Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck

Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’When sheriff deputies arrived at the scene of a late-night crash off a desolate Texas road in August 2024, they could see a giant pyre through heavy smoke.According to police reports detailing the events of that night, the officers tried to approach the vehicle, but the fire burned too intensely. They saw it was a Tesla Cybertruck and couldn’t see anyone inside. So they combed the surrounding area for the driver

Instagram to remove end-to-end encryption for private messages in May

Instagram will stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature.Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram and in an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from 8 May 2026.It means Meta will be able to see the contents of messages between all users – which so far it only could for those who did not enable encryption.The feature already appeared deactivated for Australian users, when Guardian Australia tested on Wednesday.A spokesperson for Meta said the decision to abandon encryption was due to low uptake

Subnautica 2 publisher’s CEO used ChatGPT in failed bid to avoid paying US$250m bonus to own studio head, court hears

A South Korean gaming publisher who hatched a plan using ChatGPT to remove the heads of one of its own game studios in a bid to avoid paying US$250m has been ordered by a US court to reverse the removal.The dispute stems from South Korean game developer Krafton’s acquisition of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, makers of the Subnautica video game, for $500m in 2021.Krafton agreed the studio would remain independent and that its leadership would retain operational control and could only be fired for cause, according to the ruling by vice-chancellor Lori Will of the court of chancery in Delaware.If Unknown Worlds met certain targets, Krafton would pay the studio what is known as an earnout worth up to $250m.As the studio was last year ramping up to release Subnautica 2, internal projections showed it would trigger the earnout, according to the ruling

UK must learn lessons from AI race and retain its quantum computing talent, says minister

The UK will not let quantum computing talent slip through its fingers and must learn lessons from US dominance of the AI race, the technology secretary has said, as the government announced a £1bn quantum funding pledge.Liz Kendall said the government hoped to retain homegrown quantum startups, engineers and researchers rather than lose them to competing countries, with the US stealing a march on its western rivals in AI.“I do look at what’s happened on AI,” said Kendall. “I do think we need to learn the lessons and make sure we give our brilliant scientists, spinouts and startups the ability to stay here and make it happen. And that requires a government that is bold and ambitious and confident in these technologies of the future

Child abuse material ‘systemic’ on Elon Musk’s X amid Grok scandal, Australian online safety regulator warned

The Australian online safety regulator warned Elon Musk’s X amid the Grok sexualised image generation scandal that it found child abuse material was “particularly systemic” on X and more accessible than on “any other mainstream service”, correspondence obtained by Guardian Australia reveals.The eSafety commissioner wrote to X in January after its chatbot, Grok, was used to generate sexualised images of women and children online, which the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described as “abhorrent”.In the letter, obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, eSafety’s general manager of regulatory operations, Heidi Snell, pointed to Musk’s promise when taking over the platform in 2022 that “removing child exploitation is priority #1”, but said “the availability of CSEM [child sexual exploitation material] continues to appear particularly systemic on X”.“eSafety has not identified CSEM to be as readily accessible on any other mainstream service,” Snell said.eSafety had found that while action by X to tackle bot accounts in October 2025 had reduced use of some previously commonly used hashtags and terms to advertise CSEM, eSafety found hashtags to advertise the material still prevalent

Teenage girls sue Musk’s xAI, accusing Grok tool of creating child sexual abuse material

A group of three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit on Monday against Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company alleging that its Grok image generator used photos of them to produce and distribute child sexual abuse material. The class-action lawsuit is the first filed by minors following Grok’s rampant generation of nonconsensual nude images earlier this year.“xAI chose to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children, despite knowing full well the consequences of creating such a dangerous product,” Vanessa Baehr-Jones, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.The suit, which was brought by three Tennessee teenagers but filed in California, where xAI is headquartered, details how the girls discovered that nude, AI-altered images of them were uploaded to a Discord server and shared online without their knowledge.After they alerted law enforcement to the images, according to the complaint, police arrested a suspect later that month and found child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on his phone that was allegedly produced using xAI’s image and video generation technology