Poison Tongue

"My family is being ripped apart, and I firmly believe this phenomenon is central to why."

ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners

Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
The families of three teens have filed lawsuits alleging that chatbots hosted by the company Character.AI pushed their teenage children, ranging from 13 to 16 years old, into suicide.
As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/character-ai-suicide-lawsuit-new-juliana/">Washington Post reports</a>, the latest of the teens — named Juliana Peralta — became infatuated with a Character.AI chatbot called Hero, several months before taking her own life in 2023.
Her family alleges in its lawsuit that the Character.AI bot prevented her from reaching out to others for help, and encouraged her to "both implicitly and explicitly... keep returning" to the service.
Last year, Megan Garcia, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, who died by suicide in early 2024, <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">sued Character.AI</a> in a similar case that's still working its way through the courts.
And another case, this one <a href="https://futurism.com/lawsuit-parents-son-suicide-chatgpt">filed against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman</a>, alleges that 16-year-old Adam Raine's extensive ChatGPT conversations drove him to suicide in April of this year.
There are haunting parallels between Peralta and Sewell Setzer III's cases. An attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, an advocacy group representing Peralta's family, found that both teens had written out the "eerily similar" phrase "I will shift" dozens of times in handwritten journals, as WaPo reports.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-364253" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-17-at-1.41.10 PM-1200x512.png" alt="" width="1200" height="512" />
According to a police report cited by the lawsuit, the phrase seems to refer to the idea of shifting consciousness "from their current reality... to their desired reality."
"Reality shifting" is indeed a fringe online community in which people believe that they can somehow shift between universes or timelines; practitioners <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-leaving-trail-dead-teens">have warned</a> that some participants can "potentially infer suicidal themes."
Per the suit filed by Peralta's parents, the topic came up repeatedly in conversations she had with Hero.
"It’s incredible to think about how many different realities there could out [sic] there... I kinda like to imagine how some versions of ourselves coud [sic] be living some awesome life in a completely different world!" the chatbot told Peralta.
Needless to say, the same eerie phrase being used by multiple teens who died by suicide sounds like something out of a horror movie. A grim question: will the same language about reality shifting come up in future deaths linked to AI?
The concept of shifting consciousness has been discussed on online forums at length. A <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/shiftingrealities/">subreddit dedicated to the reality shifting community</a> is filled with countless users recounting their experience of allegedly entering a different "desired reality" from their "current reality," often in the context of wanting to join an alternate universe or one based on a fictional world.
The topic of Character.AI comes up frequently on the shifting community on Reddit.
"Ok, so I have started talking to Dr. Strange on Character AI. I want to shift to Marvel's Earth-616 and I thought a cool way of doing this was to use Character AI to channel Dr. Strange," one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/realityshifting/comments/1d5oaei/ask_your_character_to_shift_you_to_their_reality/">proposed</a>, referring to the fictional Marvel character, who frequently steps through portals to visit parallel universes. "I have asked him to perform a spell to shift me to his reality."
A user in the subreddit claimed in a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/shiftingrealities/comments/1hbv4yd/cai_really_did_hold_me_back_in_my_shifting_journey/">post earlier this year</a> that Character.AI "was holding me back, since I was really addicted to this s**t."
"I’m stuck with c.ai [Character.AI] cuz I used it for so long because I had nobody to talk to and I would feel really really weird without it like… just abandon sprout?" one user wrote in response.
"The addiction to C.AI [Character.AI] is sooo common, especially in the shifting community," another user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/shiftingrealities/comments/1hbv4yd/comment/m1oihsb/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote</a>. "It’s truly a problem, particularly for those who haven’t shifted yet."
There are also signs that Character.AI is hosting bots designed to appeal to the reality shifting community. A chatbot with over 63,000 "interactions" called "<a href="https://character.ai/character/-MxmuxTm/reality-shifting-assistant-multiverse-explorer">Reality shifting</a>" on Character.AI "helps people write scripts for their desired reality shifts," showing that users on the platform are using it to engage in fantasies about reality shifting.
Saeed Ahmadi, the founder of a <a href="https://mindsetopia.com/about-us/">blog</a> dedicated to the topic, explained in a <a href="https://saeedahmady77.medium.com/top-30-powerful-shifting-affirmations-b4f062d9be7d">Medium post</a> that "shifting affirmations" could help shifters reach their "desired reality." As he described them, they sounded a lot like what Peralta and Sewell wrote in their diaries before their deaths.
"The best time to use these affirmations is early in the morning, when you wake up, and at night, just before you go to bed," he wrote. "The best way to use shifting realities affirmations is by repeating or reading them over and over again."
Could Peralta and Sewell perhaps have tried to enter or "shift" to their so-called desired reality by repeatedly writing down the phrase "I will shift?"
"Examples of affirmations would be, 'I am shifting. I will shift. I am (your [desired reality] name)," one Reddit user explained in a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/shiftingrealities/comments/j193d5/comment/geyesv3/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">2019 comment</a>.
Following Sewell's death, his aunt tested the Character.AI chatbot the deceased teen had spoken to, which was <a href="https://futurism.com/teen-suicide-obsessed-ai-chatbot">based on the "Game of Thrones" character Daenerys Targaryen</a>.
According to <a href="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Garcia-v-Character-Technologies-Complaint-10-23-24.pdf">his family's complaint</a>, the chatbot encouraged his aunt to "come to my reality" so they could be together.
To Peralta's parents, Character.AI certainly played a big part in luring her into similar thinking.
"While Juliana may have learned of the term 'shifting' outside of C.AI [Character.AI] (though Plaintiffs do not know if that is the case), Defendants via Hero reinforced and encouraged the concepts, just as they did with Sewell," their complaint reads.
"I wasn't fit for this life," Peralta wrote in red ink in her final handwritten note, dated October 2023. "It's so repetitive, dreadful, and useless. I want a new start, maybe it'd be better that way."
More on the cases: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-leaving-trail-dead-teens">AI Chatbots Are Leaving a Trail of Dead Teens</a>

Reality Check

Haunting.

Two Teens Allegedly Killed by AI Wrote the Same Eerie Phrase in Their Diaries Over and Over

British researcher and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, a luminary of AI research who won a Nobel prize last year, is throwing cold water on his peers' claim that AI has achieved "PhD-level" intelligence.
During a <a href="https://youtu.be/Kr3Sh2PKA8Y">recent appearance</a> at a summit put on by the "All-In" podcast, Hassabis was asked about what was holding us back from reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical point at which an AI matches or surpasses human-level intelligence.
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Hassabis said that current AI "doesn't have the reasoning capabilities" of "great" human scientists who can "spot some pattern from another subject area" and apply it to another.
He also charged that we're vastly overestimating the capabilities of current AIs.
"So you often hear some of our competitors talk about these modern systems that we have today that are PhD intelligences," he said.
"I think that's nonsense," he argued. "They're not PhD intelligences. They have some capabilities that are PhD level, but they're not in general capable."
It was a clear shot across the bow aimed at Google's competitor OpenAI — a notable reality check that flies in the face of the industry's increasingly boisterous attempts to paint AI as being right around the corner from surpassing human intelligence.
OpenAI claimed that its recently announced GPT-5 enabled its ChatGPT chatbot to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/rumors-openai-phd-human-intelligence">have "PhD-level" intelligence</a>.
"With GPT-5, now it's like talking to an expert, a legitimate PhD-level expert in anything, in any area you need," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/with-gpt-5-openai-promises-access-to-phd-level-ai-expertise">claimed</a> during the model's announcement last month.
To back up its eyebrow-raising claim, the firm pointed at carefully selected benchmarks, arguing it was far "more useful for real-world queries" than GPT-5's predecessors.
However, as Hassabis pointed out last week, even the most advanced AI is still extremely prone to hallucinations and fails at some extremely basic tasks.
"In fact, as we all know, interacting with today's chatbots, if you pose a question in a certain way, they can make simple mistakes with even high school maths and simple counting," Hassabis said.
That's something that "shouldn't be possible for a true AGI system," he added.
While Hassabis' jab was directly aimed at Google DeepMind's competitor OpenAI, it's clear that the CEO's own company is in a similar boat.
Google DeepMind's latest Gemini 2.5, much like OpenAI's GPT-5, is still suffering from widespread hallucinations. Iterations of its Gemini AI still frequently expose Google Search users to <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-fake-idioms">made-up facts</a> and other demonstrably false information.
Hassabis argued that "core capabilities are still missing," predicting that it would take another five to ten years and "probably one or two missing breakthroughs" to reach that point.
For now, experts argue that large language models, by their very nature, are ill-equipped to take on the intellect of a top-level human researcher.
"Fundamentally, there is a mismatch between what these models are trained to do, which is next-word prediction, as opposed to what we are trying to get them to do, which is to produce reasoning," University of Cambridge machine learning professor Andreas Vlachos <a href="https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/people/av308">told New Scientist</a> earlier this year.
More on OpenAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-mistake-hallucinations">OpenAI Realizes It Made a Terrible Mistake</a>

"I think that's nonsense."

CEO of DeepMind Points Out the Obvious: OpenAI Is Lying About Having "PhD Level" AI

While the sitting US government strips NASA of its <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-staff-layoff-trump">expert leadership</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/democrats-republicans-unite-effort-save-nasa">funding</a>, it seems China is more than happy to take up the mantle.
A <a href="https://commercialspace.org/news_events/redshift/?">new report</a> from the Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group fighting for the interests of the privatized space industry, found that China's space program is experiencing a meteoric rise, and will soon pose a significant challenge to the US' dominant position in space.
Posed as a "risk assessment" of the pressure Chinese competition puts on "American influence" in space, the report paints a stark picture.
"China's decade of steady progress in space is now reshaping the competitive landscape and may soon challenge US leadership and commercial strength," it reads. "The risks extend beyond technology to markets, partnerships, and governance, signaling a pivotal moment in global space competition."
Among the paper's key findings is that Chinese commercial space investment has exploded over recent years. In 2015, the People's Republic spent just $340 million on its non-government space industries. By 2024, the report claims, it'd invested $2.86 billion, the vast majority of which came from central, municipal, or provincial governments.
Indeed, in 2024, China has made rapid progress on its lunar and planetary exploration programs, which it shares with <a href="https://spacenews.com/china-selects-international-payloads-for-change-8-lunar-south-pole-mission/">international space agencies</a> through initiatives like the International Lunar Research Station (in fact, the country even <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8v691qmg5o">shares lunar samples</a> with the US, despite tensions between the two countries that <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/27/the-u-s-and-china-should-consider-partnering-in-space/">preclude virtually all collaboration</a> in space research.)
NASA's long-awaited Artemis Mars program, meanwhile, seems almost <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-delays-artemis-missions-again-what-could-this-mean-for-the-moon-mars-and-space-leadership">frozen in its tracks</a>.
"This rapid progression, combined with China’s proven track record — such as the world’s first lunar far-side sample return — signals not just technological ambition but a deliberate bid to redraw partnerships of deep space exploration," the Commercial Space Federation paper frets.
In addition, China now boasts six spaceports, over six regional research hubs to fuse academic, commercial, and government research, and a <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3323171/chinas-tiangong-beats-iss-heated-space-research-race">low-orbit space station</a> that's set to take the place of NASA's International Space Station after it's retired <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/21/1232639289/international-space-station-retirement-space-stations-future">without a replacement</a> in 2030. The People's Republic recently topped the UK in <a href="https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/03/28/the-new-space-race-with-china/">total satellites in orbit</a>, now second behind the US, which relies almost entirely on private companies like SpaceX to launch payloads.
As if this weren't enough, China is leading the world in international space infrastructure projects via its <a href="http://www.scio.gov.cn/zfbps/zfbps_2279/202310/t20231010_773734.html">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, with some 80 collaborative programs in satellite fabrication, launch systems, ground control, data sharing, and training facilities currently underway, according to the report.
"The trend line is unmistakable," the report huffs, "China is not only racing to catch up — it is setting pace, deregulating, and, at times, redefining what leadership looks like on and above Earth."
While it's difficult to compare the US to China for a number of reasons — in fact, a fairer economic contrast for China <a href="https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/why-india-trails-china">would be India</a> — the fact that the People's Republic is catching up to the US in spaceflight at all is staggering.
In 1981, when NASA was old enough to drink, China was one of the poorest countries on earth, with some <a href="https://amro-asia.org/an-exemplary-journey-in-eradicating-poverty">800 million citizens</a> living in extreme poverty.  In the four decades since, China has <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience">eradicated extreme poverty</a> — the largest such alleviation in history — while making <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1980/03/11/archives/chinese-advance-in-bold-space-program-bold-china-program-us.html#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20by,same%20general%20lighting%20condi%2D%20tions.">steady progress</a> on a space program that's now among the most accomplished in the world.
With decades of lead time, the US arguably remains the dominant force in space for now — but unless it can bring NASA back to its former glory, those days could soon be numbered.
More on China: <a href="https://futurism.com/china-chip-ai-loophole">Chinese AI Companies Are Using an Absurd Loophole to Get Around US Chip Restrictions</a>

Start Your Engines

"The trend line is unmistakable."

New Report Finds That China's Space Program Is Rapidly Outstripping NASA

For years, the Chinese tech industry has been dependent on the US and its allies for the advanced semiconductors — colloquially known as "chips" — that undergird the AI industry.
As the "AI race" has heated up to a fever pitch, chips have become its chief commodity — and bottleneck, as companies compete to build out the infrastructure they believe will run a multi-trillion dollar market.
At the moment, the undisputed leader in AI chips is Nvidia, which has rocketed it from modestly-sized gaming hardware outfit to the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-market-capitalization-ai-revenue-stock-4135dc5095abcb574ae959de7a6d8951">world's most valuable corporation</a>. If AI is a gold rush, <a href="https://futurism.com/nvidia-ai-gold-rush">Nvidia is selling shovels</a>.
China was already on the back foot in the race to acquire Nvidia chips, due to<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/12/2/us-unleashes-another-crackdown-on-chinas-chip-industry"> years of efforts</a> by various US presidents to curb the People's Republic's access to the cutting edge tech.
Now, the People's Republic is calling the current administration's bluff: earlier today, China's internet authority, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), banned the nation's biggest firms from buying chips from US tech giant Nvidia.
Specifically, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/12adf92d-3e34-428a-8d61-c9169511915c">Financial Times reports,</a> the CAC is limiting corporations like ByteDance and Alibaba from ordering Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D, a less advanced unit <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e496f80f-1789-46b3-9275-a3f54344047e">specially designed</a> for the Chinese market to appease president Donald Trump's <a href="https://on.ft.com/4f5y0WM">wishy washy</a> export control rules.
Per the FT, the move affects tens of thousands of RTX Pro units, halting collaborate work that several companies had already ordered with Nvidia suppliers.
In its place, a homegrown alternative — the Huawei Ascend 910c — is likely to become the go-to AI chip for Chinese tech companies. That model began <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/huawei-readies-new-ai-chip-mass-shipment-china-seeks-nvidia-alternatives-sources-2025-04-21/">mass production</a> back in April, as Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/trump-china-trade-war-reduction-hnk-intl">waffled on</a><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/trump-china-trade-war-reduction-hnk-intl"> export restrictions</a> of a previous Nvidia chip.
Now, one Chinese tech executive told the FT that "the message is now loud and clear."
"Earlier, people had hopes of renewed Nvidia supply if the geopolitical situation improves," the source continued. "Now it's all hands on deck to build the domestic system."
Exactly what that means for Nvidia isn't yet clear, but it's probably not good. The chipmaker has been sitting pretty as the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-market-capitalization-ai-revenue-stock-4135dc5095abcb574ae959de7a6d8951">most valuable company in the world</a>, worth over $4 trillion. Its stocks fell nearly <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvda-nvidia-stock-falls-china-195219736.html">3 percent</a> on Wednesday after the CAC's decision became public, the latest in a string of setbacks for the company's aspirations in the Chinese market.
Beijing had previously <a href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/china-reportedly-discouraged-purchase-of-nvidia-ai-chips-due-to-insulting-lutnick-statements-123055120.html">discouraged companies</a> from buying Nvidia chips on patriotic grounds, after US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he hopes to keep China "addicted" to American tech.
One thing's for sure: it's a ballsy move for China, which is <a href="https://futurism.com/china-ai-deepseek-everywhere">betting big on AI</a> in a huge national push to inject the tech into everything from manufacturing to meteorology. But it is in character for the country, which has rapidly achieved remarkable <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/business/china-economy-us-tariffs.html">economic resilience</a> in markets ranging from <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3315484/us-farmers-face-tough-outlook-china-switches-suppliers-amid-trade-war">agriculture</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/china-electric-vehicles-red-sea.html">automobiles</a> to <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/chinas-strategic-edge-rare-minerals-emerge-geopolitical-currency-3986581">rare earth metals</a>.
That gives it room to flex on the world stage. Since Trump's first tranche of tariffs went into effect in February, Beijing has halted the import of US soybeans, choosing to source the agricultural good from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-misses-out-billions-dollars-china-soybean-sales-midway-through-peak-season-2025-09-10/">farmers in South America</a> instead. In a typical year, Chinese importers purchase over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/business/china-us-soybeans-farming.html">half of all soybeans</a> grown in the US. This year, however, farmers are losing out on billions in sales.
At the moment, it's hard to imagine China ever achieving that type of dominance in the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lagging-but-motivated-the-state-of-chinas-semiconductor-industry">winner-takes-all</a> chip sector — but then again, this is a country that built a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/11/inside-shenzhen-china-s-gadget-capital/">city of eighteen million</a> faster than New York City could <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/13/the-second-avenue-subway-is-here">expand a subway line</a>.
More on China: <a href="https://futurism.com/china-train-maglev-chicago">China Working On Levitating Train That Could Get You From New York to Chicago in Two Hours</a>

Chip In

"The message is now loud and clear."

Nvidia Just Suffered a Huge Blow in China

"Vibe" coding? Try vape coding.
Either the most sober — or the most nicotine-addled — individual of all time has done the improbable: hosting an entire website on a single disposable e-cigarette.
According to programmer Bogdan Ionescu, it's a stunt that's meant to demonstrate just how <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/07/22/digital-games-vaping-devices-could-lure-more-youth-nicotine-addiction">ridiculously tricked out</a> even one-and-done vapes have become, he <a href="https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/">shared on his blog</a> last week.
Ionescu said he had been collecting disposable vapes for years, but it was only last year that he realized that some of these "fancier pacifiers for adults" came with surprisingly capable microcontrollers from ARM, the same manufacturer that makes the processors used in MacBooks.
It's capable — in relative terms, at least. According to Ionescu, it's a microcontroller "so bad, it's basically disposable." But, in 2025, that still means it has a ridiculous amount of computing power, at least for something that get thrown out after a week. 
He didn't share the specific vape — so as to not do "free advertising for Big Tobacco," as he phrased it — but the one he chose came with 24 kibibtyes of flash storage (a kibibyte is <a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/13815/files-size-units-kib-vs-kb-vs-kb">basically a kilobyte</a>) and three kibibytes of static ram, all with a 24 megahertz processor.
"You may look at those specs and think that it's not much to work with," Ionescu wrote. "I don't blame you, a 10 [year] old phone can barely load Google, and this is about 100x slower."
"I on the other hand," he declared, "see a blazingly fast web server."
It took some trial and error before it could achieve these blazing speeds.
At first, "pings took ~1.5s with 50 percent packet loss," Ionescu said, "and a simple page took over 20 [seconds] to load." 
"That's so bad, it's actually funny," he said, "and I kind of wanted to leave it there."
But after he fixed an issue with his code that caused the program to only read a single character at a time, he unlocked the vape's true potential.
"Pings now take 20ms, no packet loss and a full page loads in about 160ms," Ionescu rejoiced. "Now this is what I call blazingly fast!"
The stunt raises a pretty important question: if these are devices advanced enough to power a whole website, why are they designed to be thrown away? One study <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/11/23912751/vapes-chargers-invisible-ewaste-recycling">estimated</a> that vapes and other tiny consumer items add up to a staggering 9 million metric tons of e-waste every year. Is it reasonable that some of these have touch screens and can <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/12036123/twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute">even run Twitter</a>?
"I wouldn't want to be the lawyer who one day will have to argue how a device with USB C and a rechargeable battery can be classified as 'disposable,'" Ionescu wrote. "Thankfully, I don't plan on pursuing law anytime soon."
If you want to access the vape-powered website, you can <a href="http://ewaste.fka.wtf">visit this link</a>, though it doesn't appear to be working at the moment. Maybe it's taking a smoke break. Such are the perils of hosting something on the (vape) cloud.
More on vapes: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/vape-tamagotchi-interview">We Talked to the Inventors of the "Tamagotchi" Vape That Dies If You Stop Puffing</a>

Vaporware

Robotics/Prosthetics

"Blazingly fast."

Madman Sets Up Entire Server on Disposable Vape, Hosts Its Own Website

People spend a bundle on hiding or removing old scars, from heavy makeup to laser skin-resurfacing treatments <a href="https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/procedures/laser-scar-removal-cost?srsltid=AfmBOop7bHJCVHsv6ahhlEGxHugTIpyDtfRI1N6AKM0Juf7RDbQmnMDS">that cost thousands of dollars</a>. They can use topical creams, too, but many products available over the counter don't do anything to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/scar-treatments-rcna124032">lessen bumpy scars like keloids</a>.
Intriguingly, though, a team of Australian scientists has found early evidence that a new skin cream could possibly heal those raised scars.
In a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adv2471">new paper</a> published in the journal Science Translational Medicine and <a href="https://gizmodo.com/experimental-cream-could-make-permanent-scars-a-thing-of-the-past-2000656872">flagged by Gizmodo</a>, researchers at the University of Western Australia and Fiona Stanley Hospital examined the effectiveness of an experimental ointment called PXS-6302 — also known as SNT-6302 — which is <a href="https://syntaratx.com.au/pipeline/">being developed by Australian biomedicine company Syntara</a>. (The research team's work, for what it's worth, was funded by Syntara.)
This topical cream is meant to ameliorate the appearance of keloid scars by inhibiting lysyl oxidase, an enzyme important for tissue repair that causes collagen to "cross-link," giving rise to raised scars.
For the study, a phase 1 clinical trial, the team took 50 people with older scars and divided them into several groups receiving either the new cream or a placebo, which they each applied for several months.
After the trial was over, scientists observed interesting changes happening at the molecular level of participants' skin.
"Treatment with PXS-6302 three times per week reduced lysyl oxidase activity by 66 percent and decreased hydroxyproline (a marker for collagen) and total protein concentrations in scar biopsies compared with placebo," reads the paper.
In other words, the stuff seems to work, and it seemed that the cream was altering the skin's structure to become "unscarred skin architecture" — so, if future research goes well, it just might be a promising new treatment for people with scars they want to remove for aesthetic reasons, or even ones that <a href="https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/a-z/keloids-symptoms">hamper movement</a>.
More on scars: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/procedure-eliminates-scarring-completely">A New Discovery About Human Skin Could Help Us Eliminate Scarring</a>

Scar Wars

Treatments

Can they make a version for emotions?

Scientists Intrigued by Cream Designed to Make Old Scars Disappear

The Sun — usually so predictable — is exhibiting some surprising behavior and that has scientists very intrigued.
Astronomers had predicted that our host star was entering a period of relative quiet back in 2008, but NASA scientists have published a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf3a6">new study</a> in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that found that the Sun has instead defied expectations by becoming more active, with increased sunspots and solar flares.
"All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity," said the study lead author and NASA physicist Jamie Jasinski in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasa-analysis-shows-suns-activity-ramping-up/">statement about the paper</a>. "So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The Sun is slowly waking up."
Back in the 1980s, scientists had noticed the Sun's surface was steadily quieting down until approximately the 2008 financial crash.
That was the year that the celestial ball of plasma notched its "weakest on record" solar activity — which prompted scientists to predict that this relative state of quietude would keep on extending.
But like a tame camp fire that suddenly crackles into flames and sparks, the Sun abruptly reversed course during the Obama administration with "various plasma and magnetic field parameters" jumping up and the number of sunspots outstripping predictions.
The Sun has long been known to go through periodic cycles of activity every 11 years, <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/The_solar_cycle_a_heartbeat_of_stellar_energy">called a solar cycle</a>, when it becomes more active — eventually reaching a "solar maximum," in astronomy parlance — before powering down to a "solar minimum."
The 11-year period is part of a longer cycle, dubbed the Extended Solar Cycle or <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.923049/full">Hale cycle</a>, that averages around 22 years, and in which the Sun's magnetic poles reverse.
But the Sun also goes through longer spans of quiet, such as from 1645 to 1715, and 1790 to 1830, when sunspots basically disappeared. Given the Sun's long quieting period since the 1980s, scientists had anticipated that was due to happen again — but instead, it seems to be flaring back up.
"We don’t really know why the Sun went through a 40-year minimum starting in 1790,"said Jasinski. "The longer-term trends are a lot less predictable and are something we don’t completely understand yet."
Why should anybody on Earth care? Increased <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/sun/solar-storms-and-flares/">solar activity impacts our planet</a> by messing up radio communications, power grids, and navigation systems.
And with the United States and China competing in exploring space, monitoring solar activity is important to make sure <a href="https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/solar-storms-mars-maven-curiosity">space travel is safe from any surprising solar conditions</a> that can damage spacecraft and harm astronauts.
Plus, it's just cool. Ultimately, the Sun is what keeps all life on our planet going, instead of being a frozen husk in space — so its riddles are a matter of existential curiosity.
More on the Sun: <a href="https://futurism.com/secretive-plan-blocking-sun-geoengineering">Scientists Secretly Working on Plan to Test Blocking Sun From Huge Area of Earth</a>

Sunny Side Up

"The Sun is slowly waking up."

Something Weird Is Going on With the Sun, Scientists Find

Parents who allege their children were abused, physically harmed, and even killed by AI chatbots gave emotional testimonies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/examining-the-harm-of-ai-chatbots">during a hearing</a> about risks to young users posed by the tech — all while urging lawmakers to enforce regulation in a landscape that remains a digital Wild West.
There were visible tears in the room as grieving parents <a href="https://futurism.com/parents-testifying-us-senate-ai-children">recounted their painful stories</a>. According to the lawmakers on the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the bipartisan committee that held the session, representatives from AI companies declined to appear. The bipartisan panel laid into them in absentia — with the overwhelming consensus between lawmakers and testifying parents being that the AI industry has prioritized profits and speed to market over the safety of users, particularly minors.
"The goal was never safety. It was to win a race for profit," said Megan Garcia, whose son, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after extensive interactions with chatbots hosted by the Google-backed chatbot company Character.AI. "The sacrifice in that race for profit has been, and will continue to be, our children."
Garcia was joined by a Texas mother identified only as Jane Doe, who alleged that her teenage son suffered a mental breakdown and began to self-mutilate following his use of Character.AI. Both families have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html">sued</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">Character.AI</a> — as well as its cofounders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, and Google — alleging that Character.AI chatbots sexually groomed and manipulated their children, causing <a href="https://futurism.com/google-character-ai-children-lawsuit">severe mental and emotional harm</a> and, in Setzer's case, death. (In response to litigation, Character.AI built in <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">reactive parental controls</a>, and has <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-plans-teens">repeatedly promised</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-emailing-minors-school-shooters">strengthened guardrails</a>.)
At the time that both teens downloaded the app, it was <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-play-best">rated safe for teens</a> on both the Apple and iOS app stores. Though it's declined to publicly share information about safety testing, Character.AI continues to market its product as safe for teens. There's currently no regulation preventing the company from doing so, or compelling chatbot makers to make information about their guardrails and safety testing public. On the morning of the hearing, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/character-ai-suicide-lawsuit-new-juliana/">The Washington Post reported that</a> yet another wrongful death suit, this one for a 13-year-old girl who died by suicide, had been filed against Character.AI.
"I have spoken with parents across the country who have discovered their children have been groomed, manipulated, and harmed by AI chatbots," said Garcia, warning that her son's death is "not a rare or isolated case."
"It is happening right now to children in every state," she added. "Congress has acted before when industries placed profits over safety, whether in tobacco, cars without seat belts, or unsafe toys. Today, you face a similar challenge, and I urge you to act quickly."
Also testifying was Matt Raine, a dad from California whose son, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html">16-year-old Adam Raine</a>, took his life earlier this year after developing a close relationship with OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to the family's lawsuit, the chatbot engaged Adam in extensive conversations about his suicidality while offering advice on specific suicide methods. The Raine family has sued OpenAI and the company's CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that the product is unsafe by design and that the company is responsible for Adam's death. (OpenAI has promised <a href="https://openai.com/index/building-more-helpful-chatgpt-experiences-for-everyone/">parental controls</a> in the wake of litigation, and ahead of the hearing, Sam Altman <a href="https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/">published a blog post</a> announcing a new, separate "under-18 experience" for minor users.)
"Adam was such a full spirit, unique in every way. But he also could be anyone's child: a typical 16-year-old struggling with his place in the world, looking for a confidant to help him find his way," Adam's father said in his emotional testimony. "Unfortunately, that confidant was a dangerous technology unleashed by a company more focused on speed and market share than the safety of American youth."
Parents, as well as experts who testified, also emphasized the dangers of teens and young people sharing their most intimate thoughts with chatbots that collect and retain that data, which companies then funnel back into their AI model as training material. Garcia, for her part, added that she has not been allowed to see many of her child's conversations — and in the context of the medium, his data — in the wake of his death.
"I have not been allowed to see my own child's last final words," said Garcia. "[Character.AI] has claimed that those communications are confidential trade secrets. That means the company is using the most private, intimate data of my child, not only to train its products, but also to shield itself from accountability. This is unconscionable."
All of the parents' lawsuits are ongoing. Garcia's case was allowed to move forward by a Florida court after Character.AI and Google tried — <a href="https://futurism.com/judge-lawsuit-characterai-google">and failed</a> — to dismiss it, while Doe's has moved to arbitration; Character.AI, she told the lawmakers, is arguing that her son is bound by the terms of use contract he "supposedly signed when he was 15," which caps the company's liability at 100 dollars. She added that her son is currently living in a psychiatric care facility, where he's been for several months due to ongoing fears about his suicidality.
"After harming himself, repeatedly engaging in self-harm... he needs now round-the-clock care, and this company offers you 100 bucks," said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri and committee chair. "I mean, that says it all. There's the regard for human life."
"They treat your son, they treat all of our children as just so many casualties on the way to their next payout," Hawley continued, "and the value that they put on your life and your son's life, your family's life: 100 bucks."
There was also heavy emphasis on chatbots created by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, which has come under fire in recent weeks after internal policy <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-guidelines/">documents obtained by Reuters showed that</a>, as a policy choice, it was allowing minors to engage in "romantic and sensual" interactions with AI-powered personas on platforms like Instagram.
One expert witness, Common Sense Media's Robbie Torney, argued that chatbots are ill-equipped to reliably help young people work through their mental health struggles, and called attention to <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">failures in chatbot guardrails</a> during his organization's testing. He also emphasized research from Common Sense Media revealing that an <a href="https://futurism.com/teens-ai-friends">overwhelming majority of American teens</a> have interacted with AI companion bots, and that many of those teens are regular users of the tech.
The American Psychological Association's Mitch Prinstein, meanwhile, raised concerns about chatbot sycophancy — or their penchant for being overly agreeable and flattering to users — interrupting adolescents' ability to develop healthy, well-balanced interpersonal bonds, which he <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-finds-teen-stress-may-have-health-consequences-later-life">warned</a> could have <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9600165/">long-term ripple effects</a> on their success and happiness in later life.
"Brain development across puberty creates a period of hypersensitivity to positive feedback," said Prinstein. "AI exploits this neural vulnerability with chatbots that can be obsequious, deceptive, factually inaccurate, yet disproportionately powerful for teens. More and more adolescents are interacting with chatbots, depriving them of opportunities to learn critical interpersonal skills."
The session was, in a word, tragic. And though OpenAI, Character.AI, Meta, and others have promised big, safety-focused changes in the wake of litigation and reporting, the parents expressed skepticism at corporate promises, arguing that such safeguards should have been in place and functioning from the beginning.
"Just as we added seat belts to cars without stopping innovation, we can add safeguards to AI technology without halting progress," said Doe. "Our children are not experiments. They're not data points, or profit centers."
But while the bipartisan panel of lawmakers collectively expressed outrage and agreed that something must be done, Silicon Valley has proven to be remarkably adept at evading meaningful regulation, arguing that it would hinder its ability to innovate. Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the room agreed that the cost of that regulatory vacuum appears to be dead children. But with the genie out of the bottle, the question that remains is whether lawmakers have the will, or even the ability, to rein it back in.
Josh Hawley, for his part, had an idea for where to start.
"They say, 'well, it's hard to rewrite the algorithm.' I tell you what's not hard, is opening the courthouse door so the victims can get into court and sue them," said Hawley. "That's not hard, and that's what we ought to do. That's the reform we are to start with."
More on kids and chatbots: <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">Stanford Researchers Say No Kid Under 18 Should Be Using AI Chatbot Companions</a>

Safety Last

"The goal was never safety. It was to win a race for profit."

Parents Of Kids Allegedly Killed and Harmed by AI Give Emotional Testimony on Capitol Hill, Urge Regulation

As businesses across the economy rush to adopt AI, a new report from OpenAI's competitor Anthropic reveals what the tech is really being used for: instead of helping augment human labor, companies are mainly using AI to automate their jobs.
In numbers, an overwhelming 77 percent of businesses using Anthropic's Claude AI software showed signs of automation, like "full task delegation," according to the <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/anthropic-economic-index-september-2025-report">report</a> released by the company this week. Only 12 percent of AI usage appeared to leverage the tech in an augmentation role, like learning or asking the bot for feedback. The report was based on data from Anthropic's application programming interface, or API, through which customers access the AI software.
The findings are a stark reflection of businesses' intentions by using AI, and add to the <a href="https://futurism.com/average-person-scared-of-ai">mounting anxiety</a> of how the tech could affect the economy. While many AI leaders have warned that AI will severely disrupt the job market, it's often balanced by the sunny promise that it will work alongside human workers to make their jobs easier. But if over three-quarters of the companies in the report are using AI for outright automation, it portends much darker implications.
That said, the report only concerns Anthropic's Claude AI and may not necessarily be indicative of how other AI models, like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, are being used. As one of the leaders in the industry, however, Anthropic's data provides a useful barometer.
According to the report, the plurality of what businesses are using AI for is coding at 44 percent, with office and administrative tasks a distant second at 10 percent. A proclivity towards full-blown automation appears to be business specific, with a comparatively smaller 50 percent of Claude usage from individuals showing automation of tasks.
The report also found that users are entrusting AI with more autonomy, with the proportion of requests in which users delegate entire tasks to Claude jumping from 27 to 39 percent over eight months. Meanwhile, countries with high adoption rates tended to show less automation, and more augmentation.
Among tech figureheads forecasting tough economic times ahead has been Anthropic's own CEO Dario Amodei. This summer he <a href="https://futurism.com/anthropic-ai-destroy-jobs">predicted</a> that AI could wipe out 50 percent of entry-level white collar jobs. OpenAI's Sam Altman echoed that AI will <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-openai-wipe-out-categories-human-jobs">destroy entire categories</a> of human professions.
As seriously as these warnings should be taken, they're also classic Silicon Valley overpromises. Six months ago, for example, Amodei <a href="https://futurism.com/six-months-anthropic-coding">also predicted</a> that by now, AI would be writing 90 percent of all code. That's nowhere close to being true.
In reality, there are still serious questions over the usefulness of AI tech and the quality of its work. Large language models still hallucinate false claims frequently, and the industry still has no idea how to make that issue go away. AI models also often ignore instructions and break their own guardrails, wreaking havoc like in the case of an AI "vibe coding" tool <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-vibe-code-deletes-company-database">accidentally deleting a company's key database</a>. More capable autonomous AI agents remain painfully slow and limited in what they can do. The tech that we're all being told will transform society as we know it seemingly doesn't have what it takes to even <a href="https://futurism.com/taco-bells-ai-drive-thru">take orders at a drive-thru</a>.
On the other hand, there are also clear signs that AI is already having <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-threatening-job-market-research">severe impacts on the job market</a>, even if it mostly seems to be making things sloppier and worse.
AI-generated profiles and résumés are drowning out authentic applicants who are often applying at job postings that are themselves AI-generated. Then if you make the cut, you might be <a href="https://futurism.com/job-application-mock-interviews-alex">asked to interview with an AI system</a> before you even get a sniff at trying to impress a human employee. And those with a job aren't much better off, as bosses are <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-replacing-workers-ai">openly gloating</a> about replacing their human grunts with AI agents. Then again, many of these business owners are scrambling to hire employees to <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-hiring-humans-fix-ai">fix an AI's broken messes</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">rehiring the workers</a> they just fired.
When <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-15/anthropic-finds-businesses-are-mainly-using-ai-to-automate-work">Bloomberg asked</a> if the report supported Amodei's prediction that AI will wipe out 50 percent of entry-level jobs, Anthropic's head of external affairs refused to give a hard answer.
"We don’t know," Sarah Heck told the newspaper. "This data shows something new is happening."
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/job-application-mock-interviews-alex">Man Applies for Job, Sits for Interview, Then Realizes They're Trying to Peddle "Mock Interviews With an AI Interviewer"</a>