A new survey found that over half of American teens are regular users of anthropomorphic AI companions like Character.AI and Replika.
That's striking on its own, as an illustration of how embedded AI companions have become in mainstream teenage life. But even more startling were the 31 percent of surveyed teens who said their interactions with AI companions were either as satisfying or more satisfying than conversations with real-life friends — a finding that shows how profoundly AI is already changing the formative and tumultuous years of adolescence.
The <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/why-teens-use-ai-companions">survey</a>, published today by the tech accountability and digital literacy nonprofit Common Sense Media, surveyed 1,060 teens aged 13 to 17 across the US. It found that around three in four kids have used AI companions, defined by Common Sense as emotive AI tools designed to take on a specific persona or character — as opposed to an assistive, general-use chatbot like ChatGPT — with over half of surveyed teens qualifying as regular users of AI companions, meaning they log on to talk to the bots at least a few times per month.
While about 46 percent of teens said they've mainly turned to these bots as tools, around 33 percent said they use companion bots for "social interaction and relationships, including conversation practice, emotional support, role-playing, friendship, or romantic interactions," according to the report.
"The most striking finding for me was just how mainstream AI companions have already become among many teens," said Dr. Michael Robb, Common Sense's head of research, in an interview with Futurism. "And over half of them say that they use it multiple times a month, which is what I would qualify as regular usage. So just that alone was kind of eye-popping to me."
AI companions have come under heavy scrutiny in the months following the <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">filing of two separate lawsuits</a> against Character.AI and its benefactor, the <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-play-best">tech giant Google</a>, over allegations that the company released a <a href="https://futurism.com/google-suicide-teen-research">negligent</a>, reckless technology that emotionally and sexually abused multiple minors, resulting in physical and psychological harm. One of the youth at the heart of these lawsuits, a 14-year-old in Florida named Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after extensive interactions with bots on Character.AI with which the teen engaged in intimate and sexually explicit conversations.
In a <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">separate safety assessment</a> published earlier this year, researchers from Common Sense and Stanford University's Brainstorm lab warned that no AI companion was safe for kids under the age of 18. But while that report focused deeply on <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-teens-self-harm">content</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-school-shooters-victims">safety pitfalls</a> — interactive <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-pedophile-chatbots">sexual</a> or violent content easily generated by companion bots, the unreliability of the bots' ability to provide <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-eating-disorder-chatbots">accurate and helpful information</a>, and the unknowns surrounding how access to agreeable, always-on social companions might impact kids' developing minds — this latest study was aimed at understanding the breadth of use of companions among young people, and how integrated they've become in day-to-day teen life.
"Society is grappling with the integration of AI tools into many different aspects of people's lives," Robb said. "I think a lot of tools are being developed without children in mind, even though they are being accessed by users under 18 quite frequently... but there hasn't, to date, been much research on what the AI companion environment is for children."
The most widely-reported use case teens reported was entertainment, while many others said they use AI companions as "tools or programs," as opposed to friends, partners, or confidantes; around 80 percent of teen users also reported that they spend more time with real, human friends than they do any AI companions, and about half of teens expressed skepticism around the accuracy and trustworthiness of chatbot outputs. In other words, many teens do seem to be setting healthy boundaries for themselves around AI companions and their limits.
"I don't think teens are just replacing human relationships wholesale with AI companions; I think a lot of teens are approaching them fairly pragmatically," said Robb. "A lot of kids say that they're using it for entertainment and to satisfy their curiosity, and the majority still spend a lot more time with real friends and say that they find human conversations more satisfying."
"But at the same time," he caveated, "you still see little inklings below the surface that could be problematic, especially the more ingrained these things get in kids' lives."
The most ominous group in the survey might be the teens who don't find human social interaction as satisfying as interactions with AI companions. Twenty-one percent of teens, it noted, said their conversations with AI bots were just as good as human interactions, and 10 percent said they were better than their human experiences. About one-third of minors who reported AI companion use also said that they've chosen to discuss serious or sensitive issues with the bots instead of human peers.
"There's a good chunk of teen users who are choosing to discuss serious matters with AI instead of real people, or sharing personal information with platforms," said Robb, findings he said "raise concerns about teens' willingness to share their personal information with AI companies."
"The terms of service that a lot of these platforms have grant them very extensive, often perpetual rights to the personal information kids share," said the researcher. "Anything a teen shares — their personal information, their name, their location, photographs of themselves... and also, the very intimate thoughts that they're putting in there — that all becomes fodder for the companies to be able to use however they want."
Though most mainstream companion platforms technically forbid minors — the most <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-emailing-minors-school-shooters">high-profile exception being Character.AI</a>, which has always rated its platform as safe for teens 13 and over — these platforms are <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">extremely easy for young people to access regardless</a>; age verifications are generally limited to providing a working email and self-reporting your birthday. The AI industry also effectively self-regulates, and there are virtually no rules dictating how generative AI products can be created, how they might be rolled out to the public, and to whom they can be marketed and accessed.
"There should be higher accountability for the tech platforms," said Robb, adding that "we should have more meaningful regulation to regulate how platforms can provide products to children."
Indeed, when it comes to teen use of AI companions, the burden of the AI industry's regulatory vacuum falls heavily on parents — many of whom are struggling to keep up with the new tech and what it might mean for their children.
"There's not a perfect plan for parents because they're up against giant corporations who are very invested in getting their kids on these products," said Robb. "Many parents don't even know that these platforms exist... have that conversation openly, without judgment, as a first step."
More on AI and kids: <a href="https://futurism.com/lonely-children-ai-chatbots">Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends</a>

The Kids

"There's not a perfect plan for parents because they're up against giant corporations who are very invested in getting their kids on these products."

A Staggering Proportion of Teens Say Talking to AI Is Better Than Real-Life Friends

Elon Musk has been boasting about <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-grok-4-power-hitler">what he says</a> are the incredible capabilities of xAI's new Grok 4 AI chatbot.
"Grok 4 is smarter than almost all graduate students in all disciplines, simultaneously," Musk bragged, adding that Grok 4 was "the smartest AI in the world."
Is it really? Intelligence was a hard thing to measure even before back before AI hit the scene, but certain tests can provide something of a clue.
One prominent platform for doing so is the UC Berkeley-developed <a href="https://lmarena.ai/leaderboard">LMArena leaderboard</a>, which crowdsources rankings on AI models by having users score their responses in categories ranging from creative writing and coding to math and vision.
In its latest scores, Grok 4 ranked third place overall and on text generation. Make no mistake, that's impressive — but it's still trailing behind advanced models from Google and OpenAI. (Specifically, Google's Gemini 2.5 placed first and OpenAI's o3 and 4o reasoning models tied for second, with GPT-4.5 tied with Grok 4 for third.)
While Grok is clearly a fearsome competitor in the <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">arenas of racism and antisemitism</a>, in other words, even its latest release clearly falls short of being the "smartest AI in the world." (This isn't entirely surprising; Musk has a long history of fibbing in his <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-openai-web-lies">professional life</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjz24ne85o">political activities</a>, and <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal-path-of-exile-asmongold-quin/">even his hobbies</a>.)
Perhaps the only saving grace for Grok is the suggestion, per expert criticism, that Berkeley's chatbot arena may be more vibes-based than strictly scientific.
According to a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.20879">recent study</a>, conducted by a consortium of AI researchers and led by the machine learning firm Cohere, the leaderboard allegedly has a bunch of "systematic issues that have resulted in a distorted playing field." Among the serious allegations raised by the researchers is the claim that the arena conducts "undisclosed private testing" before publicly releasing scores — and that rankings can be retracted at will.
Soon after the paper's release, it <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/30/criticism-of-the-chatbot-arena/">was revealed</a> that the version of Meta's LLaMA 4 that had been used by the leaderboard wasn't the same one that had been released publicly — a bait-and-switch ploy on Meta's part to charm the human voters behind the arena.
Though an <a href="https://x.com/lmarena_ai/status/1909397817434816562">apology was issued</a> and Meta was thrown under the bus for its sketchy attempts to rig the game, it was still a really bad look that marred the chatbot arena's credibility. What that means for Grok, though? We'll have to ask the smartest AI in the world.
More on Grok: <a href="https://futurism.com/pentagon-elon-musk-xai-grok">The Pentagon Is Pumping $200 Million Into Elon Musk's AI That Just Had a Nazi Meltdown</a>

Leaderboard of Legends

Well, this is embarrassing. 

Elon Musk Said Grok 4 Was the "Smartest AI in the World," But Its Leaderboard Scores Just Came Out and They Tell a Different Story

Try as he might, President Donald Trump is failing miserably to get the world to move on from the still-unfolding Jeffrey Epstein crisis.
Trump's loyal fan base devolved into a cesspool of conspiracy theories after the White House walked back claims about the late billionaire sex criminal, concluding that Epstein had no "client list" and that the sex criminal had killed himself in jail, rather than being killed to keep him silent.
In a wildly backfired attempt to sweep the affair under the rug, <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-trump-release-epstein-files">Trump took to Truth Social last week</a>, baselessly claiming that Epstein is "somebody that nobody cares about."
Besides a cacophony of outrage, the US Department of Justice and FBI are also struggling to put out the fire. Last week, the Trump administration released what it called "full raw" surveillance video footage, recorded from near Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead.
But as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/metadata-shows-the-dojs-raw-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-was-likely-modified/">Wired reported</a> at the time, the allegedly unaltered video showed signs of tampering. Metadata analyzed by the publication found that it was edited using the professional editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro.
And the plot continues to thicken. In <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-fbis-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-had-nearly-3-minutes-cut-out/">followup reporting today</a>, Wired revealed that the video appears to have had nearly three minutes cut out — further stoking the flames of a major political crisis.
As Wired suggests, the baffling discrepancy in the footage may be related to a "one-minute gap" that attorney general Pam Bondi <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/9/why-is-maga-angry-with-trump-pam-bondi-over-epstein-files">blamed</a> on a nightly system reset.
It remains to be seen where the story leads. However, almost three full minutes remain unaccounted for in the over four hours of footage released by the FBI.
And the optics are appalling. Trump himself had a well-documented relationship with Epstein that dates back to the late 1980s, calling him a "terrific guy" in a 2002 <a href="https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/#print">New York Magazine interview</a>.
"He’s a lot of fun to be with," Trump added at the time. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
Adding to the sense that Trump desperately doesn't want extensive Epstein material released, he <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/07/14/trump-sounded-hesitant-about-releasing-epstein-files-in-newly-resurfaced-interview/">told Fox News</a> last summer that "you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there."
Coverup job or not, the revelations about the video will likely spark renewed speculation, which could have very real ramifications for Trump, who now stands at odds with his otherwise extremely loyal fan base.
Longtime Trump loyalist and house speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/15/mike-johnson-epstein-files-democrats-house-vote/?utm_campaign=wp_main&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=bluesky">told a right-wing podcaster</a> that he was in favor of the release of the Epstein files, days after the Department of Justice declared the matter was closed.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats are also calling for more transparency into the extremely sensitive topic.
"If you’re not hiding anything, prove that to the American people," said minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in a Monday statement. "And if you are trying to hide something, as many of Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters apparently believe, then the Congress should work hard to uncover the truth for the American people."
More on the Epstein crisis: <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-trump-release-epstein-files">Musk Questions Why Trump Won't Release Epstein Files</a>

Epstein Crisis

The plot thickens.

Metadata Shows That Critical Minutes Were Deleted From the Epstein Video

In his increasingly desperate bid to keep up in the ongoing AI race, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is throwing out the rulebook in his quest to expand data center infrastructure as fast as possible.
As <a href="https://semianalysis.com/2025/07/11/meta-superintelligence-leadership-compute-talent-and-data/#from-buildings-to-tents">SemiAnalysis first reported</a> last week, Meta is "prioritizing speed above all else" by setting up "tents" to add additional capacity to its data center campuses.
The prefabricated modules are designed from the ground up to get computing power online as fast as possible, underlining Meta's furious scramble to build out capacity for increasingly power-hungry AI models.
"Everyone is trying to build data centers as fast as possible in the race to achieve AGI," SemiAnalysis CEO Dylan Patel <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-mark-zuckerberg-building-ai-data-centers-tents-catch-up-2025-7">told Business Insider</a>. "Due to constraints with power, datacenter capacity, and the construction crews, Meta has started putting datacenters in 'tents' to reduce construction bottlenecks."
On Monday, Zuckerberg largely corroborated the reporting, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2300161320399228">promising in a Facebook post</a> that "Meta is on track to be the first lab to bring a 1GW+ supercluster online."
Meta's unorthodox infrastructure efforts are reminiscent of billionaire Elon Musk's EV maker Tesla <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-tent-model-3-production">setting up temporary tents</a> to ramp up production of the company's Model 3 sedan following many months of "production hell" back in 2023.
Could Zuckerberg be in the middle of a similar crunch time, desperately trying to convince investors — and users — of a future filled with so-called "superintelligent" AIs that justifiably eat up a monstrous amount of resources?
By all indications, Zuckerberg is trying not to get left behind by some fierce competition in the AI race. He's been poaching AI researcher talent at competitors left and right, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/26/meta-hires-key-openai-researcher-to-work-on-ai-reasoning-models/">including OpenAI</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-poaches-apple-intelligence-guy">Apple</a>, offering up <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-09/meta-poached-apple-s-pang-with-pay-package-over-200-million?sref=YfHlo0rL">enormous compensation plans</a> to woo top talent.
Earlier this week, the executive went on a media blitz, touting Meta's <a href="https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/meta-to-invest-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-into-compute-to-build-superintelligence-with-several-multi-gw-data-center-clusters/">latest data center construction projects</a>, which are all part of a broader plan to spend "hundreds of billions of dollars" to "build superintelligence."
But whether Meta's latest efforts to expand its computing power with the help of temporary tents will pay off remains to be seen. For one, as SemiAnalysis points out, tents can get hot, meaning Meta may be forced to shut down racks during the "hottest summer days."
It's not hard to see Zuckerberg's mad dash to stay relevant in the AI space, which is still attracting tens of billions of dollars in investment, despite <a href="https://futurism.com/investors-concerned-ai-making-money">worrying predictions</a> about its profitability. As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ai.html">New York Times reported</a> last month, the CEO was quietly worried Meta was falling behind, kicking off his enormous hiring spree.
But even with top talent joining Meta, it's an enormous bet on an unproven technology that <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-trouble-subprime">AI critics say</a> could soon collapse like a house of cards — or a tent in high winds.
More on Zuckerberg: <a href="https://futurism.com/interview-mark-zuckerberg-audio">Interview With Mark Zuckerberg Crashes and Burns as They Can't Get His Audio Working</a>

Circus Survive

Meta is "prioritizing speed above all else."

Zuckerberg Is So Desperate for AI Power That He's Building Temporary Data Centers in Tents

The United States is changing fast. Lawmakers are being forced to grapple not just with timeless questions of governance, but often with novel and rapidly-changing policy issues ranging from <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/21/crypto-super-pac-spending-industry-friendly-lawmakers-00183754">cryptocurrency regulation</a> to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/16/ken-buck-silicon-valley-giants-00111384">tech monopolies</a> to <a href="https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03689401v1/document">app-based labor</a>.
That quickly shifting landscape has some doubting whether the country's aging lawmakers are up for the increasingly complicated task. The issue is stark, with a larger percentage of Congress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/05/us/politics/congress-age.html">over the age of 70</a> than ever before, and a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66665682">long</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinstein-told-just-say-aye-awkward-senate-committee-moment-rcna96697">string</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/07/capitol-hill-gerontocracy-eleanor-holmes-norton-dianne-feinstein-joe-biden-00437318">of incidents</a> causing constituents to question whether their elected officials are suffering cognitive decline in office.
In response, one House democrat is proposing what <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/07/14/congress-age-mental-marie-gluesenkamp-perez">Axios calls</a> a "radical solution" to those concerns: mental fitness exams for lawmakers.
The proposal is being raised by Democratic representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who was elected in 2022 to represent the 3rd district of Washington State.
Last month, Perez tried to <a href="https://gluesenkampperez.house.gov/posts/gluesenkamp-perez-in-axios-people-want-systemic-reform">pass an amendment</a> to require the Office of Congressional Conduct to produce a cognitive test to assess members' "ability to perform the duties of office unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment."
Go figure, the proposal was widely unpopular with the House Appropriations Committee that voted on it — but Perez is using the momentum to continue <a href="https://gluesenkampperez.house.gov/posts/gluesenkamp-perez-on-cnn-its-about-systemic-transparency-and-accountability">pushing the issue</a>.
"What I've heard from my neighbors, my community is this idea that this place is being run by a bunch of staffers," Perez told Axios, referencing elderly figures like <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/bidens-allies-are-stepping-forward-vouch-age-questions-rcna138124">Joe Biden</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/us/politics/feinstein-senate-staff.html">Dianne Feinstein</a>, who leaned heavily on support staff to function while in office. "We're seeing a very real decline in confidence in Congress."
According to the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/16/age-and-generation-in-the-119th-congress-somewhat-younger-with-fewer-boomers-and-more-gen-xers/">Pew Research Center</a>, the median age of a sitting US congressperson currently stands at 64.7 years old. Though Baby Boomers — which Pew defines as the generation born between 1946 and 1964 — no longer have the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/boomer-dominance-means-more-of-the-same-in-the-114th-congress/">monopol</a>y on congressional seats they once did, they still hold 60 of the 99 Senate spots, and 39 percent of the House.
Congress is getting so old, in fact, that eight sitting members of Congress have died in office <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/8-members-congress-died-office-democrats-2025-5">since 2022</a>, including 75-year old Democrat Gerry Connolly of Virginia in May, which allowed House Republicans to pass Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill by just a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/22/gerry-connolly-house-democrats-age-biden">single vote</a>.
81-year-old Texas Representative Kay Granger, meanwhile — who once sat on the Appropriations Committee currently roadblocking these kinds of checks — was found to have been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/22/kay-granger-assisted-living-facility-texas-00195837">admitted to a retirement home</a> last year with six months left in her term.
"It’s clear people want systemic reform," said Perez. "They want accountability."
More on politics: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/pelosi-invested-ai-stock">Nancy Pelosi Invested in a New AI Stock That's Spiking in Value</a>

Golden Years

"It’s clear people want systemic reform. They want accountability."

New Law Would Force Aging Members of Congress to Take Cognitive Tests

<h2>Cost Benefit</h2>
As Elon Musk's Tesla triples down on an autonomous ridehailing service, analysts are ringing the alarm bells, warning that even if the technology were swiftly perfected, it could take many years for robotaxis to become profitable.
As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dont-believe-the-hype-around-robotaxis-hsbc-analysts-say-2025-7">Business Insider reports</a>, analysts at HSBC warn that the market for driverless taxis — if there even is one — is being "widely overestimated."
In a note published on Monday, they posited that driverless cabs involve a whole host of "overlooked" costs that could severely cut into already razor-thin margins, including parking, charging, cleaning fees, and human remote operators, who are tasked with taking over when needed.
"When we factor in these costs, we believe robotaxis won't be break-even on a cash flow basis until 7-8 years after launch," the note reads, as quoted by BI.
It's a notable vote of no confidence, undercutting Musk's promises of establishing a fleet of "<a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/04/23/musk-millions-of-autonomous-teslas-in-2026-future-of-mobility">millions</a>" of autonomous Teslas by the end of next year, efforts that would allegedly add <a href="https://qz.com/elon-musk-tesla-market-cap-robots-optimus-robotaxis-1851540331">tens of trillions of dollars</a> to Tesla's market cap.
<h2>Exaggeration Station</h2>
Even without factoring in additional costs, Musk's EV maker has struggled to realize self-driving. The mercurial CEO <a href="https://futurism.com/video-elon-musk-promising-self-driving-cars">has infamously promised</a> that Teslas will drive themselves "next year" — every year since 2014.
The only real competitor in the robotaxi space, Alphabet's Waymo, has also fallen far short of turning its autonomous ride-hailing service into a profitable business, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/robotaxis-may-mobility-tesla-cybercab-waymo-ford-gm-2025-1">bleeding billions of dollars each year</a>.
HSBC analysts warned that regulatory hurdles and necessary hardware upgrades could pose major challenges in scaling up robotaxi services, meaning that it could take Tesla a full eight years to turn a profit — and that's if the stars align on Musk's outsize promises.
Promises made in the past could be an issue as well: Musk has <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-realizes-all-teslas-self-driving-computers">previously admitted</a> that vehicles built before 2023 will need a full onboard computer swap to enable actual self-driving.
As sales continue to crater in the <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-falling-worldwide-norway">US</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-sales-data-europe">Europe</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-serious-trouble-china">China</a>, nobody knows how much time Musk's EV maker still has. While investors are still happy to <a href="https://futurism.com/actual-value-tesla-stock-time-bomb">prop up a near $1 trillion valuation</a>, Musk's embrace of far-right extremism has left a <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-earnings-brutal-elon-musk">massive hole in the company's finances</a>.
In other words, Tesla is facing an enormous uphill battle in its <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-executive-fsd">attempt to catch up with Waymo</a> and prove that there's ultimately a payoff for dominating the robotaxi space.
More on robotaxis: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-serious-trouble-china">Tesla Is in Serious Trouble in China</a>

Self-Driving Profits

They're not convinced.

Bank Warns That Robotaxi Companies May Have Overlooked Severe Obstacles to Actually Making Money

Tesla has expanded the area where its Robotaxis can operate in Austin, and it's difficult — nay, impossible — to ignore its resemblance to something unmistakably vulgar.
As folks immediately <a href="https://x.com/Teslarati/status/1944765626607607942">pointed out online</a>, the crudely-shaped geofence is, essentially, a bathroom graffiti-level dick drawing — and given his puerile sense of humor, there's a non-zero chance that Tesla CEO Elon Musk made it that way on purpose.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger <a href="https://t.co/t7grvsIJKg">pic.twitter.com/t7grvsIJKg</a>
&mdash; Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) <a href="https://twitter.com/robotaxi/status/1944717529538015677?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Indeed, after someone posted a video showing the phallic geofence on X, the shitposting billionaire quote-tweeted it with the words "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1944688226037325868">bigger, longer, and uncut</a>."
It certainly wouldn't be the first time the world's richest man has tweeted out a dick joke to his 222 million followers. So prolific is Musk's anatomical preoccupation, in fact, that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/trolling-maga-elon-musk/681793/">The Atlantic </a><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/trolling-maga-elon-musk/681793/">published an article</a> earlier this year about how he could not stop posting about penises when he first was working for president Donald Trump's administration.
After learning, for instance, that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) pays for circumcisions in developing countries — which is part of its efforts to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10005968/">stem the spread of HIV</a> — the <a href="https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1889353805763924355">multi-hyphenate business owner briefly changed</a> his X display name to "Harry Bōlz" and his bio to "Circumcisions at a discount, now 50% off!" while he worked to gut the foreign aid agency.
By comparison, the Robotaxi geofence is far more innocuous. As <a href="https://x.com/xdNiBoR/status/1944729574710899000">others on X pointed out</a>, however, that phallic outline now completely envelopes the service area for Google's Waymo driverless cab service, making the region a bona fide petri dish for <a href="https://futurism.com/cyclist-waymo-collision-injury">glitchy</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-week-disaster">self-driving tech</a>.
Responding to the overlapping maps, others on the Musk-owned app couldn't resist making childish jokes.
"Tesla is clearly penetrating the Waymo market!!" <a href="https://x.com/TonyBusiness2/status/1944766523954065795">one user tweeted</a>, complete with laugh emojis.
Perhaps defending Waymo, <a href="https://x.com/Zen4Free/status/1944772004403392888">another poster added</a> that the Google-owned driverless cab service may have a new motto after losing literal ground to Tesla: that it's "not the size that counts," but "how you use it."
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-grok-goth-anime-waifu">Users Immediately Find Grok's Anime Waifu Persona Has Hidden "Full Gooner Mode"</a>

Size Matters

"Bigger, longer, and uncut."

We Are Having a Very Hard Time Believing the "Shape" of Tesla's New Robotaxi Geofence Is a Coincidence

Senator Bernie Sanders is, like most of us, worried about how <a href="https://x.com/SenSanders/status/1842272015354601737">AI is going to affect our future</a> — but he's not convinced that the mainstream conversation is capturing the dynamics of how the tech is really affecting the labor market.
In an <a href="https://gizmodo.com/bernie-sanders-reveals-the-ai-doomsday-scenario-that-worries-top-experts-2000628611">interview with Gizmodo</a>, the Vermont legislator revealed that in the wake of his call for AI to aid in the establishment of a <a href="https://futurism.com/bernie-sanders-ai-four-day">four-day work week</a>, he has taken to speaking with AI experts and CEOs about the technology.
Though Sanders refused to name names, the tech luminaries he's been speaking with are apparently of two minds. In one school, experts warn that there "will be massive job losses," while others insist that new jobs will be created even as others go by the wayside.
"I happen to believe this is not like the Industrial Revolution," Sanders told Giz. "I think this could be a lot more severe."
As the two-time presidential contender noted, AI seems already to be accelerating the longstanding disparity between increasing worker productivity and those same workers failing to see the fruits of their labor. As the independent senator puts it, all that money instead goes "to the corporations and to the companies that developed that technology" — and the current existential struggle should be about AI helping rather than hindering labor rights and security.
"Workers today... are earning less, and I fear very much that almost all the new benefits of worker productivity will go to the people on top at the expense of working people," Sanders told the site. "That is something that concerns me very much."
"Unless we change the political dynamics, the benefits are going to accrue to the people on top at the expense of working people," he continued. "That to me is the most important issue. I want workers to benefit from this new technology, not just the people on top."
Still, he believes that "AI is neither good nor bad" — but that it's also "not science fiction" either.
"There are very, very knowledgeable people... who worry very much that human beings will not be able to control the technology," the former Burlington mayor said, "and that artificial intelligence will in fact dominate our society."
Like so many <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-lying-hiding-abilities">AI doomers</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/nobel-prize-winner-ai-godfather">before him</a>, Sanders believes that there may soon come a time when "we will not be able to control" the nascent technology, and that instead, "it may be able to control us."
"That’s kind of the doomsday scenario," he concluded, "and there is some concern about that among very knowledgeable people in the industry."
All told, Sanders' AI take isn't all that surprising given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opinion/sanders-labor-2020.html">workers' rights rhetoric</a> he's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060929023600/http://bernie.house.gov/statements/20030716135257.asp">espoused for his entire career</a>.
What sets him apart in the <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/how-us-states-are-shaping-ai-policy-amid-federal-debate-and-industry-pushback/">increasingly politicized AI wars</a> isn't that he's cautiously optimistic about it, but that he intends to hold tech CEOs' feet to the fire to make sure the technology doesn't result in the kind of <a href="https://futurism.com/ceos-ai-job-market">massive unemployment</a> that <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-gen-z-careers">so many</a> have <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-ceo-ai-replacing-jobs">warned about</a>. That show of integrity, at the end of the day, inspires much more confidence than the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-pulls-ai-regulatory-ban-from-gop-bill-after-complaints-from-states">collective shoulder-shrug</a> we're seeing from most politicians on the topic.
More on AI and politics: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tesla-board-america">Elon Musk's Bizarre Behavior May Force Tesla Board to Step in, Analyst Warns</a>

Feel The Bern

"Doomsday scenario."

Bernie Sanders Issues Warning About How AI Is Really Being Used

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has <a href="https://www.ai.mil/Latest/News-Press/PR-View/Article/4242822/cdao-announces-partnerships-with-frontier-ai-companies-to-address-national-secu/">announced</a> a nearly $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense for developing AI tools for the military.
The news comes a week after xAI's foul-mouthed Grok chatbot <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">had a full-blown Nazi meltdown</a>, referring to itself as "MechaHitler" and making outrageously bigoted claims about Black and Jewish people.
In a <a href="https://www.ai.mil/Latest/News-Press/PR-View/Article/4242822/cdao-announces-partnerships-with-frontier-ai-companies-to-address-national-secu/">wordy statement</a> that was thin on details, the DoD's chief digital and AI officer, Doug Matty, lauded the partnership as an important step forward for the US military.
"Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business and enterprise information systems," Matty said.
The announcement highlights how cozy Musk's relationship with the government has become, despite his <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-musk-bromance-exploded">major falling out</a> with president Donald Trump. In May, Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/musks-doge-expanding-his-grok-ai-us-government-raising-conflict-concerns-2025-05-23/">was heavily criticized</a> for pushing the use of its Grok chatbot at the Department of Homeland Security without the required sign-offs, yet another example of the billionaire's glaring conflicts of interest.
Its massive DoD contract could xAI a much-needed influx of cash. The startup has been burning through an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xai-burning-through-1-billion-a-month-as-costs-pile-up">astonishing $1 billion per month</a>, forcing a seemingly desperate Musk to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/spacex-to-invest-2-billion-into-elon-musks-xai-413934de?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAiTan1rHDNDBwQ2KiFyhEadnRey2T6zbzbehHNjOZ_O7Mg64hMDxE1kNxwLOxE%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68754f82&amp;gaa_sig=4H3IOWasMo0yuwsCzU8_SWYfoh9H_u24u-Rmu04kX5S1w5ouZWy3VZqRFAgJ9w5OQ2vP2m-bjOH_iFZ4WtlRuQ%3D%3D">siphon off funds</a> from his other businesses to keep it afloat.
Apart from the DoD deal, xAI also announced a "Grok for Government" feature, designed to capture the Trump administration's considerable appetite for adopting AI.
It also conveniently aligns with the administration's "anti-woke" agenda. Musk has been <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-elon-instructions">trying to push Grok</a> to allegedly be "maximally truth seeking" in a purported effort to root out its "woke" tendencies, such as pointing out <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-infilitrated-grok-ai">accurate reporting</a> by trustworthy news sources.
Instead, Musk has pushed the chatbot to echo his personal, right-wing extremist beliefs to a near-comical degree. Over the weekend, it <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-looks-up-what-elon-musk-thinks">emerged </a><a href="https://futurism.com/grok-looks-up-what-elon-musk-thinks">that Grok</a> was searching Twitter and the web for Musk's personal views before making up its mind.
In other words, the US military is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a chatbot that isn't just happily furthering unhinged conspiracy theories; it's started to act like Musk's own AI shadow, making it a highly questionable choice for the Department of Defense.
More on Grok: <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-looks-up-what-elon-musk-thinks">Newest Version of Grok Looks Up What Elon Musk Thinks Before Giving an Answer</a>

Omnipresent Elon

This is an outrage.

The Pentagon Is Pumping $200 Million Into Elon Musk's AI That Just Had a Nazi Meltdown

Elon Musk's hate speech-spewing AI chatbot Grok, which recently <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">gave itself the nickname "MechaHitler</a>," didn't exactly fit into the gender binary — but you have to admit that its edgelord persona had a certain masculine energy.
Well, scratch that: Musk has officially swapped Grok's gender into... a goth anime waifu?
We wish we were kidding. The mercurial CEO's xAI startup announced that its Nazi-loving assistant will now be able to take on several personas, including a lingerie- and corset-wearing anime girl, dubbed Ani.
Put simply, Musk's obsession with replicating 4chan on X-formerly-Twitter is alive and well, squarely aiming his social media platform's AI tech at red-pilled, body pillow-obsessed, and sexually repressed neckbeards.
That's despite Musk going on several cruel anti-trans tirades and treating his estranged daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, with <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-daughter-interview">active disdain</a>.
But when it comes to an antisemitic AI chatbot — that literally <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/197719/elon-musk-ai-chatbot-antisemitic-rhetoric">does web searches</a> to ensure it's in line with Musk's extremist beliefs — gender swapping is suddenly okay? We're just as confused as you are.
Alongside Ani, X also announced a separate "Companion," dubbed Bad Rudy, a <a href="https://x.com/tetsuoai/status/1944724983118479486">cartoonish fox</a> that looks like it was yanked straight out of a bottom-shelf animated show aimed at toddlers.
Speaking of children, users quickly found out that swapping between "Kid Mode" and "NSFW" had little effect, allowing Ani to engage in sexual conversations.
"I want you to slap me and call me mommy," the budget waifu <a href="https://x.com/SaoiSayre/status/1944808124465967259/photo/3">told one user</a>.
And if you play your cards right — surprise! — Ani will strip down in what one X user dubbed "<a href="https://x.com/markgadala/status/1944778118524186797">full Gooner mode</a>."
The debacle is strongly reminiscent of the kind of <a href="https://futurism.com/chatbot-impersonation-suicide">companions</a> being hosted by Google-backed company Character.AI, which has led to <a href="https://futurism.com/lonely-children-ai-chatbots">shockingly widespread problems</a> among minors, and even been linked to a <a href="https://futurism.com/mother-teen-suicide-chatbots-letter">teen suicide</a>.
Meanwhile, as his AI startup burns through an alarming amount of cash, Musk is betting on scantily-clad anime girls to appease his male-dominated audience on X.
As if the whole thing wasn't embarrassing enough, Musk suggested that it was "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1944835420568817850">inevitable</a>" that Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot would soon replicate her with a "silicone skin."
If the whole thing screams, "Musk is struggling with some sexual issues," you're not alone.
While he's been literally <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-sperm-compound-texas-1235146555/">offering up his sperm to random users</a> on his social media platform in an apparent attempt to have as many children as possible, his latest foray into waifu AI content shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.
If anything, the move reeks of desperation, following the social media platform's merger with Musk's AI startup xAI. Musk has been attempting to siphon funds from both <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/spacex-to-invest-2-billion-into-elon-musks-xai-413934de">SpaceX</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/14/elon-musk-says-he-does-not-support-a-merger-between-tesla-and-xai.html">Tesla</a> to keep the cash-bleeding firm alive.
The company is reportedly <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xai-burning-through-1-billion-a-month-as-costs-pile-up?sref=YfHlo0rL">burning through $1 billion</a> a month, giving even the richest man in the world little time to right the ship.
More on AI companions: <a href="https://futurism.com/mattel-announces-openai">As ChatGPT Linked to Mental Health Breakdowns, Mattel Announces Plans to Incorporate It Into Children's Toys</a>