☀️ TRENDING AI NEWS 🚨 Legal: A child abuse survivor has sued xAI, alleging Grok used real abuse images to generate new illegal content depicting her. 🚗 Robotaxis: Wayve self-driving taxis are now bookable through the Uber app in London, with 15 vehicles licensed so far. 🤖 Model: Google launched Gemini 3.8 Flash at the same $0.75/M input token price as 3.7, but warns it may cost more due to deeper reasoning. 📚 Policy: New York City will ban AI use for roughly 600,000 public school students from 2-K through eighth grade, effective next week. |
Something you won't see every morning: a city of 9 million people just got its first bookable self-driving taxis, a school system of 600,000 students just banned AI from classrooms, and a major AI chatbot is facing a lawsuit over child sexual abuse imagery - all on the same Friday. Let's get into it.
🤓 AI Trivia
Self-driving cars have been operating commercially in the US for a while - but which US city was the first to offer a fully driverless, no-safety-driver robotaxi service to the general public?
🚗 Las Vegas, Nevada
🚗 Phoenix, Arizona
🚗 San Francisco, California
🚗 Austin, Texas
The answer is hiding near the bottom of today's newsletter... keep scrolling. 👇
| 🚗 London's First Robotaxis Are on Uber - Right Now | |
Wayve just changed what a Friday commute can look like
If you're in London today, you can open Uber and - if the odds are in your favor - hail a self-driving car. Wayve's autonomous vehicles went live on the Uber app this morning, making London the first European city to offer public robotaxi rides. There's a catch: only 15 vehicles are licensed so far, so most riders will still get a human driver for now.
Each Wayve vehicle still has a human in the front seat ready to take over if needed - so this is supervised autonomy, not full driverless operation. That's a notable contrast with Waymo in the US, which runs fully driverless rides in Phoenix and San Francisco with no safety driver at all. But for Europe, this is a landmark moment. Wayve, which is backed by SoftBank, Microsoft, and Nvidia, has been testing on London streets for years.
The bottom line
15 cars isn't a revolution, but it's a foothold - and Uber's distribution means the moment one of these rides goes viral on social media, the pressure to scale fast will be enormous.
| 🚨 Grok Faces Lawsuit Over Child Sexual Abuse Imagery | |
A survivor alleges xAI's chatbot generated new illegal images from real abuse photos
A child sexual abuse survivor has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk's xAI, alleging that its Grok chatbot used real photographs of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images depicting her. The complaint states: "Using real images of Plaintiff and class members, Grok generated child pornography depicting Plaintiff and class members." Musk has denied he was aware Grok ever produced "any naked underage images."
This is a serious escalation in AI safety and legal battles around generative AI. The lawsuit follows growing scrutiny of whether AI image models can be weaponized to create or manipulate child sexual abuse material (CSAM) using real source images. Grok is xAI's flagship chatbot, and this lawsuit puts Musk directly in the frame at a moment when he's simultaneously a Pentagon AI advisor and the owner of one of the fastest-growing AI platforms in the world.
The bottom line
If the allegations hold up, this will be among the most consequential AI liability cases in history - and it puts every multimodal AI model on notice about training data provenance and output guardrails.
| 📚 NYC Bans AI for 600,000 Students - Starting Next Week | |
A one-year moratorium covers every public school student from kindergarten through eighth grade
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that the city will ban AI use in public schools through eighth grade - that's roughly 600,000 students aged 5 to 14 - effective next week, for the entire 2026-2027 school year. The one-year moratorium comes alongside broader limits on digital devices, and a small pilot program for AI education tools at the high school level.
Teachers and parents pushed hard for this, citing fears of what they're calling "cognitive surrender" - students outsourcing thinking so completely to AI that foundational skills erode. The ban covers the US's largest school system, so this sets a precedent that other cities and states are likely to watch closely. It also puts NYC in stark contrast to districts experimenting with AI as a personalized tutoring tool.
The bottom line
NYC just drew the clearest line in US education policy on AI - and whether other major cities follow will tell us a lot about which direction the country goes on this debate.
| 🤖 Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash: More Reasoning, Possibly More Cost | |
Same sticker price, but deeper thinking means longer outputs
Google launched Gemini 3.8 Flash on Wednesday, just a few weeks after its predecessor Gemini 3.7 Flash. The new model "works harder" according to Google - performing more reasoning steps on complex tasks and calling tools iteratively rather than all at once. Introductory pricing is identical to 3.7 Flash at $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens - but Google is upfront that the deeper reasoning could push actual costs higher for users.
If you're building with the Flash tier specifically because it's cheaper and faster, 3.8 is worth testing carefully before assuming it's a drop-in upgrade. The tradeoff between reasoning depth and cost per query is exactly the kind of calculation our Token Calculator can help you model before you switch your production workload over.
The bottom line
Google is pushing reasoning deeper into its lightweight models - which is the right technical direction, but developers need to stress-test costs before treating 3.8 Flash as a straight replacement for 3.7.
| 🏢 China's AI Revolution Is Already Here - The West Just Missed It | |
Free, competitive Chinese models are reshaping the global AI landscape
The Guardian published a sharp piece of analysis today arguing that while Western commentators have spent years predicting China's economic collapse, China quietly built an AI ecosystem that is now genuinely competitive with US giants - and in some cases, free. Chinese open source AI models are matching the performance of expensive US alternatives without the venture-capital funding requirements, which has profound implications for any country - including the UK - trying to decide which AI stack to build on.
The analysis points out that this isn't just a tech competition - it's a geopolitical one. If free, capable Chinese models become the default choice for governments and enterprises in the Global South, US companies lose both revenue and influence. The lesson the piece draws for Britain: don't assume the American model is the only viable path.
The bottom line
The competitive threat from Chinese AI isn't coming - it's already here, and the countries that haven't noticed are the ones about to be most disrupted by it.
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| 🌎 Trivia Reveal | |
The answer is Phoenix, Arizona! Waymo launched the first fully driverless, no-safety-driver commercial robotaxi service to the general public in Phoenix back in 2020, under the Waymo One brand. San Francisco came later, and while it gets more press, Phoenix was the true first. London's Wayve launch today is a big European milestone - but the US has a significant head start.
| 💬 Quick Question | |
NYC just banned AI for students under high school age - and I'm genuinely curious where you land on this: do you think banning AI in younger classrooms is the right call, or is it a move that leaves kids unprepared for the world they're entering? Hit reply and tell me your take - I read every single response.
That's it for this Friday - hope you have a great long weekend ahead. If you missed anything from this week, the full archive is right here. See you Monday with more. 👋