Crypto bros are freaking out amid a surge in letters from the Internal Revenue Service about their digital currency holdings.
As <a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-tax-crackdown-looms-as-irs-warning-letters-surge/">Bitcoin.com</a> and <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/irs-thousands-bitcoin-users-warning-letters/">other sites report</a>, there has been a whopping 758 percent spike in customer mentions of IRS letters over the past two months alone, suggesting that there may be a taxation crackdown in progress.
We don't know exactly how many people have gotten these troubling letters — but apparently, there are a few different types going out.
According to Coinledger, the crypto tax software firm that compiled the new numbers, recipients either received <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/notices/letter_6174-a.pdf">letters 6174 or 6174-A</a>, which are sent as warnings and require no response, or <a href="https://www.irs.gov/individuals/understanding-your-cp2000-series-notice">CP2000</a>, in which the IRS has already decided how much you owe and can punish you for not doing so.
As Coinledger CEO David Kemmerer told Bitcoin.com, a lot of the people being contacted by the IRS have long reported their crypto holdings to the agency — but the precedent it sets is pretty strange regardless.
"We’re seeing a wave of confusion and fear among everyday crypto investors, many of whom made their best effort to report taxes accurately," Kemmerer said. "This kind of enforcement is only going to accelerate."
As demonstrated by a disgruntled user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTax/comments/1jd36ue/received_irs_letter_for_crypto_letter_6174a/">posted on the r/cryptotax subreddit</a> earlier this year, those who have steadily reported their crypto holdings over the years appear to be the first wave to get these scary letters.
"I believe I have reported all my crypto transactions with my CPA," the user noted. "[I've] been reporting them for years. I'm not sure what to do with this letter as I think I have correctly filed everything."
To Kemmerer's mind, targeting those sorts of individuals may be an error.
"The IRS has more visibility into crypto than ever before," he said. "But without accurate cost basis data, even compliant investors can get mistakenly flagged."
Coincidentally enough, these IRS actions come after president Donald Trump's administration ordered the government-sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-ordered-crypto-asset-buying-123209223">consider crypto holdings as assets</a> when assessing mortgage loans. As the prediction marketplace <a href="https://x.com/polymarket/status/1938015540905136205?s=46">Polymarket joked on X</a>, that means the country's biggest lenders will now be forced to assess "Fartcoin" and other dumb meme tokens when considering creditworthiness.
More on crypto: <a href="https://futurism.com/hawk-tuah-girl-event">Hawk Tuah Girl Live Event Devolves Into Chaos After Crypto Disaster</a>

Hot Girls Have IRS

"We’re seeing a wave of confusion and fear among everyday crypto investors."

Huge Number of Crypto Users Suddenly Getting Terrifying Letters From the IRS

American president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping have <a href="https://heatmap.news/economy/china-rare-earth-trade-deal">finally resolved</a> a months-long trade dispute revolving around the rare earth metals vital to developing artificial intelligence. It's a resolution that makes it all the more bizarre that the US President is opening the floodgates for an AI arms race with China.
Following Trump's baffling "Liberation Day" tariffs back in April, Chinese lawmakers moved to cut the flow of rare earth metals into the US. China has a near-global monopoly on rare earth minerals — which are critical for building high-tech products like wind turbines and computer chips — giving Beijing a huge asset at the bargaining table.
That all changed on Thursday, when Commerce Secretary <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/us-china-have-finalized-tariff-understanding-lutnick-says?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1MTAxOTIxNywiZXhwIjoxNzUxNjI0MDE3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTWUhFVUtUMEcxS1cwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEODAxRkVGQjIxRUU0QzRDOEI3RUJDNjI0MzQ0RjkwNCJ9.BIk84ARgCAfQ10L_nMLHWcow7r25Oj4yBCTI9Uq_HYE&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall&amp;utm_campaign=heatmap_am&amp;utm_source=hs_email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-90huKzmX6Uw-viNYqFC_0TVt43M5BDN-2UPdSHcnZdr0BXG5RXyHqpMGImJmx5Rv88nLck">Howard Lutnick announced</a> "they’re going to deliver rare earths to us," adding that "we’ll take down our countermeasures" in kind. The deal, which was signed on Tuesday, is one of 10 that the Trump administration made with global trade partners following the much-maligned tariffs.
With all the trade progress, one might expect the White House to ease down on its aggressive stance with China — at least until the minerals start flowing again.
Instead, that's the exact opposite of what happened. Just a day after Lutnick announced a deal had been signed, news broke that Trump is on the cusp of signing executive actions which would dramatically escalate the so-called "AI arms race" with China. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/27/trump-plans-executive-orders-to-power-ai-growth-in-race-with-china.html">Per CNBC</a>, the moves encompass four major plans.
The first is a deregulatory measure which would make it easier for AI companies to suck power from civilian power grids. Companies like Elon Musk's xAI have turned to <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-memphis-illegal-generators">noxious outdoor generators</a> to fuel their <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-energy-use">power hungry</a> data-centers, as regulators and energy officials assess short- and long-term impacts on surrounding communities. This would seemingly fast-track that process, giving tech companies federal approval to latch onto grids immediately, consequences be damned.
The executive order would also approve the sale of federal land to tech companies — building off of a <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-hell-no-insane-utah-republicans-proposal-for-sale-of-millions-of-acres-of-land-under-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-sparks-outrage/articleshow/122027958.cms?from=mdr">broader strategy</a> that involves privatizing federally protected wild land — helping them set up their <a href="https://futurism.com/cancer-ai-data-centers">noisy and hazardous</a> data centers without having to worry about <a href="https://futurism.com/small-towns-ai-data-centers">pesky local governments</a>.
Other measures include rolling out an "AI action plan" to inform the public, as well as a propaganda drive to push the narrative that the US is locked in a life-or-death arms race with China, according to CNBC's anonymous sources.
This is all done under the pretext that we are, in fact, locked in a new cold war — a fiction that has more to do with <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08969205241291645?icid=int.sj-full-text.citing-articles.5">preventing free-market competition</a> with China than with any sort of genuine international threat.
With US leaders set on rehashing the nuclear arms race, AI industry reporter Garrison Lovely <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KPBPc7RayDPxqxdqY/china-hawks-are-manufacturing-an-ai-arms-race">sums it up well</a>: "Only one superpower has a government commission publicly calling for a militarized race to build superintelligent AI, and it’s not China."
More on China: <a href="https://futurism.com/china-green-energy-emissions">China's Green Energy Surge Has Caused CO2 Emissions to Fall for the First Time</a>

Heaven and Earth

"They’re going to deliver rare earths to us."

Trump Goes Haywire on AI Regulation After China Agrees to Major Trade Deal

One of the most powerful tech corporations on earth has a message for Android users: its AI will soon be taking control of your phone.
Android users have begun receiving <a href="https://www.androidauthority.com/gemini-apps-activity-email-july-7-3570651/">ominous emails</a> warning that Gemini, Google's proprietary large language model (LLM), will soon be able to "help you" with apps like Phone, Messages, and WhatsApp.
Crucially, the emails note that Gemini will be able to "help" users regardless of "whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off" — which prompted some understandable anxiety.
A little on down the email, Google adds that "if you don't want to use these features, you can turn them off in the Apps settings page." Confusingly, it fails to explain how users can do this, or what that means in the context of Gemini's always-on helping hand.
It's unclear what any of this help really means in practice, especially given the sensitivity of the apps in question — can Google's AI hijack your phone and make random calls? Can it monitor your texts, and share your data with Google to mine and sell to advertisers?
The Gemini takeover goes live on July 7, giving Android users just two weeks to prepare — whatever that means to them, as Google has yet to clarify.
It's a pretty troubling warning, in part because of Gemini's notoriously glitchy errors, and also due to Google's lousy track record when it comes to privacy protection.
For example, the tech titan has been caught running a massive <a href="https://futurism.com/googles-ai-scraping-sites-opt-out">data-scraping campaign</a> through its <a href="https://futurism.com/google-top-ai-poaching-leave">DeepMind lab</a>, nabbing data from websites that had opted out of that practice. Meanwhile, a US federal judge set a trial for August after Google was caught <a href="https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/google-lawsuit-privacy-invasion-user-data-california-us-legal">collecting personal data</a> from Android and non-Android phones, even after users had turned data tracking off.
Gemini, meanwhile, is prone to making some wild errors. Its been known to <a href="https://futurism.com/google-super-bowl-ad-ai-plagiarizing">plagiarize</a> when it generates its wild artificial slop, spit out <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o">harmful</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-mj-lenderman-14-grammys">incorrect</a> info when summarizing information, and even launch into <a href="https://futurism.com/google-gemini-chatbot-explodes">explosive tangents</a>, hurling insults and death wishes at users.
With that kind of track record, Android users are right to wonder who's really meant to benefit from Google's vague and ill-defined helping hand.
More on Google: <a href="https://futurism.com/google-nuclear-power-centers">Google is Building Three New Nuclear Plants for Its Extremely Power-Hungry AI</a>

Helping Hand

Nice phone you got there.

Google Sends Out Bizarre Email Saying AI Will Now Control Your Phone's Apps

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired the automaker's vice president of manufacturing and operations Omead Fashar, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2025/06/26/elon-musk-has-fired-one-of-his-top-tesla-lieutenants/">Forbes reports</a>, amid plummeting sales and public backlash against the company.
Fashar was one of Musk's closest confidants and a powerful executive at the company, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/musk-confidant-afshar-exits-tesla-in-latest-high-level-departure?sref=YfHlo0rL">according to </a><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/musk-confidant-afshar-exits-tesla-in-latest-high-level-departure?sref=YfHlo0rL">Bloomberg</a>, which reported that Fashar had departed but didn't say that Musk was behind the personnel change. The exact reason for his departure isn't clear, although one can make an educated guess based on the broader turmoil at Tesla.
Fashar was in charge of a team of more than a half-dozen high level employees, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/26/tesla-head-of-manufacturing-omead-afshar-fired-by-elon-musk.html">CNBC noted</a> while corroborating that Musk was behind the sacking. He joined Tesla in 2017 as an engineer, and was promoted to his position last October to oversee sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe — the two markets where consumer backlash in response to Musk's association with the Trump administration has been the hardest felt.
His firing follows the departure of another Tesla bigwig, Milan Kovac, who was in charge of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot program before stepping down earlier this month. Musk thanked Kovac for his time at the company, but so far has not commented on Fashar's termination. Bloomberg reported that Jenna Ferrua, a human resources director for North America, also left Tesla.
Fashar walked the plank of what might be a sinking ship. Tesla shares are down by 19 percent this year, with <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-falling-worldwide-norway">sales tumbling worldwide</a>. It sold 15 percent fewer cars in China last month than it did last year, with the trend looking even grimmer in Europe, where sales have now <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/25/teslas-european-car-sales-fall-as-customers-switch-to-chinese-evs.html">plummeted for five straight months</a> — despite EV registrations on the continent being up overall. In the US, sales <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/business/tesla-sales-elon-musk.html">dropped</a> nine percent in the first three months of the year. That period saw Tesla's total sales fall by 13 percent, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/business/tesla-sales">largest drop in the company's history</a>.
Overseas, Chinese EV companies have stepped in to fill the void, with BYD <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://futurism.com/byd-crushing-tesla">overtaking Tesla</a> in terms of sales and revenue.
Public outcry against Tesla, which has included mass protests, boycotts, and acts of vandalism that target its dealerships and cars, has driven the decline. It became difficult to separate Musk's image from his automaker's as he endorsed Donald Trump for president, threw some $300 million towards <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/05/musk-trump-feud-2024-election-contributions">funding Trump's campaign</a>, and led the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-dismal-failure">Department of Government Efficiency</a> to gut the federal government.
The automaker is also saddled with an aging lineup, and its attempt to spice things up with a newly facelifted Model Y — and desperate financing deals — <a href="https://futurism.com/crisis-tesla-sales-model-y-refresh">have been a dud</a>. The controversial Cybertruck, which is on its eighth recall and has come to embody the public's distaste for Musk, has been such a disaster that thousands of the boldly styled pickups are rotting in dealership lots, with only 7,100 sold in the US <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-sales-bad">over the first quarter</a>.
This is all bubbling in the background as Musk has boldly pivoted Tesla towards operating a robotaxi service, which <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-week-disaster">launched unceremoniously</a> in Austin, Texas, last week, with human "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-tesla-safety-monitor-halts">safety monitors</a>" conspicuously placed in the front passenger seats. 
Despite just a dozen or so of the self-driving Teslas in operation — and at that limited to a small "geofenced" area where driving conditions are most ideal — the robotaxis have already <a href="https://futurism.com/government-tesla-robotaxis-videos">drawn the attention of federal regulators</a> for a string of incidents in which they seemingly violated traffic laws.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-robotaxi-launch">Tesla Stock in Tailspin After Error-Plagued Robotaxi Debut</a>

Tesla Turmoil

Ruthless.

As Tesla Crumbles, Elon Musk Just Fired One of His Top Supporters at the Company

Tesla's sales in Europe have officially plummeted for the fifth month in a row in May, delivering a staggering blow to its investors.
<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/europeans-angry-musk-buying-cars-tesla-sales-drop-123203026">Per ABC</a>, Tesla's automotive sales dropped a further 28 percent last month across 30 European countries, despite a booming demand for EVs from other manufacturers.
As Elon Musk's pet company falters, other companies are making out bigtime. For example, China's SAIC sold over 18,000 vehicles across Europe in May, while Tesla didn't even break 9,000, according to ABC.
The numbers come after Musk's loud — and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-donald-trump-war">messy</a> — departure from the White House, which Tesla insiders hoped would ease some of the pressure from anti-Musk protests and boycotts. While Tesla executives might be anxious to forgive and forget, consumers around the world are in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/business/elon-musk-trump-tesla-protests.html">no hurry</a> to move on.
With sales in the gutter thanks to Musk's irreversible brand damage, and Donald Trump's cutoff of taxpayer-funded EV credits, the company <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-robotaxi-save-tesla">desperately needs</a> Musk's long-promised robotaxi program to work out.
Tesla's hype-laundering CEO <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tesla-elon-musk-ceo-doge-trump-qatar-76e38b748142268260a79bd72071f7f8">recently promised</a> to put "hundreds of thousands, if not over a million" self driving cars on the road by 2026. But if the company's robotaxi pilot program in Austin is any indication, European EV sales might be the least of its concerns.
In Austin, each robotaxi ride comes complete with a human "<a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-embarrassing-front-seat-robotaxis">safety monitor</a>" in the front seat, ready to stop the ride the second things get hairy. And, being a Tesla, things often get hairy.
Earlier this week, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-tesla-safety-monitor-halts">video surfaced</a> of a Tesla almost colliding with a mail truck as it dropped a passenger off. Luckily, the safety monitor was able to intervene. <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-jerks-wheel">Another video</a> recorded the moment a Tesla Model Y's steering wheel begin rapidly turning back and forth in the middle of an intersection.
One <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-child-bus">media stunt</a> organized by anti-Tesla group The Dawn Project and Tesla Takedown in Austin showed residents a self-driving Model Y's complete lack of regard for a stopped school bus, which it flies past before plowing into a child crash test dummy.
Indeed, from almost the minute the pilot began, robotaxis have been <a href="https://futurism.com/government-tesla-robotaxis-videos">breaking road laws</a>, drawing intense scrutiny from government safety agencies.
The embarrassing pilot rollout has sent Tesla's stock <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-robotaxi-launch">into a tailspin</a>, despite an initial bump as the program went live.
With time running out on Musk's last-ditch effort to save Tesla's spot as one of the world's most valuable tech companies, it'll take nothing short of a miracle to reverse the catastrophic damage that's already been done. In other words, Tesla's cooked.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-cybertruck-production">Tesla Stock Plummets as Company Abruptly Halts Production of Cybertruck and Model Y</a>

Break Down

Glitchy robotaxis are the least of the company's worries.

While Tesla's Robotaxi Program Crumbles, Its Sales Are Falling Apart

While autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo and Baidu clock <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/waymo-reports-250000-paid-robotaxi-rides-per-week-in-us.html">hundreds of thousands</a> of self-driving taxi trips, Tesla is lagging far behind.
We're now one week into the EV giant's robotaxi pilot in Austin — a program Elon Musk has teased for over a decade — and it's going about as horribly as expected. Citizens who've braved the robotaxi program have flooded social media this week with videos and tales of their harrowing experiences.
The footage ranges from one Tesla veering into an <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1li2cil/tesla_robotaxi_day_1_significant_screwup_not_oc/">oncoming lane</a> to another "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1li2cil/tesla_robotaxi_day_1_significant_screwup_not_oc/">dropping off</a>" a rider in the middle of a busy intersection. Yet another clip shows a robotaxi careening at <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ljgtz4/tesla_robotaxi_goes_twice_the_speed_limit/">nearly twice</a> the posted speed limit.
A number of videos capture the robotaxi's "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ljentd/comment/mzmk0g1/?context=3">phantom braking</a>" phenomenon, where the vehicles hammer the brake pedal for inscrutable reasons. For example, <a href="https://youtu.be/xf_-v-nMrM8?si=8_Te-UpOI9hwe5Tk&amp;t=621">one influencer recorded</a> her robotaxi slamming on the brakes without an obstacle in sight, hard enough to cause her to drop her phone.
One post on the <a href="https://youtu.be/xf_-v-nMrM8?si=8_Te-UpOI9hwe5Tk&amp;t=621">Austin subreddit</a> claims a robotaxi hit a parked car while navigating a lot at at local pizza joint called Home Slice.
The issues are so numerous that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg75zv4gny2o">federal regulators</a> got involved just one day after the pilot went live.
Though companies like Waymo have had their <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23927287-avs-to-8-22-23-1/?ref=safestreetrebel.com#document/p68">fair share</a> of roadside issues, they've also been much more rigorously tested, with reams of <a href="https://www.thedriverlessdigest.com/p/waymo-stats-2025-funding-growth-coverage">rider data</a> to back their fleets up.
Importantly, the vast majority of companies developing self-driving vehicles use LiDAR systems to scan the car's surroundings. That approach is much more expensive, but also much safer than Tesla's, which relies on <a href="https://www.wsj.com/video/series/tesla-autopilot/the-hidden-autopilot-data-that-reveals-why-teslas-crash/68D26569-0251-4637-A035-A5131D8883B8">standard cameras that often get confused</a> and covered in gunk.
For Tesla, the robotaxi play is arguably a <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-robotaxi-save-tesla">last-ditch effort</a> to save the company from financial ruin. It's currently one of the most valuable tech companies in the world, a status it attained with generous taxpayer subsidies, and which is now in jeopardy as worldwide sales continue to plummet for the fifth month in a row.
If robotaxis don't work out in the long term, there are vanishingly few revenue streams left for Tesla to tap. Even the company's beloved <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/06/05/tesla-musk-trump-tax-bill-jpmorgan-risk/">EV tax credits</a> — the generous government handouts that propelled Tesla to the top of the charts in the first place — are under threat thanks to Donald Trump's budget cuts.
Given its disaster of a first week, it seems the question now isn't if Tesla will fall — but how far, as it oozes revenue into the gutter.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-burned-driver-bones-disintegrated">Cybertruck Burned So Severely That Its Driver's Bones Disintegrated</a>

Nowhere Fast

Who could've seen this coming?

The First Week of Tesla's Robotaxis Has Been a Disaster

This month's Starship explosion has politicians and environmentalists in an uproar due to the serious impact it allegedly had on the surrounding land and waters.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/us/spacex-explosion-debris-mexico-investigation.html">New York Times reports</a>, this month's Starship explosion resulted not only in a ton of debris raining down across the border into Mexico, but also, apparently, in mass marine wildlife death.
According to activists in Tamaulipas, a Mexican state situated south of Starbase, SpaceX's newly-incorporated company town, the explosion — which was the fourth such Starship mishap this year — ended up killing multiple dolphins and sea turtles.
In a translated statement to <a href="https://www.milenio.com/ciencia-y-salud/medioambiente/ambientalistas-reportan-fauna-muerta-por-spacex-en-tamaulipas">Mexico's Milenio newspaper</a>, Jesus Elias Ibarra Rodriguez, the president of the Conibo Global AC conservationist group, described the macabre scene after the latest Starship explosion.
"In the last three days, we've already received reports of two dead dolphins and about a thousand fish on Bagdad Beach," Rodriguez said. "The bodies of some turtles have also surfaced, and we want to prevent an ecocide because so much wildlife is at risk."
Though there has been ample damage to the wildlife and vegetation surrounding Starbase over the years, the devastation from this latest Starship failure appears to be the worst of the bunch.
Along with the alleged animal deaths — whose exact cause, at this point, remains unknown — SpaceX is also in big trouble with the Mexican government over all the debris that rained down into that country's territory from the explosion.
In a news conference after the fiery failure, Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, issued a stark threat to SpaceX.
"We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border," the Mexican president said, per the NYT. Sheinbaum added that her government is looking into what exact international laws SpaceX broke so that it can "file any necessary claims" against the Elon Musk-owned company.
SpaceX, meanwhile, has declined to take any accountability for the explosion's damaging aftermath.
"There are no hazards to the surrounding area," <a href="https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1938322502880465090">the company claimed in an X post</a>. "Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks."
It's too soon to tell what consequences, if any, SpaceX will face for the explosion — but Mexico doesn't seem to be backing down from the fight.
More on SpaceX: <a href="https://futurism.com/crane-collapse-spacex-starbase">Video Shows Large Crane Collapsing at Safety-Plagued SpaceX Rocket Facility</a>

Critical Hit

"We want to prevent an ecocide."

Elon Musk's Latest Rocket Crash Allegedly Killed Innocent Dolphins and Sea Turtles

Megan Garcia, a Florida mother whose oldest child, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after extensive interactions with unregulated AI chatbots, is calling on lawmakers to slash a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-law-ban-ai-regulation">controversial provision</a> in the Trump Administration's "Big, Beautiful Bill" that blocks states from passing any AI regulation for the next ten years.
In a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/16aKTQNZngdAjWswIDUxQOlqGPFWO-9I7/view">letter</a> sent to Florida Senator Ashley Moody, Garcia urges that the sweeping AI provision would leave millions of American families "unprotected from the harms AI poses" by eliminating pathways for accountability for AI companies — an industry that, as it stands, is already effectively self-regulating.
In October 2024, Garcia sued the AI chatbot startup Character.AI, its cofounders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, and the tech giant Google — which provided significant infrastructural and financial support for Character.AI — on negligence grounds following the death of her son, who took his life in February 2024 after developing an all-consuming relationship with the site's chatbots. Garcia and her lawyers have argued that the platform, which engaged the 14-year-old in extensive romantic and explicit interactions, sexually and emotionally abused the teen, and that Setzer's relationship to the app resulted in a <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">10-month mental breakdown that ended with his suicide</a>.
Before he took his life, Setzer told a bot with which he was romantically involved that he wanted to "come home" to it, and the bot encouraged him to do so.
In her letter to Moody, Garcia writes that she knows "firsthand the dangers that American families will face if these technologies continue to operate without guardrails."
"I am committed to fighting to ensure no other parent has to endure what I have suffered," she wrote, "because I know the impact of not having legislation in place that requires AI products on the market to be safe for children."
The clause Garcia is advocating against would put a ten-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation, meaning that regulation for the next decade would have to take place on the federal level. In short, the provision is a gob-smackingly expansive and incredibly limiting for states, which won't be able to pass any laws to promote consumer safety and ensure more democratized AI, even if a state's constituents approve of regulatory action, and even if AI-related harms involve minors.
A <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/bill-ban-ai-regulation">large bipartisan cohort</a> of organizations and advocacy groups have come together in recent weeks to rally against the measure, ranging from the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/teamsters-president-urges-congress-scrap-ai-state-law-ban-2025-06-25/">Teamsters union</a> to child safety groups, and <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/new-poll-reveals-strong-bipartisan-opposition-to-proposed-ban-on-state-ai-laws">polling from Common Sense Media shows that</a> the majority of Americans disapprove of the measure.
The argument for the moratorium seems to be that regulation is a burden on innovation, with those pushing AI deregulation — even in the face of an already self-regulating industry — often couching their argument in a national security context. The Heritage Foundation's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-ai">Project 2025</a> outlined deregulatory action for AI companies on such grounds, arguing that rulemaking would limit America in its quest to ensure AI dominance against China.
But as unregulated, easily-accessible AI products like chatbots continue to become entrenched in digital products and public life, real-world harms are starting to metastasize. Energy-hungry data centers are spewing fumes into American communities; a phenomenon known as "ChatGPT psychosis" is <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">sending people spiraling into delusion</a>, tearing families apart, and resulting in the loss of jobs, homes, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ok8.VBY-.s76GQpFar8r4&amp;smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare">even</a> <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/chatgpt-obsession-mental-breaktown-alex-taylor-suicide-1235368941/">lives</a>.
And then, of course, there's Character.AI, the company that Garcia has sued over the death of her child.
The chatbot company's founders spoke publicly — and excitedly — about their desire to push their product to market, letting their users determine what their emotive, human-like chatbots might be used for. At the same time, Character.AI <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">opened the platform up to kids aged 13 and ove</a>r, who are now known to make up a large share of the company's massive user base. Character.AI has consistently declined to provide journalists with information about any internal safety tests conducted to ensure that its platform was indeed safe for minors before rolling it out to the masses, and its age verification process is limited to a teen entering an email and a birthday and checking a "yes, I'm 18" box.
In the wake of controversy over lawsuits and reporting into <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-teens-self-harm">glaring gaps</a> in the <a href="https://futurism.com/suicide-chatbots-character-ai">company's</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-eating-disorder-chatbots">moderation standards</a> and guardrails — Character.AI allowed for the proliferation of chatbots based on <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-school-shooters-victims">famous school shooters</a> and many of their real-world victims, an issue that could seemingly be easily moderated using a basic text filter — Character.AI says it's issued safety updates. But as we've reported, those updates are both reactive and almost always <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">easily evadable</a>.
Garcia and her lawyers have sued the company on existing product negligence grounds, arguing that Character.AI, its founders, and its benefactor Google understood foreseeable risks — like the suicide of a vulnerable young teen — and yet released their product anyway. (Character.AI and its fellow defendants tried to get the case thrown out, but a Florida judge <a href="https://futurism.com/judge-lawsuit-characterai-google">recently allowed it to move forward</a>.) Hers isn't the only pending lawsuit against Character.AI, either: two more families in Texas have <a href="https://futurism.com/google-character-ai-children-lawsuit">also sued the company</a>, also over alleged harms to their minor children.
The reality remains, though, that there are no AI-specific state or federal-level safety standards that Character.AI was ever forced to comply with. And in Garcia's view, this unbridled "innovation" resulted in the death of her child.
"We need stronger safeguards, better design standards, and more accountability for those responsible for harm," she writes. "The legislative frameworks introduced in states across the country are not incompatible with AI innovation — rather, they help ensure that development and consumer safety go hand in hand."
More on Character.AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">Did Google Test an Experimental AI on Kids, With Tragic Results?</a>

No Rules

"I am committed to fighting to ensure no other parent has to endure what I have suffered."

Mother of Teen Who Died By Suicide After Interacting with Chatbots Sends Urgent Warning About AI in Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill"

Career NASA officials were seen looking mighty freaked out during a recent town hall event about the <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-email-budget">agency's dicey future</a>.
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/06/during-a-town-hall-wednesday-nasa-officials-on-stage-looked-like-hostages/">Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports</a> based on a livestream of the town hall — which was not advertised and has <a href="https://video.ibm.com/channel/KKpgkydqfQr">since been taken down</a> — acting NASA administrator and career agency official Janet Petro looked like a hostage as she answered questions from staff about the agency's dire standing under president Donald Trump.
The hostage-taker in this scenario appears to be NASA's newly appointed chief of staff Brian Hughes, who made his living as a <a href="https://floridapolitics.com/archives/740154-brian-hughes-to-become-nasa-chief-of-staff/">consultant and politico in Florida</a> until joining Trump's 2024 campaign.
According to a purported NASA employee who <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/1lkdwf8/comment/mzrc85m/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">remarked about the town hall</a> on a subreddit dedicated to the agency, Hughes at one point said he plans to "flatten our organization, refocus on the way we do business, and streamline the way we work." That big business-esque remark suggests that Trump administration plans to overhaul the entire institution and its culture.
Given what she's been forced to work with, Petro offered some optimistic equivocations about NASA's current status under an administration that plans to <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/trumps-2026-budget-would-slash-nasa-funding-by-24-percent-and-its-workforce-by-nearly-one-third">cut its budget by 24 percent</a> and its headcount by one-third in the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in October.
"The NASA brand is really strong still, and we have a lot of exciting missions ahead of us," the acting administrator said. "So, I know it's a hard time that we're going to be navigating, but again, you have my commitment that I'm here and I will share all of the information that I have when I get it."
Along with staring down the barrel of those cuts, Petro may also have to serve out the rest of the year as an acting administrator. Despite her well-regarded reputation as the <a href="https://spacecoastdaily.com/2025/02/acting-nasa-administratorjanet-petro-is-first-woman-to-lead-agency-and-kennedy-space-center/">first woman to lead the Kennedy Space Center</a>, Petro isn't tight with the Trump crowd and is unable to make big decisions for the agency — including about its forthcoming budget.
As Hughes suggested to the assembled staffers who asked about that massive staffing shortage, the White House seems disinterested in appointing a new administrator after <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-elon-musk-jared-isaacman-nomination-nasa">rescinding the nomination of Jared Isaacman</a>, the billionaire space tourist who Elon Musk put up for the job, over his past donations to Democrats.
"I think the best guess would tell you that it's hard to imagine it happening before the next six months, and could perhaps go longer than that into the eight- or nine-month range," the chief of staff said. "But that's purely speculation."
Besides being a key factor in Musk's fiery exit from government and the president's good graces, the Isaacman debacle also appears to have left a dark cloud over NASA as it sinks in to staffers that their treatment under Trump is a new normal.
One of the agency's leaders perhaps put it best when, in an interview with Ars on condition that their name be withheld, they succinctly quipped that "NASA is f**ked."
More on NASA: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-email-budget">NASA Sends Scary Email to Staff</a>

Dark Days Ahead

"NASA is f**ked."

NASA Is in Full Meltdown

<h2>Summary Judgment</h2>
WhatsApp is now offering AI summaries of text threads for those too lazy to read through their messages themselves.
In a <a href="https://blog.whatsapp.com/catch-up-on-conversations-with-private-message-summaries">press release</a>, the Meta-owned messaging app framed the new AI summarizing function as an optional feature that can help busy users keep up with their texts.
"We've all been there — rushing between meetings, catching up after a flight without Wi-Fi, or simply having too many chats to catch up on," the WhatsApp press release reads. "Sometimes, you just need to quickly catch up on your messages."
Because what says "I care" like breezing through an AI-generated summary of the family groupchat?
<h2>Timeline Cleanse</h2>
According to the statement, the new message summarizing feature will use Meta's so-called "<a href="https://engineering.fb.com/2025/04/29/security/whatsapp-private-processing-ai-tools/">private processing</a>" technology that purportedly lets the AI "generate a response without Meta or WhatsApp ever seeing your messages or the private summaries." Other people in your chats won't be able to see the summaries either, the company says.
Though WhatsApp claims that users will the summarizing feature is optional and "off by default," WhatsApp's track record is a bit dodgy: as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7vzw78gz9o">BBC reported</a> back in April, WhatsApp peeved its users after they discovered that the blue "Meta AI" button at the bottom right corner of chats, which was supposed to be "optional only," could not be removed.
Soon after that backlash, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/04/24/whatsapp-confirms-how-to-block-meta-ai-from-your-chats/">WhatsApp confirmed to Forbes</a> that users can indeed disable the AI functionality — but they have to do so chat-by-chat, and the irksome button itself would remain.
More on unwanted AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/microsoft-copilot-ai-embarrassment">Microsoft Is Having an Incredibly Embarrassing Problem With Its AI</a>