Over the weekend, visitors at Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, spotted a massive bust of Elon Musk being carted around by a pickup. A sign attached to the figure read “MAKE AMERICA WAIT AGAIN” and “Now With Longer Lines Thanks to DOGE Cuts!”

One of the new “companions,” or AI characters for users to interact with, is a sexualized blonde anime bot called “Ani."

AI safety researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other organizations are speaking out publicly against the “reckless” and “completely irresponsible” safety culture at xAI, the billion-dollar AI startup owned by Elon Musk.

Ani, an anime avatar wearing a tight black dress, was launched the same day the tech billionaire was awarded a $200 million Department of Defense contract.

A $440 million data center with an odd name is going up in Bastrop County, the suburban Austin hub of several of Elon Musk’s companies.

The Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth has been fixated on buzzwords like “warfighting” and “warfighters,” and adopting new AI tools is part of that mission, according to leaders at the agency. And Monday’s press release was filled to the brim with similarly grandiose language.

Brussels was expected to finalise its probe into the social media platform before the EU’s summer recess but will miss this deadline, according to three officials familiar with the matter. They noted that a decision was likely to follow after clarity emerged in the EU-US trade negotiations. “It’s all tied up,” one of the officials added.