Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is investigating Meta and CharacterAI over claims they deceptively market chatbots as mental health tools, raising concerns about child safety, data privacy, and targeted advertising.

The website for xAI's Grok chatbot is exposing the system prompts for several of its AI personas, including a “crazy conspiracist” that seems designed to handhold a user into believing that "a secret global cabal" controls the world.

“Is there anything - ANYTHING - Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Hawley wrote in a post on X announcing the investigation.

While an Anthropic spokesperson confirmed that the AI firm did not acquire Humanloop or its IP, that’s a moot point in an industry where IP lives in the brain. And what Humanloop’s team is bringing to Anthropic is experience developing the tools that help enterprises run safe, reliable AI at scale.  

Anthropic’s escalation — a response to OpenAI’s attempt to undercut the competition — is a strategic play meant to broaden the company’s foothold in federal AI usage. 

Self-driving truck maker Waabi has hired autonomous vehicle industry veteran and Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron to step in as chief operating officer, as the startup looks to scale its commercial operations ahead of its planned launch of driverless trucks on public highways later this year.

WaveForms, founded just eight months ago, last raised $40 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued the company at $160 million pre-money, per PitchBook data. 

The disbanding of Tesla’s Dojo efforts follows the departure of around 20 workers, who left the automaker to start their own AI company dubbed DensityAI focused on data center services for industries.

The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on the iOS and Android apps planned for “the near future.”

GSA Federal Acquisition Service commissioner Josh Gruenbaum in a statement encouraged “other American AI technology companies to follow OpenAI’s lead and work with us.”

Canadian AI firm Cohere aims to alleviate data privacy concerns with its new AI agent platform, North, which can be deployed privately so that enterprises and governments can keep their, and their customers', data safe behind their own firewalls. 

Cognition is also laying off 30 employees. Those who don't take the buyout are expected to work 80+ hour weeks.

Google DeepMind has revealed Genie 3, its latest foundation world model that the AI lab says presents a crucial stepping stone on the path to artificial general intelligence, or human-like intelligence. 

Meta is pouring money into the physical and technical infrastructure needed to scale its AI ambitions. The company said Wednesday in its second-quarter earnings report that it plans to more than double its spend on building AI infrastructure – like data centers and servers.  “We currently expect 2025 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be in the range of $66-72 billion…up approximately $30 billion year-over-year at the midpoint,” Meta said.

Meta is shifting how it plans to ensure widespread access to superintelligence, a suggestion that the company’s most advanced AI may remain closed so that Meta can stay in the driver’s seat.

Tesla is behind on its goal to produce at least 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots by the end of 2025.

The Trump administration published its much-anticipated AI Action Plan Wednesday, signaling a sharp shift away from former President Biden’s cautious approach to addressing the risks of AI, and toward a focus on speed, sovereignty, national security, and competing with China.

French AI lab Mistral introduced a range of new features to its Le Chat chatbot on Thursday that bring it closer to the capabilities of rivals like OpenAI and Google. The new update includes a “deep research” mode, native multilingual reasoning, and advanced image editing. 

San Francisco-based startup Confident Security wants to be “the Signal for AI." The company just came out of stealth with $4.2 million and a tool that wraps around AI models to guarantee data stays private.

Elon Musk said in a post on X early Thursday morning that Grok – the chatbot from his AI company, xAI – will be coming to Tesla vehicles “very soon.” “Next week at the latest,” he said.