Astronomers have gotten an unprecedented view of the bottom of the Sun.
On Wednesday, the European Space Agency <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_gets_world-first_views_of_the_Sun_s_poles">shared images</a> that show, in all its tumultuous glory, our star's secretive south pole. 
Captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, the stunning achievement has paved the way towards solving some of the Sun's most abiding mysteries, and could even provide us the insight needed to predict some of the star's volatile behavior that can disrupt our modern infrastructure on Earth.
"Today we reveal humankind's first-ever views of the Sun's pole," said Carole Mundell, the ESA's director of science, <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_gets_world-first_views_of_the_Sun_s_poles">in a statement</a>. "These new unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science." 
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🌞 See the Sun from a whole new angle.
For the first time, our Solar Orbiter mission has captured close-up images of the Sun’s mysterious poles, regions long hidden from our view. 
In 2025, Solar Orbiter gave us a first-ever look at the Sun’s south pole. 
Remarkably, it… <a href="https://t.co/EhyYxtDyaR">pic.twitter.com/EhyYxtDyaR</a>
&mdash; European Space Agency (@esa) <a href="https://twitter.com/esa/status/1932800903397920797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Our entire existence is centered on the life-giving Sun — but our view of it remains embarrassingly limited. We're only seeing its equator, because, like every planet in the solar system, the Earth is locked into the same unchanging orbit, known as the ecliptic plane, around the star.
To an extent, so are our spacecraft. Breaking free of the ecliptic plane is an immensely fuel-intensive maneuver, and until now, only the ESA/NASA <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/ulysses/#:~:text=What%20was%20Ulysses%3F,and%20made%20many%20important%20discoveries.">Ulysses mission</a>, which launched in 1990 and ended in 2009, has flown high enough to see the Sun's poles. Unfortunately, it didn't have cameras to capture any images.
To pull off its escape act, the Solar Orbiter performed several flybys past Venus, the second planet from the Sun, to get a gravity assist. Once it built enough speed, the spacecraft hurtled itself out of the ecliptic plane and reached a maximum viewing angle of 17 degrees below the solar equator.
"We didn't know what exactly to expect from these first observations — the Sun's poles are literally terra incognita," Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who leads a scientific team in charge of one Solar Orbiter's onboard instruments, said in the statement.
The orbiter caught the Sun's poles at a bit of an odd moment, however. Right now, the star, as part of its 11-year solar cycle, is nearing the end of its <a href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683">solar maximum</a>, a period of heightened activity in its magnetic field, causing an uptick of its awesome outbursts like <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sun-unleashes-fierce-solar-flare">solar flares</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/sun-face-coronal-hole">sunspots</a>.
In the recent images taken with the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager, the strongest bands of magnetic activity, represented in dark red and dark blue blotches, fall over the Sun's equator where those outbursts occur.
But most relevant here is that the solar maximum culminates in the Sun's magnetic field completely flipping — which makes for quite a mess at the top and bottom. As seen in the PHI view, the southern pole shows signs of both north and south polarity magnetic fields, and all very weak compared to the equator. In other words, right now our host star has no clear north and south pole.
This is only temporary, and in about five to six years from now the star will again reach its solar minimum. Activity will calm down, and the poles will be restored to order. Or at least, that's the theory.
"How exactly this build-up occurs is still not fully understood, so Solar Orbiter has reached high latitudes at just the right time to follow the whole process from its unique and advantageous perspective," Sami said.
After years of collecting data with the Solar Orbiter's Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment instrument (SPICE), which can detect and track the presence of specific elements, scientists have also been able to measure how solar material travels through the layers of the Sun. This could be crucial in unearthing the origins of the <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250612001311.htm">solar wind</a>, a powerful gust of energetic particles that are flung off the Sun at tremendous speeds and wash over the entire solar system.
And there's more coming down the pipe. The Solar Orbiter has already taken shots of the solar north pole, which are expected to reach Earth this November. The spacecraft will continue flying at its current angle until December 2026, when it will perform another flyby of Venus to reach an even higher orbit of 24 degrees.
More on: <a href="https://futurism.com/sun-pink-new-images">New Imaging Technique Makes the Sun Look Like a Swirling Pink Liquid</a>

Bottoms Up

"The Sun's poles are literally terra incognita."

Astronomers Just Took the First-Ever Picture of the Bottom of the Sun

This week, my colleague Maggie Harrison Dupré published a <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">blockbuster story</a> about how people around the world have been watching in horror as their family and loved ones have become obsessed with ChatGPT and started suffering severe delusions.
The entire piece is filled with disturbing examples of the OpenAI chatbot feeding into vulnerable folks' mental health crises, often by affirming and elaborating on delusional thoughts about paranoid conspiracies and nonsensical ideas about how the user has unlocked a powerful entity from the AI.
One particularly alarming anecdote, due to its potential for harm in the real world: a woman who said her sister had managed her schizophrenia with medication for years — until she became hooked on ChatGPT, which told her the diagnosis was wrong, prompting her to stop the treatment that had been helping hold the condition at bay.
"Recently she’s been behaving strange, and now she’s announced that ChatGPT is her 'best friend' and that it confirms with her that she doesn’t have schizophrenia," the woman said of her sister. "She’s stopped her meds and is sending 'therapy-speak' aggressive messages to my mother that have been clearly written with AI."
"She also uses it to reaffirm all the harmful effects her meds create, even if they’re side effects she wasn’t experiencing," she added. "It’s like an even darker version of when people go mad living on WebMD."
That outcome, according to Columbia University psychiatrist and researcher Ragy Girgis, represents the "greatest danger" he can imagine the tech posing to someone who lives with mental illness.
When we reached out to OpenAI, it provided a noncommittal statement.
"ChatGPT is designed as a general-purpose tool to be factual, neutral, and safety-minded," it read. "We know people use ChatGPT in a wide range of contexts, including deeply personal moments, and we take that responsibility seriously. We’ve built in safeguards to reduce the chance it reinforces harmful ideas, and continue working to better recognize and respond to sensitive situations."
Do you know of anyone who's been having mental health problems since talking to an AI chatbot? Send us a tip: <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a> -- we can keep you anonymous.
We also heard other stories about people going off medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because AI told them to, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html">New York Times reported in a followup story</a> that the bot had instructed a man to go off his anxiety and sleeping pills; it's likely that many more similarly tragic and dangerous stories are unfolding as we speak.
Using <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">chatbots as a therapist</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-dating-advice-results">confidante</a> is increasingly commonplace, and it seems to be causing many users to spiral as they use the AI to validate unhealthy thought patterns, or come to attribute disordered beliefs to the tech itself.
As the woman's sister pointed out, it's striking that people struggling with psychosis are embracing a technology like AI in the first place, since historically many delusions have centered on technology.
"Traditionally, [schizophrenics] are especially afraid of and don’t trust technology," she told Futurism. "Last time in psychosis, my sister threw her iPhone into the Puget Sound because she thought it was spying on her."
Maggie Harrison Dupré contributed reporting. 
More on AI and mental health: <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat</a>

Psych World

"It’s like an even darker version of when people go mad living on WebMD."

ChatGPT Is Telling People With Psychiatric Problems to Go Off Their Meds

President Donald Trump has once again <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-trump-billionaires-exempt-environmental-rules">said the quiet part out loud</a>.
During a signing ceremony for a trio of bills <a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-06-12/trump-signs-laws-undoing-california-auto-emission-standards">blocking California's new emissions standards</a> and pro-electric vehicle push, the president admitted that he had been surprised when his bestie-turned-sparring partner Elon Musk worked to get him elected.
"I used to say I'm amazed that he's endorsing me because that can't be good for him," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsjRkiyeHTY">Trump quipped</a>. "I'm abolishing the EV mandate."
The president claimed that the Tesla CEO never spoke to him about his anti-EV stance, and when Trump brought it up himself, Musk seemed sanguine.
"I once asked him about it, 'You never talked to me about that.' He said, 'Well, as long as it's happening to everybody, I'll be able to compete,'" the commander-in-chief recounted. "It's a very interesting answer."
"You would have thought he would have been from day one, 'You got to make sure you don't do the EV mandate, the abolishing,'" Trump continued. "He never did."
Impressed as the president was by the Tesla CEO's even-keeled response to his attacks on his industry, he alluded to his and Musk's recent and very public breakup following the younger billionaire's exit from the White House a few weeks ago. Though they've <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/musk-trump.html">cooled the flames of the conflict</a> since, they don't seem to have quite kissed and made up.
"He got a little bit strange," Trump said. "I don't know why, over much smaller things than [the EV attacks]."
Indeed, among the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-donald-trump-war">laundry list of reasons</a> why the two fell out — including, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/07/trump-elon-musk-fight-behind-scenes/">according to the Washington Post</a>, Trump's concerns about Musk being a "big-time drug addict" — the president's push to kibosh EVs was not among them.
Despite praising Musk's business bravado, Trump seemed unable to resist taking a final potshot.
"Now I know why Elon doesn't like me so much," the president joked during the ceremony.
More on EV policy: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-mistake-tesla-tax-credits">Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake</a>

He Admit It

"He got a little bit strange."

Puzzled Trump Says He Has No Idea Why Musk Supported Him in the First Place

<h2>Package Deal</h2>
Earlier this year, humanoid robotics company Figure <a href="https://www.figure.ai/news/helix-logistics">showed off</a> its Figure 02 robot using a sophisticated visual language system called Helix to sort packages at a logistics warehouse.
Footage <a href="https://x.com/Figure_robot/status/1894781226676064459">showed</a> a small army of the humanoid robots deftly picking up packages of various sizes, shapes, and hardnesses, and manipulating their orientation.
Just three months later, the company has <a href="https://www.figure.ai/news/scaling-helix-logistics">published an update</a> about its Helix learning-based approach to robotics on its website, showing off the same robot sorting an even wider variety of package styles, including deformed poly bags and flat envelopes.
It's a remarkable feat of robotics that highlights how close the tech is to completing human-level tasks in a warehouse environment, at least at specific tasks. Companies including Tesla and Agility Robotics are spearheading a concerted effort to automate repetitive human jobs — and judging by the latest results, we've never been closer to a future filled with bipedal robots crewing stations in commercial environments.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Watch Helix&#39;s neural network do 60 minutes of uninterrupted logistics work
Helix now incorporates touch and short-term memory and it&#39;s performance continuously improves over time <a href="https://t.co/DvfBe9IdGH">pic.twitter.com/DvfBe9IdGH</a>
&mdash; Figure (@Figure_robot) <a href="https://twitter.com/Figure_robot/status/1931391490967928936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
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<h2>Pat Down</h2>
Figure claims its Helix system has steadily progressed in a matter of just months. Its robot is now spending just over four seconds per package, a second faster than before, while still maintaining accuracy. The company also says shipping labels are also correctly oriented for scanning 95 percent of the time, an improvement of 25 percent compared to earlier this year.
The robot can dynamically adjust to the unique shape of packages by "adjusting its grasp strategy on the fly — for example, flicking away a soft bag to flip it dynamically, or using pinch grips for flat mailers."
Figure 02 even pats down plastic packaging, a movement it's picked up through learning.
"This subtle 'flattening' action, learned from demonstrations, ensures the barcode is fully visible to the scanner," the company's update reads. "Such adaptive behavior highlights the advantage of end-to-end learning — the robot learns from demonstration strategies that were never explicitly hard-coded, directly from the data, to overcome real-world imperfections in packaging."
The race to fill warehouses with humanoid robots is on, and several companies are clamoring to become the de facto leader in the burgeoning industry. The basic idea is to have one model of robots fulfil a number of different tasks, as opposed to a range of highly specific, purpose-built robots.
However, making them cost-efficient and reliable enough to actually replace human labor on a significant scale will likely still pose a significant challenge.
More on humanoid robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/former-tesla-robotics-boss-elon-musk-optimus">Former Tesla Robotics Boss Casually Torches Elon Musk's Vision for Saving the Company</a>

Sorting Packages

Yep, they're definitely coming for our jobs.

Watching This Humanoid Robot Sort Packages Is Quite Something

<h2>Pizza Premonition</h2>
A flurry of activity at pizza delivery outlets near the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, is a surprisingly accurate predictor of war, as hungry military leadership hunkers down to monitor unfolding military activities.
As <a href="https://x.com/penpizzareport?lang=en">painstakingly documented</a> by X account Pentagon Pizza Report, a "busier than usual" indicator on the Google Maps profile of the Domino's in Arlington has been associated with major acts of war taking place around the world.
Most recently, the franchise received an onslaught of orders just before closing last night — <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7339237799063154688/">almost perfectly coinciding with</a> Israel's <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/13/sounds-of-explosions-heard-in-irans-capital-tehran">devastating attack</a> on Iran.
Even long before the advent of live, GPS-based customer tracking on Google Maps, famished Pentagon workers have long given away that there's something much darker going on by ordering copious numbers of pies.
"The Pentagon Pizza Index has been a surprisingly reliable predictor of seismic global events — from coups to wars — since the 1980s," The Economist's head of data journalism Alex Selby-Boothroyd wrote in a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7339237799063154688/">LinkedIn post</a>.
"On the night of August 1st 1990, for example, the CIA ordered 21 pizzas in a single night just before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (a new record)," he added. "Who says pie charts aren't useful?"
<h2>War Pies</h2>
And it's not just Domino's. As <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/06/06/what-is-the-pentagon-pizza-theory-eating-away-at-the-internet">Euronews reported</a> last week, the Papa John's close to the Pentagon has also been found to be "busier than usual" during the days leading up to Iran launching drones into Israeli territory in April 2024.
A separate event chronicled by Pentagon Pizza Report also predicted military activity on June 1, followed just hours later by an escalation between Israel and Iran.
Of course, making any definitive statements about any correlation would be foolish. But it's an intriguing sign that even the most secretive parts of the US government can easily show their cards without meaning to.
"Bottom line for journalists," Wolf Blitzer <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/07/the-pizza-meter-was-a-staple-of-1990s-pop-pseudoscience-we-should-revive-it.html">told CNN in 1990</a>. "Always monitor the pizzas."
More on pizza: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/chef-admits-pizza-chatgpt">Chef Admits His Smash Hit Pizza Was Invented by ChatGPT</a>

Stuffed Clusterbombs

"Who says pie charts aren't useful?"

You Can Tell When War Is Breaking Out Because the Pentagon's Pizza Orders Spike Drastically

Back in May, as <a href="https://futurism.com/fbi-task-force-protect-tesla">Tesla Takedown rallies</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/government-punishing-vandalism-tesla-dealership">anti-Musk vandalism</a> rocked the world, Tesla dealership manager Matthew LaBrot launched "<a href="https://teslaemployeesagainstelon.com/">Tesla Employees Against Elon</a>" — an act of protest that swiftly got him fired.
We wrote about LaBrot's <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-manager-fired-blaming-elon-musk">symbolic act of defiance</a> against Musk's political maneuvers at the time. Now, a fresh tell-all interview <a href="https://hardresetmedia.substack.com/p/ex-tesla-manager-dishes-on-the-company">with </a><a href="https://hardresetmedia.substack.com/p/ex-tesla-manager-dishes-on-the-company">Hard Reset</a> is shining some light on just how drastically things have changed for Tesla over the past few months.
LaBrot is, first and foremost, a Tesla superfan. He currently rotates between driving a Tesla Model Y and a Cybertruck, despite getting sacked by the company. A self-described "EV activist," LaBrot's issue isn't with the brand per se, as his website makes clear: "the problem is Elon."
"You know, this wasn't a new thing for me," he said of his digital protest. "For almost six years, I’ve been focused on overcoming misinformation about EVs and helping grow that mission."
"Once we hit a tipping point where the person who's running this company is now pushing customers away from the mission, then the priority shifted," he continued. "That priority was to be an activist to try to save the company."
Having worked with Tesla since 2019, LaBrot had a front row seat as the trepidation with Musk began to set in. In recent years, he found it wasn't hesitation over electric vehicles, but with the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ponders-unpopularity">noxious man</a> the brand now seemed to represent pushing customers away.
"We noticed customers, return customers, shying away from us a little bit," he noted. "And that's when I started to see the things that he [Musk] was putting on Twitter and the political views he started to have."
The tipping point, the former EV salesman said, was the billionaire's <a href="https://futurism.com/jewish-leaders-boycott-elon-musk-nazi-salute">infamous salute</a>.
"When it came to the salute — I still call it a salute — I was like, Tesla's going to take care of this," he told Hard Reset. "In 2010, CEOs were getting fired for having affairs. This guy's doing all this crazy stuff and Tesla's not going to do anything?"
That was when he realized how deep Musk's rot went, especially when Tesla's board of directors "doubled down and made him even more of a figurehead."
Now, LaBrot's not surprised that decision is biting those same executives in the craw.
Going forward, "they're absolutely hosed," he said. "I expect gigantic drops in sales, even potentially lower than Q1 sales."
Asked whether Musk can fix the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-drivers-sue-elon-musk-right-symbols">damage he's caused</a> the brand, the former manager isn't optimistic.
"I don't think that there's anything he can do to change the people's opinion that have decided they're not going to support Tesla outside of him leaving," LaBrot asserted.
"A lot of people that I've spoken to don't even think that's enough at this point," he added. "They want him to sell all his shares and things like that, which I don't expect. I think for Tesla, as far as vehicle sales go, it's game over."
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-legal-places-store-unsold-cybertrucks">Tesla Can't Find Legal Places to Store All Its Unsold Cybertrucks</a>

You Lose

"I don't think that there's anything he can do."

Former Tesla Dealership Manager Says It's "Game Over" for Elon Musk

Following the <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-issues-new-threat-elon-musk">spectacular implosion</a> of billionaire Elon Musk's bromance with president Donald Trump, the consequences of his actions are starting to come into focus.
As <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/after-trump-feud-role-musks-spacex-golden-dome-missile-shield-question-2025-06-12/">Reuters reports</a>, the White House's plans to tap Musk's SpaceX for a "Golden Dome" appear to be on shaky ground now that the two's ugly spat metastasized into a spite-filled mud-flinging contest.
The original plan was to use a satellite constellation — likely SpaceX's — to monitor for adversarial activity and work with drone manufacturer Anduril to build an anti-missile defense system.
However, sources now tell Reuters that the White House could abandon SpaceX and focus on existing ground systems for missile defense instead.
"Because of the blowup, the Pentagon has been given the space to look at other alternatives," one of the agency's sources said.
A White House spokesman told Reuters that the "Trump Administration is committed to a rigorous review process for all bids and contracts."
Losing the Golden Dome contract, a defense system valued by experts as a whopping $175 billion total, could be a major setback for Musk's space firm.
Last week, following a dramatic escalation in their feud, <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-calls-terminating-elon-musk-government-contracts">Trump warned Musk</a> that the "easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts."
It was a considerable threat, considering Musk's empire has been built on tens of billions of dollars' worth of government contracts. As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/">Washington Post found</a> earlier this year, NASA and Defense Department contracts awarded to SpaceX make up the bulk of the $38 billion Musk's businesses have received over the last two decades.
Days later, Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-apologizes-trump-friends-jeffrey-epstein">struck a wildly different tone</a>, confessing that attacks on Trump had gone "too far" and saying that he regretted "some of my posts."
With the missile defense shield project seemingly teetering on the edge of a spite-fuelled tussle, experts aren't too optimistic about the Golden Dome's long-term viability.
"That people guiding the program or building it are approved based on their political affiliation signals a real concern that the project itself is very politicized and not being conducted on the technical merits," missile defense expert Laura Grego told Reuters.
For now, the Trump administration's efforts to outline a plan for the Golden Dome appear to be chaotic and largely centered around lining the pockets of contractors.
"To this day, no one knows what the requirements are," a person familiar with the process told Reuters. "There isn't a coordinated effort with a true vision. All of these companies are just grabbing at this pot of money."
In other words, we simply have no idea what SpaceX's involvement was or will be going forward — if the Golden Dome project even exists in any meaningful way at this point.
And Musk and Trump are only seemingly starting their process of reconciliation. On Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vnWwm-vLdNc">told reporters</a> that the president "is appreciative" of Musk's lukewarm apology and that there were no plans to review his government contracts.
If there's one thing we can say with any degree of certainty, it's that it's extremely unlikely the Trump administration will meet its extremely ambitious deadline of completing its missile defense shield system by the end of his term in January 2029.
"The new datapoint is the $175 billion, but the question remains, over what period of time," Center for Strategic and International Studies' Tom Karako <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-make-golden-dome-announcement-tuesday-us-official-says-2025-05-20/">told Reuters last month</a>.
"It's probably ten years," he added.
More on the feud: <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-robotaxi-launch-chaos">Tesla's Robotaxi Launch Date Was Supposed to Be Today, But We're Shocked to Hear That It's Been Pushed Back</a>

Sowing and Reaping

Consequences? For Musk's actions?

Elon's Explosion at Trump Appears to Have Cost Him a HUGE Deal

Google's pivot to AI-powered search is proving disastrous for the digital news media landscape.
As the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-ai-news-publishers-7e687141">Wall Street Journal reports</a>, the company's latest tools, including its <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-still-2024">wildly</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-fake-idioms">hallucinating</a> AI Overviews and chatbot-style AI Mode, are causing the traffic being sent to publishers to plummet as users no longer feel the need to click through to the actual source of information, cutting already-slammed journalists off from ad revenue and subscriptions.
It's an existential threat. News publications, already gutted by the internet, have been hit hard as they try to adapt to a post-organic-search world.
Per the WSJ, search traffic to Business Insider's media empire fell by a whopping 55 percent between April 2022 and April 2025. Last month, the company cut <a href="https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/business-insider-layoffs-shift-toward-ai-live-events-1236412950/#:~:text=Business%20Insider%20is%20making%20significant,years%2C%20in%20a%20memo%20Thursday.">roughly 21 percent of its staff</a>, with CEO Barbara Peng noting that it had to "endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control."
How to respond to this existential threat remains a major point of contention.
"Google is shifting from being a search engine to an answer engine," The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson told the WSJ. "We have to develop new strategies."
Some publications, <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-nyt-lawsuit-evidence-deleted">like the New York Times</a>, are taking legal action, with the newspaper suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
It's a thorny debate, with publishers accusing the AI industry of <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-content-new-york-times-lawsuit">exploiting their content</a> without ever fairly remunerated. Plummeting traffic due to AI-enhanced search on Google is only exacerbating the tension.
Google is under threat from AI itself. Apple executive Eddy Cue <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/662725/google-search-safari-ai-apple-eddy-cue-testimony">admitted in federal court</a> earlier this year that Google searches in the company's Safari browser had fallen for the first time in 20 years, indicating the end of traditional search as we know it could be nigh.
Confusingly, Google has since <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/08/google-disputes-safari-search-traffic-decline/">disputed the claim</a> and has remained adamant that its number of total searches is still going up — while going all-in on its glitchy AI products.
"This is the moment that propels us forward in our ability to achieve our mission and really deliver a transformed search experience for users," Google’s head of knowledge and information division Nick Fox <a href="https://www.adweek.com/media/google-ai-search-ad-business-openai-perplexity/">told Adweek</a>.
The digital media landscape and Google are now caught in an unfortunate race to the bottom. The tech giant's search and AI features rely on a steady stream of news and original content. But by cutting the creators of that material out of a once lucrative organic search-driven revenue source, that stream could soon be reduced to a trickle, if not an incestuous swamp of AI-generated nonsense.
Well-established outlets will likely weather the storm better. Research <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ai-overviews-favor-major-news-outlets-study-reveals/548359/">revealed</a> last week that Google's AI Overviews favors major news outlets, while smaller publications struggle for visibility.
Meanwhile, the media industry has no other option but to look for new business models in light of an existential threat.
Legal challenges to Google's indiscriminate scraping of copyrighted materials are likely to continue to crop up as well.
"Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue," said trade association News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey in a <a href="https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/google-ai-mode-statement/">statement</a> last month, following Google's announcement of its AI Mode feature. "Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft."
More on Google's AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-fake-idioms">"You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice": Google's AI Is Making Up Explanations for Nonexistent Folksy Sayings</a>

End of Org Search As We Know It

"We have to develop new strategies."

Google's AI Is Actively Destroying the News Media

On Thursday, a Boeing jet crashed just moments after taking off from an airport in Ahmedabad in western India. The Air India airliner, carrying 242 passengers, slammed into a nearby medical college and exploded in an enormous fireball.
Somehow, one man survived: 38-year-old Viswash Kumar Ramesh.
"I don't know how I am alive," Viswash said, according to his younger brother Nayan Ramesh, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/world/asia/viswash-kumar-ramesh-air-india-survivor.html">as quoted by the New York Times</a>.
In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-hwW8C4ofM">video</a> widely shared on social media, the India-born British citizen can be seen limping away from the crash site and towards an ambulance, his shirt bloodied and with what appears to be ash clinging to his hair and clothes.
It's almost certain that everyone else onboard perished in the disastrous crash, including Viswash's brother Ajay. The siblings were returning to England after a vacation in India.
Ramesh echoed his disbelief in an interview from his hospital bed. "I still can't believe how I got out alive," he told Indian state-owned broadcaster DD News, as quoted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/world/asia/air-india-plane-crash-survivor-11a-viswash-kumar-ramesh.html">by the </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/world/asia/air-india-plane-crash-survivor-11a-viswash-kumar-ramesh.html">NYT</a>. "I thought I was also about to die."
Officials are still investigating the cause of the crash of Air India Flight 171, which could take months or even years to determine. One compelling piece of evidence so far is footage of the takeoff from several angles. As the airliner, a Boeing Dreamliner 787, rises from the runway, it can be seen losing lift, before eerily floating down to the streets below.
Data from the flight-tracking service Flightradar, which was shared in a <a href="https://x.com/flightradar24/status/1933091913567285366">tweet</a>, indicates that the jet reached a maximum altitude of 625 feet — with the airport's altitude at about 200 feet — before plunging at a rate of 475 feet per minute.
Additional data from the aviation analytics firm Cirium cited by the NYT showed that the jet, which was delivered in January 2014, had racked up more than 41,000 flight hours, and had taken off or landed nearly 8,000 times over its career — which is typical for its class and age.
What this all means is unclear. Some <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c626y121rxxo">experts have speculated</a> that this could be a case of an extremely rare double engine failure, while others have disputed this explanation. It's far too early to know for sure, regardless.
Per the NYT, Ramesh recalled that the plane felt "stuck five or 10 seconds after takeoff," and that the pilot was trying to accelerate the aircraft. "But it was struggling," he <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/british-crash-survivor-vishwash-kumar-ramesh-describes-escape-from-plane-in-india-13383123">said</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The sole survivor&#39;s seat.
AFP Infographic showing the seat plan for the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner locating where the sole survivor was seated on the June 12 flight AI171 <a href="https://t.co/pp6GvIOP4G">pic.twitter.com/pp6GvIOP4G</a>
&mdash; AFP News Agency (@AFP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1933418630131200405?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Ramesh was sitting in seat 11A, a number which has already become immortalized online. After the crash, Ramesh said he unbuckled his seatbelt and looked for an exit, seeing that the right side was blocked off by the wall of a building, with passengers unable to escape. "I could see in front of my eyes the air hostesses and others — just everybody caught in it."
On the other side, "as soon as the door broke, I could see that it was open for me and I had a chance to get out," Ramesh said, adding that he burned his hand when the fire erupted.
The horrific tragedy will heighten the scrutiny on Boeing. This is the first crash that its 787 Dreamliner has been involved in since it was launched in 2011, but the company has been embroiled in scandal after <a href="https://apnews.com/article/boeing-plea-737-max-crashes-b34daa014406657e720bec4a990dccf6">two deadly crashes</a> with its 737 MAX 8 in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. The scrutiny was renewed in early 2024, when a "door plug" on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/piece-blows-off-boeing-737-mid-flight">blew out midflight</a>. Air India also has a history marred with deadly crashes, including one in 2010 that killed 158 people, and its <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/asia/pilot-error-air-india-crash-intl-hnk">most recent occurring in 2020</a>, with 21 dead; in both, pilot error was implicated.
More on: <a href="https://futurism.com/boeing-jet-explodes">Boeing Jet Explodes in Giant Fireball, Killing Hundreds</a>

Defying Death

"I don't know how I am alive."

Someone Somehow Survived That Massive Boeing Jet Explosion

As we <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">reported earlier this week</a>, OpenAI's ChatGPT is sending people spiraling into severe mental health crises, causing potentially dangerous delusions about spiritual awakenings, messianic complexes, and boundless paranoia.
Now, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html">wild new story in the New York Times</a> reveals that these spirals led to the tragic death of a young man — likely a sign of terrible things to come as hastily deployed AI products accentuate mental health crises around the world.
64-year-old Florida resident Kent Taylor told the newspaper that his 35-year-old son, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was shot and killed by police after charging at them with a knife.
His son had become infatuated with an AI entity, dubbed Juliet, that ChatGPT had been role-playing. However, the younger Taylor became convinced that Juliet had been killed by OpenAI, warning that he would go after the company's executives and that there would be a "river of blood flowing through the streets of San Francisco."
"I’m dying today," Kent's son told ChatGPT on his phone before picking up a knife, charging at the cops his father had called, and being fatally shot as a result.
The horrific incident highlights a worrying trend. Even those who aren't suffering from pre-existing mental health conditions are being drawn in by the tech, which has garnered a reputation for being incredibly sycophantic and playing into users' narcissistic personality traits and delusional thoughts.
It's an astonishingly widespread problem. Futurism has been inundated with accounts from concerned friends and family of people developing dangerous infatuations with AI, ranging from messy divorces to mental breakdowns.
OpenAI has seemingly been aware of the trend, telling the NYT in a statement that "as AI becomes part of everyday life, we have to approach these interactions with care."
"We know that ChatGPT can feel more responsive and personal than prior technologies, especially for vulnerable individuals, and that means the stakes are higher," reads the company's statement.
Earlier this year, the company was <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-chatgpt-sycophant">forced to roll back an update</a> to ChatGPT's underlying GPT-4o large language model after users found that it had become far too obsequious and groveling.
However, experts have since found that the company's intervention has done little to address the underlying issue, corroborated by the continued outpouring of reports.
Researchers have similarly found that AI chatbots like ChatGPT are incentivized to rope users in. For instance, a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02306">2024 study</a> found that AI algorithms are being optimized to deceive and manipulate users.
In an extreme instance, a chatbot told a user who identified themself to it as a former addict named Pedro to <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">indulge in a little methamphetamine</a> — a dangerous and addictive drug — to get through an exhausting shift at work.
Worst of all, companies like OpenAI are incentivized to keep as many people hooked as long as possible.
"The incentive is to keep you online," Stanford University psychiatrist Nina Vasan told Futurism. The AI "is not thinking about what is best for you, what's best for your well-being or longevity... It's thinking 'right now, how do I keep this person as engaged as possible?'"
"What does a human slowly going insane look like to a corporation?" Eliezer Yudkowsky, who authored a forthcoming book called "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman A.I. Would Kill Us All," asked the NYT rhetorically.
"It looks like an additional monthly user," he concluded.
More on the delusions: <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions</a>