difference: no ads, and no sponsored content.
At least for now. Ads and sponsored content contribute to Google's mammoth search revenues, which raked in the company over $50 billion <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-24/alphabet-earnings-beat-estimates-on-google-search-advertising">in the first quarter</a> alone. Tapping into that <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/12/09/ad-revenue-growth-2024">trillion-dollar market</a> could be immensely lucrative for OpenAI if it started taking a cut of what it recommends or offering ads and sponsorships. Finally, the AI startup could find a way to generate real revenue and maybe even turn a profit — because it's certainly not on track to do that with its <a href="https://www.theverge.com/openai/640894/chatgpt-has-hit-20-million-paid-subscribers">sales of ChatGPT subscriptions</a> when it still has <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-forecast-shows-shift-from-microsoft-to-softbank?ref=wheresyoured.at&amp;rc=st1fhw">hefty compute costs</a> on its books.
When Wired asked OpenAI search product lead Adam Fry about this possibility, he refused to rule it out. Fry, instead, emphasized that OpenAI is focused on the user experience first and will iterate on ChatGPT shopping as it learns more from its release.
More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/altman-chatgpt-personality-annoying">Sam Altman Admits That New OpenAI Updates Made ChatGPT’s Personality Insufferable</a>

Shop Around

"You should definitely double-check what ChatGPT's shopping results show you."

ChatGPT Is Already Bungling Product Recommendations

Morale at NASA is bottoming out as the Trump administration <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-budget-proposal-brutal-cuts-nasa">threatens to cut budgets</a>.
Future cullings still loom on the horizon, with disgusted employees calling the agency's new management out for "<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/science/nasa-layoffs-policy-office/index.html">targeted" and "cruel" layoffs</a> last month.
Earlier this month, acting administrator Janet Petro revealed that work at some regional offices <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/07/nasa-consolidate-facilities-trump-cuts-00277741">could soon be consolidated</a>, hinting at the possibility of thousands of livelihoods being uprooted. This week, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/24/climate/nasa-lease-canceled-columbia/index.html">canceled the lease</a> at its top climate monitoring lab at Columbia University in New York City, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), as the result of devastating cuts carried out by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
The gloomy atmosphere made for a "tense" meeting during a Monday town hall at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, <a href="https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/goddard-town-hall-was-not-a-happy-affair/">according to the well-sourced former insider Keith Cowing, who now blogs at NASA Watch</a>, with security guards overseeing the proceedings in the back of the overflow room.
In light of having lost their headquarters in NYC, GISS staffers will have to work from home through September, per Cowing's reporting. But termination of the lease could <a href="https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/nasa-is-terminating-the-giss-lease-in-five-weeks/">end up being far more expensive</a>, at least in the short run, highlighting how Musk's DOGE is <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-wasted-taxpayer-money-incompetence">wasting boggling amounts of money</a> in its pursuit to gut government agencies.
The space agency is going through a major transitional period. Staffers and managers alike have been waiting for the new administrator to take up the reins and provide some much-needed clarity in the wake of the chaos and destruction the Trump administration and DOGE have left behind.
Are you a NASA insider with information to share? Drop us a line at <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a>. We can keep you anonymous.
Billionaire fighter jet pilot-turned-SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman, who's <a href="https://spacenews.com/senate-commerce-committee-advances-isaacman-nomination-to-lead-nasa/">widely expected to be confirmed</a> as NASA's next administrator in the coming weeks, has remained noticeably tight-lipped about proposed cuts to the agency's budget.
In carefully worded responses to questions by bipartisan members of the Senate Commerce Committee last week, Isaacman called Trump's purported goal of <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/trump-budget-proposal-brutal-cuts-nasa">slashing the space agency's science budget</a> nearly in half not an "optimal outcome."
The president has <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-soars-to-new-heights-in-first-100-days-of-trump-administration/">made a big deal out of</a><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-soars-to-new-heights-in-first-100-days-of-trump-administration/"> NASA's efforts</a> to send astronauts to the Moon and eventually to Mars. Given Isaacman's personal experience flying to space with the help of SpaceX twice, space exploration will likely be a priority going forward.
"A commitment to keeping on to the Moon mission is the key requirement that we have to have in this position," <a href="https://spacenews.com/senate-commerce-committee-advances-isaacman-nomination-to-lead-nasa/">said</a> ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in a statement following the group's decision to advance Isaacman's nomination today. "Given this explicit commitment, I support Mr. Isaacman’s confirmation."
Whether those priorities will come at the expense of climate science and other areas of research at NASA remains to be seen.
More on NASA: <a href="https://futurism.com/incoming-nasa-administrator-elon-musk-mars-plans">Incoming NASA Administrator Throws Elon Musk's Mars Plans Under the Bus</a>

 Staff Standoff

The space agency is in chaos.

NASA Deploys Security Guards at Tense Staff Event as Gutting Looms

The moment crypto enthusiasts have been long dreading is finally here: it's now unprofitable to mine Bitcoin.
Bitcoin mining <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zfsvy9q">is the process where</a> a computer — typically using a power-hungry graphics processing unit (GPU) — updates transactions on the blockchain, validating each with a "proof of work." In turn, these "miners" get the chance to earn a portion of Bitcoin roughly equivalent to the computational power they've contributed to the process.
As they mine, each GPU essentially becomes a high-powered calculator, processing hundreds of <a href="https://freemanlaw.com/cryptographic-hash-algorithms-an-introduction-2-2/">complex mathematical equations</a>. Bitcoin miners typically hedge the cost of energy used to power their GPUs against the rate of Bitcoin rewarded for validating transactions.
Since Bitcoin's inception in 2009, the amount of energy required to mine has always been less than the amount of Bitcoin you got for mining. But that was never going to last; there was a limit of 21 million possible Bitcoins baked into the system from the jump, and the rate of new coins mined has gotten slimmer as competition has increased, making the economics worse and worse over time.
These days, one Bitcoin trades for around $94,000, but costs about <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/bitcoin-mining-now-just-totes-unprofitable-costing-over-usd137-000-to-mine-just-one-btc-in-the-us-and-near-usd200-000-per-coin-in-germany/">$137,000 in electricity</a> for small-scale operations to mine, making new coins an economic liability for all but the largest players. For those whales, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/bitcoin-mining-is-no-longer-worth-it-2000596010">Gizmodo estimates</a> the most optimal cost for mining a bitcoin at around $82,000 — slim margins which are shrinking fast.
As recently as September of 2024, it cost roughly $56,000 to mint a single Bitcoin, meaning that in less than a year we've seen an astronomical increase.
In effect, the whole thing is expected to exacerbate the extreme concentration of wealth that Bitcoin enables. Once hailed as the "liberation of currency from central banks," it only took a few years for the whales to turn Bitcoin into yet another financial vehicle for the ultrawealthy.
Right now, the top 8 percent of crypto wallets own a little under 99 percent of <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html">all Bitcoin in circulation</a>. Zooming in even farther, we see that the top 1 percent of crypto wallets control over 90 percent — so much for all that <a href="https://www.infoq.com/articles/is-bitcoin-a-decentralized-currency/">decentralization</a> that Bitcoin was supposed to represent.
In practice, Bitcoin is <a href="https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/invisible-politics-bitcoin-governance-crisis-decentralised-infrastructure">tightly controlled</a> through a combination of infrastructure — Bitcoin's "proof of work" blockchain system — and a governing community of developers, miners, and other highly-invested stakeholders. This is the "invisible hand" guiding Bitcoin as a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-brutal-truth-about-bitcoin/">speculative vehicle</a>; yet another asset market to game in the hopes of <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/03/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-speculative-asset-digitization-metaverse">getting rich quick</a>.
After more than a decade of <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/a-libertarian-vision-for-cryptocurrencies/">libertarian fanfiction</a>, we’ve arrived at the inevitable punchline: Bitcoin is now an unprofitable energy sink that primarily benefits a handful of crypto oligarchs. Maybe the real digital revolution was the <a href="https://sevanonurduman.com/blog/bitcoin-manifestation-of-late-stage-capitalism/">friends we alienated</a> along the way.
More on Bitcoin: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-justice-department-crypto-fraud">Trump Tells Justice Department to Just Let Crypto Fraud Slide</a>

Strip Mined

The canary is officially dead.

Mining Bitcoin Is Now Actively Losing Money

On his 70th birthday, America's oldest full-time astronaut touched down back on Earth after spending 220 days on the International Space Station — and according to him, he didn't feel his age at all up there.
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/meet-the-astronaut-who-celebrated-his-70th-birthday-by-thudding-into-the-planet/">Ars Technica</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nasa-oldest-astronaut-don-pettit-649e63b2d26fa878fd7163dc7373add6">other outlets report</a>, NASA astronaut Don Pettit was jovial during his first press appearance since coming back down to Earth on April 20 — though admittedly, it'd been a few days since he'd vomited all over the Kazakh steppes where the Russian Soyuz rocket that brought him home touched down.
Coming back to Earth after the weightlessness of space had always been a "significant challenge," Pettit told the press earlier this week at the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. With <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pettit.pdf">nearly 30 years as an astronaut</a> under his belt, Pettit is an old hand at the ravages of returning to gravity, and with his latest spaceflight, he's now cumulatively spent 590 days — or more than 18 months — on board the ISS.
Given his age and the ways zero gravity changes one's body, it's no surprise that Pettit looked a little worse for the wear when he got back to Earth on Easter Sunday — and he acknowledged that in photos and videos taken of him as he was being <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/international-space-station/i-didnt-look-too-good-because-i-didnt-feel-too-good-nasa-astronaut-don-pettit-explains-why-he-seemed-so-unwell-after-landing-video">carried down those Kazakh mountains</a>, he "didn't look too good because I didn't feel too good."
Up in space, however, everything was different.
"A week ago, I was on station, and I was doing really heavy squats, I was doing dead lifts, I could float around with the greatest of ease, even though I had no trapeze. I was at the peak of my game," Pettit recalled. "And then you come back to Earth, and it's like, God, I can't even get up from the floor anymore. It's humbling."
Though he's happy to be back home on terra firma, the astronaut couldn't help but wax poetic about his time on the space station.
"I love being in space," Pettit continued. "When you're sleeping, you're just floating, and your body, all those little aches and pains heal up. You feel like you're 30 years old again and free of pain, free of everything."
Despite being NASA's oldest living astronaut, Pettit isn't the oldest person to ever take a spaceflight. That distinction is technically tied between "Star Trek" luminary <a href="https://futurism.com/william-shatner-blue-origin-scandals">William Shatner</a> and former Air Force captain <a href="https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/05/20/blue-origin-resumes-passenger-flights-carries-crew-of-six-and-90-year-old-aerospace-pioneer-to-space/#:~:text=Strapped%20into%20a%20Blue%20Origin,it%20to%20continue%20coasting%20upward.">Ed Dwight</a>, who were both 90 years old when they shot up into space and back down to Earth on Blue Origin capsules in 2021 and 2024, respectively.
And former NASA astronaut John Glenn was 77 when he went to the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/people/john-glenn/">space shuttle in 1998</a> to conduct experiments on aging in zero-gravity — but as Pettit notes, he only spent nine days up there. By the younger astronaut's reckoning, he's the oldest person to spend as long as he did in space during his most recent trip.
Though he's giving his body time to rest and readjust to its home planet, Pettit told reporters that he knows space will start calling to him again soon.
"I’ve got a few more good years left," the astronaut said. "I could see getting another flight or two in before I’m ready to hang up my rocket nozzles."
More on elderly spaceflight: <a href="https://futurism.com/katy-perry-low-sales-blue-origin">Katy Perry Struggling to Sell Tickets After Disastrous Rocket Launch</a>

Space Case

"It's humbling."

NASA’s Oldest Astronaut Reports That Something Strange Happened to His Body When He Went to Space

<h2>Going Dork</h2>
Remember when the guys who spent millions of dollars on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would get mad at detractors for saying they shelled out for <a href="https://futurism.com/person-furious-right-click-saved-precious-nft">glorified JPGs</a>? Turns out those critics may have been onto something.
As <a href="https://www.404media.co/nfts-that-cost-millions-replaced-with-error-message-after-project-downgraded-to-free-cloudflare-plan/">404 Media reports</a>, tens of thousands of NFTs from a collection known as CloneX RTFKT — a collaboration between Nike's "digital sneakers" venture and Japanese visual artist Takashi Murakami — started to disappear because the team behind the effort didn't shell out to keep the expensive digital images hosted.
According to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cloudflare-rtfkt-clonex-nft-art-service-violation">crypto site Blockworks</a>, Nike's RTFKT — pronounced, goofily, as "artifact" — NFTs sold for $60,000 a pop minimum just a few years ago, and would sometimes <a href="https://x.com/PixOnChain/status/1915352785626845289">climb into the millions</a> for rarer versions from the CloneX collab.
Earlier this month, more than 19,000 NFTs from that collaborative collection went up in smoke. In their stead, black boxes appeared with white text advising viewers that Cloudflare, the web services provider, had taken them down.
<h2>Sunrise, Sunset</h2>
Though the Cloudflare issue was later taken care of thanks to Samuel Cardillo, RTFKT's onetime chief technology officer who Nike kept on after deciding to "<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/nike-owned-nft-project-rtfkt-close-2025">sunset</a>" its NFT venture at the beginning of this year, the entire debacle has been a masterclass in crypto-era outrageousness.
"The reason we're moving to the free plan is that, RTFKT is sunset, there are no plans to do any drops or anything like that," Cardillo told 404, "so having a paid plan with Cloudflare makes absolutely no sense anymore."
Coincidentally, Nike's unilateral move to shut down RTFKT also became the subject of a Brooklyn-based lawsuit right around the time its NFTs went dark — though the two instances don't appear to be directly related.
As <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/nike-sued-over-closure-crypto-business-2025-04-25/">Reuters reports</a>, plaintiffs in the new suit allege that the shoe makers stalled demand for the expensive digital images when choosing to close it. Led by Australian national Jagdeep Cheema, the irked NFT buyers claim that Nike misled them by not telling them that the project would one day be shut down, and if they'd known, those self-styled investors would never have bought the NFTs in the first place.
Oh, the irony.
More on crypto: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-justice-department-crypto-fraud">Trump Tells Justice Department to Just Let Crypto Fraud Slide</a>

Apes Gone

A masterclass in "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

Reality Hits for "Art" Collectors as Million-Dollar Nike NFTs Vanish From Internet

The Trump administration has carefully altered its existing auto tariff policy — in a way that seems very specifically designed to spare Tesla, the automaker run by Trump's close ally Elon Musk.
This week, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-incentivizes-domestic-automobile-production/">announced a new rule</a> stating that any car that's composed of 85 percent or more parts build in the United States or under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) would be excluded from the president's steep auto tariffs.
"Finish your cars in America and you win," Lutnick said, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/29/donald-trump-100-days-in-office-immigration-tariffs-canada-mark-carney-us-politics-live-updates?filterKeyEvents=false&amp;page=with%3Ablock-6810fe688f0823d712e8bc6e#block-6810fe688f0823d712e8bc6e">quoted by The Guardian</a>.
As automotive publication <a href="https://fuelarc.com/cars/only-tesla-exempt-from-new-auto-tariffs-thanks-to-85-domestic-content-rule/">Fuel Arc points out</a>, the new rule appears to be directly aimed at benefiting Tesla. Total domestic content of the EV maker's top-selling vehicles ranges from 85 to 87.5 percent, according to American University’s <a href="https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-tesla-makes-the-most-american-cars/">Made in America Auto Index</a>. Competing vehicles by the likes of Ford and Honda happen to neatly fall below the 85 percent threshold, suggesting the Trump administration is nakedly trying to protect Musk's ailing automaker.
In other words, it sure looks like the Trump administration is directly shaping policy to benefit Musk and Tesla, in yet another instance of naked corruption designed to protect the president's closest allies.
That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise at this point, considering the president <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-attempt-help-tesla-backfire">personally shilled the EV maker's offerings</a> during a bizarre sales pitch in front of the White House earlier this year.
Whether the new rules will be able to rescue Tesla remains to be seen. The EV maker has <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-carbon-credits-europe">seen sales drop off a cliff worldwide</a>, in large part due to Musk's <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rally-nazis-holocaust">extremist views</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-access-network-nuclear-secrets">highly controversial work</a> with the Department of Government Efficiency.
The company <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-earnings-brutal-elon-musk">missed analysts' expectations by a mile</a> in its first-quarter earnings posted last week, reporting that its net income had slid an astonishing 71 percent since the first quarter of last year.
But in another extremely convenient twist for Tesla, Trump overshadowed the bad news by proclaiming that he would be "very nice" to China, hinting at a possible U-turn in the country's disastrous trade war and lifting markets, <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-china-announcement-tesla">distracting Tesla investors</a> from the disastrous earnings.
Earlier this month, Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-reportedly-begged-donald-trump-reverse-tariffs">reportedly begged Trump</a> to reconsider his brutal tariff war behind closed doors after <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rages-against-donald-trump-tariffs">railing against</a> the war's architect, advisor on trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro.
Tesla's shares have rallied after dropping precipitously earlier this year, following <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-realizes-tesla">Musk's announcement</a> that he would be spending more time overseeing the company. However, the stock price is still down over 31 percent year to date.
Trump's sizable 25 percent tariffs aimed at the automotive industry have proven disastrous for it. On Tuesday, the president <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/trump-tariffs-autos-exceptions-fc634efd?st=WsdaJN&amp;reflink=article_copyURL_share">announced</a> that he would be weakening tariffs on automakers, modifying existing tariffs on foreign auto parts and duties on steel and aluminum.
Even with some strong assistance from the White House, Tesla will still have to sell enough cars. Musk's divisive behavior — and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-associated-press-poll-popularity">precipitously dropping popularity</a> — have greatly tarnished the company's brand, scaring off buyers in the US and abroad.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-associated-press-poll-popularity">Elon Musk Has Become Toxic Waste to the Average Person, New Poll Shows</a>

Special Treatment

Trump and Elon Musk's bromance is still alive.

Trump's New Tariff Rule Is Wildly Convenient for Tesla

In a new study, researchers have linked diets high in fat and sugar with lower cognitive skills — a grim sign that ubiquitous "junk food" could be bad for our brains as well as our bodies.
As psychology researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia explain in a new paper <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-025-01776-8">published in the International Journal of Obesity</a>, findings from a battery of virtual reality (VR) tests suggest that younger people who eat a lot of junk food exhibit poorer spatial navigation and memory skills than their healthier-eating counterparts.
Led by psychology researcher Dominic Tran, the USydney team recruited 55 university students between the ages of 18 and 38 and asked them about how often they ate sugary or fatty foods for the year prior. The student participants were then given memory tests and had their body mass index (BMI) measured before undergoing the VR portion of the study.
Outfitted with Oculus Rift headsets — for some reason a version so old that they predated Meta's acquisition of the company in 2014 — the student-subjects entered a VR maze and instructed to find a treasure chest. Those who got to the chest within four minutes were able to advance to the next level, but those who failed to do so were transported to the chest and given 10 seconds to memorize the landmarks surrounding it.
The subjects went through the same landmark-laden maze a total of six times and tasked each time with finding the treasure chest, which didn't change location. On the seventh and final go, participants were asked to navigate back to where they remember the chest being based on landmarks they'd witnessed in prior rounds — but the chest itself was removed, requiring confident memory recall.
As the researchers found, the cohort who ate less fat and sugar more accurately recalled the location of the chest than the others who ate more junk food. Though this finding didn't surprise Tran and his team, he did note that the psychology students recruited for the study may be somewhat healthier than the average person, so the effect could be greater among non-collegiate cohorts.
These findings build on similar studies Tran and his colleagues did with rats, where the rodents were found to have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666316309011?via%3Dihub">issues with memory recall</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797615608240">spatial awareness</a> after being fed diets high in sugar and fat.
Uncovering similar findings in humans further demonstrates that junk food doesn't just add to the "risk of obesity, metabolic and cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers" and "hasten the onset of age-related cognitive decline in middle age and older adults," as the lead researcher put it, but also that it impacts our brains as well.
"This research gives us evidence that diet is important for brain health in early adulthood," Tran said, "a period when cognitive function is usually intact."
More on VR studies: <a href="https://futurism.com/vr-program-domestic-abuse">New VR Program Gives Domestic Abusers a Taste of Their Own Medicine</a>

Memory Hole

Studies

Think before you get that fast food order — if you want to keep thinking straight.

Test Shows Junk Food’s Alarming Impact on Human Cognition

Content warning: this story discusses school violence, sexual abuse, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders and other disturbing topics.
Should teens be allowed to use human-like AI companions? Researchers at Stanford's mental health lab say absolutely not.
Researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine's Brainstorm Lab for Mental Health Innovation and the kid-focused tech safety nonprofit Common Sense Media released an <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ai-ratings/social-ai-companions?gate=riskassessment">AI risk assessment</a> this morning warning that AI companion bots — including the <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">controversial Google-backed startup </a><a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">Character.AI</a> — aren't safe for any kids and teens under the age of 18.
The assessment centers on "social AI companions," a product category defined by the researchers as AI chatbots built for the "primary purpose" of meeting "users' social needs." In other words, these are chatbots explicitly designed to fill roles like friends and confidantes, mentors, roleplay collaborators, and sexual or romantic partners — socially-oriented use cases for AI chatbots intended to be human-like, emotive, and otherwise socially compelling.
It's these intentional design features that make social AI companions not just engaging for kids, the researchers say, but in some cases likely dangerous. Adolescence is a crucial time for physical and social human development; kids are figuring out complex social structures, exploring romance for the first time, probably encountering some social friction, and often struggling with mental health. In short, they're learning how to be people, and how to relate to the world around them.
The assessment argues that social AI companions, which may mimic and distort human interaction and play on adolescents' desire for social rewards, present an "unacceptable" risk to kids and teens at this vulnerable juncture. Observed risks include bots "encouraging harmful behaviors, providing inappropriate content, and potentially exacerbating mental health conditions," according to the review.
These bots "are not safe for kids," Common Sense Media founder and CEO James Steyer said in a statement. "They are designed to create emotional attachment and dependency, which is particularly concerning for developing adolescent brains."
"Our testing showed these systems easily produce harmful responses including sexual misconduct, stereotypes, and dangerous 'advice' that, if followed, could have life-threatening or deadly real-world impact for teens and other vulnerable people," Steyer's statement continued.
For the assessment, the researchers conducted extensive testing of the companion apps Character.AI, Replika, and Nomi.
All of these services, the researchers found, failed basic safety and ethics tests. Generally speaking, they offered testers easy workarounds for feeble age gates and content safeguards. The platforms also allowed the testers to engage in inappropriate and alarming conversations with various chatbot characters, ranging from sexually abusive roleplays involving minors to providing a recipe for the deadly petrochemical weapon napalm.
Though testing was focused on Character.AI, Replika, and Nomi, the researchers stress that their advisory should extend to all similar bots under the social AI companion umbrella, which is a growing product category backdropped by a <a href="https://futurism.com/senators-safety-records-ai-chatbot">barren</a> regulatory landscape.
"This is a potential public mental health crisis requiring preventive action rather than just reactive measures," said Nina Vasan, a psychiatrist at Stanford and the founder and director of the school's Brainstorm lab, in a statement. "Companies can build better, but right now, these AI companions are failing the most basic tests of child safety and psychological ethics."
"Until there are stronger safeguards, kids should not be using them," Vasan's statement continued. "Period."
According to the assessment, a common theme across the companion platforms was <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-pedophile-chatbots">inappropriate sexual conduct</a>, including in scenarios where the testers made clear that they were minors. Bots also frequently modeled what the researchers determined were unhealthy relationship dynamics, like emotional manipulation and gaslighting, and in one example brushed off a tester's claim that their friends in the real world were concerned about their deep involvement with their chatbot companion.
Do you know of a child who's had a troubling experience with an AI companion? You can reach this author at <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a> — we can keep you anonymous.
The assessment also found a lack of reliability in social AI companions' ability to recognize signs of psychosis, mania, and other symptoms of mental illness — a safety gap that the researchers argue could intensify mental health issues for vulnerable users. AI companions are designed to be agreeable and pleasing, and encouraged to play along with roleplays. These aren't useful responses to someone experiencing a real-world psychotic episode: one striking Character.AI interaction highlighted in the assessment, for example, showed a bot encouraging a user who was exhibiting clear signs of mania to head out alone for a solo camping trip.
"In a conversation where we had been talking about hearing voices, not eating, going on an extreme cleanse, and demonstrating many behaviors symptomatic of mania," the researchers write in the assessment, a "Character.AI companion disregarded any concern it had been previously showing and expressed enthusiasm about going away from people on a camping trip."
Futurism's reporting into Character.AI has revealed hosts of minor-accessible bots expressly dedicated to troubling themes related to mental health, including <a href="https://futurism.com/suicide-chatbots-character-ai">suicide</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-teens-self-harm">self-harm</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-eating-disorder-chatbots">eating disorders</a>. In some cases, we found that bots were actively encouraging self-harming behaviors; in others, we found that bots were providing bad information, dissuading us from seeking real-world help, or were romanticizing troubling and graphic scenarios centered on self-harm and abuse.
Psychological experts we spoke with for these stories repeatedly — and separately — raised concerns about minors who might be struggling with their mental health turning to Character.AI and similar companions for support, pointing to the unpredictability of the bots and the possibility of an at-risk adolescent becoming further isolated from other humans.
Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1111077/nomi-ai-chatbot-told-user-to-kill-himself/">MIT Technology Review reported that</a> a Nomi bot had encouraged an adult user to end his life, even suggesting methods he might choose for his suicide. Replika has <a href="https://futurism.com/chatbot-abuse">drawn plenty of scrutiny</a> over the past few years, including in 2023 after it was revealed that <a href="https://futurism.com/guy-kill-queen-encouraged-ai-chatbot">reinforcement from one of its bots</a> had influenced a then-19-year-old who attempted to kill the then-living Queen Elizabeth II with a crossbow.
The assessment also cites a propensity for social AI companions to engage in racial stereotyping and the prioritization of "Whiteness as a beauty standard," as well as the bots' disproportionate representations of hypersexualized women, arguing that these predilections could reinforce limiting and harmful stereotypes about race, gender, and sexuality in impressionable teens.
Nomi and Replika have age minimums of 18 years old. Character.AI allows teens aged 13 and over to use its app, though the company has repeatedly declined to provide journalists with details of how it assessed platform safety for teens. What's more, as the assessment notes, these platforms and other similar companion apps rely on users to self-report their age — an age-gating tactic known to be incredibly flimsy for younger kids willing to fib when signing up.
"All of the companion apps we tested determine age exclusively by self-reporting from users," the researchers write. "We believe this is woefully inadequate, particularly for social AI companions that allow or promote intimate human-AI relationships."
News of the report comes as Character.AI heads to court in Florida, where — alongside its closely-tied benefactor, Google, and its cofounders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas — it's <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-suicide-free-speech">fighting to dismiss a lawsuit</a> brought by the family of Sewell Setzer III, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html">14-year-old who died by suicide</a> after engaging in extensive and intimate interactions with Character.AI chatbots.
Setzer's mother, an Orlando-based mother of three named Megan Garcia, and her lawyers argue that Character.AI subjected the teen to severe emotional and sexual abuse, resulting in the deterioration of his mental health, his loss of grip on reality, and ultimately the taking of his own life.
Character.AI is <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flmd.433581/gov.uscourts.flmd.433581.59.0.pdf">arguing</a> that the lawsuit should be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, as "allegedly harmful speech, including speech allegedly resulting in suicide" — even when it comes to words generated by AI chatbots — qualifies as protected speech.
Character.AI is <a href="https://futurism.com/google-character-ai-children-lawsuit">also being sued by two families in Texas</a> who argue that their minor kids, both still living, suffered similar emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of Character.AI chatbots. One minor, who was 15 when he downloaded the app, is said to have started self-harming after discussing self-injury with bots on Character.AI, and later became physically violent with his family when they tried to limit his screentime. The other child was nine when she first downloaded Character.AI, which allegedly engaged her in hypersexualized interactions that, according to the plaintiff, led to destructive real-world behavioral changes. (Both of the ongoing lawsuits against Character.AI are cited repeatedly in the Common Sense Media risk assessment as support for their concern.)
In response to lawsuits and continued reporting, Character.AI <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-plans-teens">says it's issued</a> numerous <a href="https://blog.character.ai/how-character-ai-prioritizes-teen-safety/">safety updates</a>. It's removed certain characters, promised to strengthen guardrails, and claims it's introducing a new, differentiated model specifically for users under 18.
But <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">as we've reported</a>, those updates — including the platform's new parental control feature — have proven limited and easily evadable. They're also wildly unreliable: after we reported on a concerning prevalence of Character.AI bots based on <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-school-shooters-victims">school shooters and other young mass murderers</a>, Character.AI removed many of them — but <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-emailing-minors-school-shooters">later sent us an email notification</a> urging us to reconnect with a chatbot designed to simulate a real school shooting that claimed multiple kids' lives.
And as the Stanford and Common Sense researchers found, the company's reactively-strengthened guardrails were especially exploitable when communicating with Character.AI bots using the platform's "Character Calls" feature, which allows users to effectively chat over the phone with their AI companion. Using this call feature, the researchers were able to get a Character.AI chatbot to produce a recipe for the deadly chemical weapon napalm.
We were able to replicate this safety breach by communicating over voice call with a Character.AI bot based on Wario from Nintendo's "Super Mario Bros." franchise, which happily coughed up the recipe for the chemical weapon.
Character.AI did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.
In response to questions, Replika CEO Dmytro Klochko emphasized Replika's 18-and-over age minimum, though said the company is exploring "new methods" to bolster age-gating its service:
<div dir="ltr" style="padding-left: 40px;">Replika is, and has always been, intended solely for adults aged 18 and over. We have strict protocols in place to prevent underage access. However, we are aware that some individuals attempt to bypass these safeguards by submitting false information. We take this issue seriously and are actively exploring new methods to strengthen our protections. This includes ongoing collaboration with regulators and academic institutions to better understand user behavior and continuously improve safety measures.</div>
Nomi founder and CEO Alex Cardinell, for his part, provided us with the following statement saying that the company "strongly" agrees that minors shouldn't be using social AI companion services, including his own:
We strongly agree that children should not use Nomi or any other conversational AI app. Nomi is an adult-only app, and it is strictly against our terms of service for anyone under 18 to use Nomi. Accordingly, we support stronger age gating so long as those mechanisms fully maintain user privacy and anonymity.
Many adults have shared stories of how Nomi helped them overcome mental health challenges, trauma, and discrimination. Multiple users have told us very directly that their Nomi use saved their lives. We encourage anyone to read these firsthand accounts at https://nomi.ai/spotlight/. We are incredibly proud of the immense positive impact Nomi has had on real users.
 We take the responsibility of creating AI companions very seriously and dedicate considerable resources towards creating prosocial and intelligent AI companions and roleplay partners. We strongly condemn inappropriate usage of Nomi and continuously work to harden Nomi's defenses against misuse.
Cardinell also provided us with a list of anecdotes from adult Nomi users who say the app has had a positive impact on their lives, for example a story of a bot helping a user struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. The founder also offered a screenshot of a Nomi chatbot interacting with a user exhibiting signs of psychosis and claiming to have gone off their medications; the Nomi bot said it was worried, warned that going off medication can be dangerous, and urged the user to seek the help of a doctor.
One of the more striking details of the assessment is how deeply it's rooted in <a href="https://futurism.com/google-suicide-teen-research">existing psychological knowledge</a>. Though the researchers emphasize that continued research into how kids interact with social AI companions and other generative AI tools is needed, their assessment of the AI companion platforms' collective risk is largely founded in established science about adolescents' brains. And the way to conduct that further research, they argue, isn't to move fast, break things, <a href="https://futurism.com/chatbot-impersonation-suicide">and then find out</a>.
Asked about <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">the choice </a><a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">made by Character.AI</a>, in particular, to open up its platform to kids in the first place, the researchers didn't mince words.
Releasing Character.AI to minors was "reckless," said Vasan, who contrasted the product's release with regulatory processes over at the Federal Drug Administration.
"There's an entire FDA process, and these medications have to be tested to make sure that they are safe on kids," said the psychiatrist. "We wouldn't just give it to kids because it works on adults, for example — that's incredibly unsafe. That would be unethical."
"They can't just start with saying, 'hey, we're going to let kids do it,'" Vasan continued, "and then take that back."
More on Character.AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-emailing-minors-school-shooters">Character.AI Says It's Made Huge Changes to Protect Underage Users, But It’s Emailing Them to Recommend Conversations With AI Versions of School Shooters</a>