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Plus: The US plans to force partners to pick sides in the AI race. What happens when a kid's robot best friend dies? When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him how to calm down when he was anxious or mad. Six years later, she mostly watches him play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animals. Moxie is a robot--a 15-inch-tall device that looks a bit like a blue, legless astronaut. It belongs to a subset of robots designed to assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping kids practice social skills usually learned from therapists.

Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel for his work on a disease in Papua New Guinea. But his biggest experiment was on the children he took back to the U.S. As a boy, Luwi Ikabala moved with Carleton Gajdusek to the U.S. "I am the son of one of the world's greatest scientists," Luwi said. Luwi uses a yellow cooking-oil cannister for a chair. On a good day, he makes enough money from hemming sleeves and mending torn clothes to buy a bag of rice. As he waits for customers, he reads novels, copying passages that he likes into his journal. His favorite author is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He has kept a journal for the past forty years, giving the entries headings such as "Air of freedom," "As I recall her--'the past,' " "About Weakness," and "Who am I?" Luwi often feels like the "poorest man that ever lived on this planet earth," "a perfect example of a failure." He approaches strangers on the street and asks about their problems, until he sees an opening to "touch them emotionally."

Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibits feature Black Lives Matter, the Phoenix Suns' 'Los Suns' immigration law protest and Nipsey Hussle's activism.

A fourth party is pursuing legal action against xAI, alleging that Grok was used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM) based on her childhood photos. As first reported by Washington Post, the woman, named as Jane Doe 4 in the lawsuit, said that her stepfather used Grok to create "thousands of sexually explicit images of her as a child and traded them online." According to the the lawsuit, the stepfather created more than 7,000 "fake explicit images of her using the AI chatbot Grok," including converting a photo taken of her when she was 11 into a sexually explicit image. Eventually, state and local law enforcement raided her stepfather's electronic devices for CSAM and two days after, he was found dead by suicide in his car, according to the report. Jane Doe 4 joins three other teenagers, who filed the original lawsuit that alleged that Grok was used to create sexually explicit deepfake images of them.

Sainsbury's pauses AI cameras after shopper ousted Sainsbury's has suspended its use of live facial recognition technology at one of its London branches after a customer was wrongly challenged as a shoplifter and asked to leave. Matt Arnold, 46, was buying items at the East Dulwich store when he was stopped by management at a self-service till. Describing the experience as a terrifying glimpse of the future, he has warned that retail surveillance tech risks humiliating customers and creating a system where staff feel compelled to follow automated alerts without applying human logic. The supermarket said it had apologised to Arnold and claimed the mistake was caused by human error, but critics have called for the technology to be scrapped. The incident happened on 6 August as Arnold - a comedy promoter getting supplies for a stand-up event hosted at the next door Dulwich Hamlet Football Club - was waiting for a staff member to approve an alcohol purchase.

The first anti-AI protester to be jailed has a message for OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta: 'Regain your humanity' Wynd Kaufman, 69, chained and locked the front doors of OpenAI's headquarters last year with members of StopAI A n activist who blocked the entrance to one of the world's biggest AI companies is believed to have become the first person jailed for protesting against artificial intelligence as supporters dub her the "Rosa Parks of AI risk". Wynd Kaufman, 69, surrendered herself on Friday to authorities in San Francisco . She was found guilty by a jury for her role in an action last year that saw members of the group StopAI chain and lock the front doors of OpenAI's headquarters in protest against the pursuit of artificial superintelligence. The retired teacher from Berkeley, California, refused to move from a sit-in protest in February 2025 and pleaded not guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges. She was convicted in June of interfering with a business, trespassing with intent to interfere with a business, unlawful assembly and refusal to disburse a riot.

The number of unauthorised Gypsy and traveller sites is on the rise, with developments often carried out over Bank Holiday weekends. Since April, sites in Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and elsewhere have been transformed, prompting legal battles and local dismay. In January, the number of unauthorised traveller caravans - those without planning permission - across England stood at 4,950, a 73% increase on January 2020's figure of 2,860. The summer count also shows a rise, of 44% between July 2019 and July 2025, from 3,113 to 4,471. A senior councillor in one affected area warns there has been a loss of control of the planning system, while villagers living near one site likened its rapid construction to a military operation .

Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI? Something mysterious has been happening in the world of secondhand books. Over the last few months independent booksellers have been observing a strange pattern of purchases which have seen scores of their novels being shipped to far-off warehouses. In a typical week, Stuart Manley, from Barter Books, in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books. But one recent single bulk order from a Canadian company equalled what he would expect to move in seven days.

Can robots save an aging Japan? A mechanical wolf robot used to ward off bears and wild boars at a cabbage farm in the village of Shimo Higashiyama, in Yamagata Prefecture. It's hard to explain why Japanese love the cherry blossoms, called sakura. Robots do not appreciate the soft evanescence of the sakura. Nor do they understand why a snowbound town in northern Japan has dedicated itself to the cultivation of a winter variety. But the residents of Nishikawa have discovered -- at least, they thought they had discovered -- that they need robots for their sakura.