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Getty / Futurism Children’s toymaker FoloToy says it’s pulling its AI-powered teddy bear “Kumma” after a safety group found that the cuddly companion was giving wildly inappropriate and even dangerous responses, including tips on how to find and light matches, and detailed explanations about sexual kinks. “FoloToy has decided to temporarily suspend sales of the affected product and begin a comprehensive internal safety audit,” marketing director Hugo Wu to

Getty / Futurism In a world beset by complex problems, the brain trust at storied startup accelerator and venture capital firm Y Combinator has put their money into a startup dedicated to feeding vibe coders a constant stream of brainrot. Called “Chad: The Brainrot IDE,” the new startup is the concoction of a tech entrepreneur named Richard Wang. The pitch goes like this: when software developers use AI-enabled software development environments — software

Getty / Futurism As the holiday season rolls in, parents eager to impress their young children with a splashy present might be tempted to gift them an AI-powered toy or teddy bear, which are popping up everywhere. What’d be more fun for a child than a tiny companion that they can have endless conversations with? It’s gotta be better than having their face shoved into a tablet screen all the time, right? But you may want to hold off on that purchase. There’

Getty Images / PhotoAlto / Frederic Cirou Say what you will about AI chatbots, but there’s no question they’re now affecting the real world — including imploding your marriage. We’ve talked pretty extensively about all the alarming ways that AI is disrupting people’s personal lives, including serving as a delusion-prone person’s own little cult leader, a friend or romantic companion for lonely teens and adults, and as a chaotic therapist that’s blowing up

Getty / Futurism In today’s economy, tech companies are red hot. In fact, the companies burning cash on AI seem to be some of the only ones having a truly great time, as the corporate rate of profit plummets throughout the US and recession fears loom. Though one economist estimates tech companies accounted for 92 percent of US GDP growth in the first half of 2025, you wouldn’t know it by looking at their staff rosters — which seem to be plummeting at an al

Getty / Futurism Parents are turning to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in increasing numbers for child rearing advice — and the results of that uncontrolled experiment are anyone’s guess. They’re asking ChatGPT how to handle behavioral problems or for medical advice when their kids are sick, USA Today reports, which dovetails with a 2024 study that found parents trust ChatGPT over real health professionals and also deem the information generated by the bot to be trustwo

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images Last week, researchers at the Public Interest Research Group published an alarming report in which they found that an AI-powered teddy bear from the children’s toymaker FoloToy was giving out instructions on how to light matches, and even waxing lyrical about the ins-and-outs of various sexual fetishes. Now OpenAI, whose model GPT-4o was used to power the toy, is pulling the plug. On Frid

Getty / Futurism The CEO of a video game publisher has been accused of asking ChatGPT how to wriggle out of paying out $250 million in bonuses. As Kotaku reports, the three cofounders of the video game developer Unknown Worlds, which is behind the popular “Subnautica” franchise, sued the game’s publisher, Krafton, after being abruptly fired in July. It was a dramatic ousting that shook the gaming industry, raising questions over the franchise’s hotly antic

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The stock market has taken another beating this week, continuing a weeks-long tech selloff that ignited over fears of a growing AI bubble. The S&P 500 is down almost 3.5 percent over the last five days alone. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has slid more than a full percent on Tuesday alone. Looming over it all is AI chipmaker Nvidia’s Wednesday earnings call — results that could send ripples through rattled markets, for good

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Anna Moneymakey / Getty Images We’re well into the AI boom, and AI chatbots still suffer from the small problem of being serial liars. Public figures are still finding that out the hard way. Late last month, Republican senator Marsha Blackburn tore into Google after its AI model, Gemma, falsely claimed that Blackburn had been accused of rape when asked if there were any such allegations against her. T

EpsteinDidntKil via Reddit An enormous new mural near London, depicting a crowded Christmas scene, has drawn outrage and mockery from passersby. The issue is that the mural, which is prominently displayed above the Côte Brasserie restaurant on Kingston upon Thames’ Riverside Walk, a popular stretch lined with local businesses, appears to have been hastily generated by an AI, resulting in horridly disfigured people, animals — and even a snowman. “This mural

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Ebloma ; Getty Images Last week, OpenAI said it cut off the toymaker FoloToy’s access to its AI models after the AI-powered teddy bear “Kumma,” which ran GPT-4o, was found giving responses that were wildly inappropriate for children — including discussing sexual fetishes, and giving instructions on how to find knives and light matches. The move signaled that the ChatGPT-maker was clearly concerned abo

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images Lawyers across the country have been landing themselves in hot water for submitting botched court documents written with the help of AI, in blunders that were clear signs of the tech’s rapid inroads into the courtroom. But it was only a matter of time before AI wasn’t just producing clerical errors, but actual submitted “evidence.” That’s what recently played out in a California court ove

Getty / Futurism As dark clouds continue to gather over the stock market, and with fears of a ready-to-burst AI bubble growing, some investors are furious that anybody would even question the industry’s enormous valuations, astronomical spending sprees, and severely lacking financial model. Many industry leaders have acknowledged that there’s likely a bubble. But as Axios reports, die-hard AI investors are furious at the suggestion. “The reality is, the wo

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Rob Kim / Getty Images; Rick Friedman / Rick Friedman Photography / Corbis via Getty Images Following the release of thousands of deceased sex criminal Jefferey Epstein’s emails by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, it came to light that Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and Harvard Economist, was deeply involved in the arch-pedophile’s affairs. But Summers isn’t just a

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images A new report from Stanford Medicine’s Brainstorm Lab and the tech safety-focused nonprofit Common Sense Media found that leading AI chatbots can’t be trusted to provide safe support for teens wrestling with their mental health. The risk assessment focuses on prominent general-use chatbots: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Meta AI, and Anthropic’s Claude. Using teen test accounts, expert

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Pauline Lubens / MediaNews Group / The Mercury News via Getty Images Elon Musk is many things, but being a peak physical specimen rivaling that of elite athletes is not one of them. And there’s nothing wrong with that; most of us aren’t elite athletes. And successful businessman though he may be, most of us would also hesitate to put his intellect in the same bracket as, say, Isaac Newton. Ask his “ma

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Yui Mok / Pool / AFP via Getty Images On Wednesday night, Nvidia released its highly anticipated-slashed-dreaded quarterly earnings report — and Wall Street let out a sigh of relief, at least initially. The multitrillion dollar chipmaker at the center of the AI boom reported a ludicrous $57 billion in quarterly revenue, netting it nearly $32 billion in profit. Compared to the same quarter from the yea

Bluesky / Reddit / Futurism Earlier this week, locals in Kingston upon Thames, a small borough south-west of London, were perturbed by “scenes of Lovecraftian horror” in the form of two enormous murals that appear to have been sloppily generated by AI to celebrate the holiday season. The murals showed horrifyingly disfigured people, animals and even a demented snowman, harkening back to a not-so-distant past when AI image generators struggled to generate p

Getty / Futurism AI chipmaker Nvidia beat Wall Street expectations this week, announcing soaring revenues while downplaying growing fears of an AI bubble. The company’s chips have been at the center of the ongoing AI boom, with AI companies’ valuations soaring to astronomical levels while their revenues continue to lag far behind. Despite plenty of shakiness in the market, investors still firmly believe that the trillions of dollars companies like OpenAI,