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The Southern District of Texas announced the seizure of more than $50 million in NVIDIA GPUs bound for China in violation of US export laws. Authorities arrested two businessmen, one of them the owner of a Houston company, accused of smuggling the chips used to train and run AI models. Operation Gatekeeper has exposed a sophisticated smuggling network that threatens our Nations security by funneling cutting-edge AI technology to those who would use it against American interests, said US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei. The investigation had been ongoing since at least last year and centers on the illicit export or attempted export of at least $160 million worth of NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs. The H200 chips are the very same that the Trump administration announced a revenue-sharing agreement for today, allowing NVIDIA to sell them to approved customers in China. The smuggling operation used a combination of falsified paperwork, purposefully misclassified goods, straw purchasers and even removing the NVIDIA labels on GPUs to ship them to both mainland China and Hong Kong. The conspirators face between 10 and 20 years in prison if convicted. The H200 chips in question are more powerful than the H20 chip specifically designed to comply with US export restrictions. Production of the H20, however, was reportedly halted shortly after the Trump administration struck a revenue-sharing deal with NVIDIA, after which China began heavily discouraging local companies from buying them. Illicit sales to China are nothing new and occur against the backdrop of an AI technology race and tight export controls. NVIDIA is still prevented from selling its highest-end Blackwell chips to China, with the US hoping to keep an edge over foreign competition.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/texas-authorities-have-made-multiple-arrests-in-an-nvidia-gpu-smuggling-operation-144749526.html?src=rss
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Its the end of another year, so its time for the Engadget staff to compile a list of the years biggest losers. We scour over articles from the previous 12 months to determine the people, companies, products and trends that made our lives worse over the course of the year. Some selections may be so pervasive they actually make our list of biggest winners. But, for the most part, were confident youll share in our collective rage over the biggest losers of 2025.OpenAIOpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivers a speech with video at the SK AI Summit 2025 at COEX in Seoul, South Korea on November 3, 2025 Anadolu via Getty ImagesIn 2025, OpenAI shed any pretense it was committed to anything more than making money. There are a few different things you could point to, including the company's successful reorganization into a more traditional profit-seeking business, but I think the most damning sign was OpenAI's response to the tragic death of Adam Raine. In August, Raines parents sued OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT was aware of four suicide attempts by their son before it helped him successfully plan his death. At first, OpenAI's response appeared commensurate with the gravity of the situation. A week after news of the lawsuit broke, the company announced in early September it was working on parental controls. That same month, the company said it was working on a system that would automatically identify teen users and restrict their ChatGPT usage. Then came the announcement of a new "wellness" advisory council. Setting aside the question of whether OpenAI would even follow the advice of the council, it was peculiar that the company chose not recruit a single expert on suicide prevention. At that point, it was still possible to give OpenAI the benefit of the doubt, but then information about the company's legal defense against the Raines started to trickle out, including the fact it had reportedly asked to see the memorial guest list for Adam Raine's funeral, a request the family's lawyers described as "intentional harassment." In late November, court documents revealed the company planned to argue Raine's "misuse" of ChatGPT was to blame for his death, not its own insufficient safety systems. We live in a world where tech giants are rarely held accountable for the great harm they've shown themselves capable of inflicting on people. As things stand, OpenAI's handling of Adam Raine's death is further proof something must change. Igor Bonifacic, Senior reporterXboxAn Xbox Ally X running the Windows full screen experience.Sam Rutherford for EngadgetDid anything go right for Xbox this year? While price increases have also affected Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft cranked up the prices of both the Xbox Series S and X twice in the last year. Its bad: The Series S is now $100 more than at launch, five years on.Previously the best deal in gaming, the Xbox Series X/S combined with a Game Pass subscription gave you a ton of games to play, including any of Microsofts own titles on their launch date. However, the subscription is now $30 a month, up 50 percent. (It was previously $17 per month the year before.)I agree with Nathan Ingrahams take: $30 for literally hundreds of games, plus launch-day availability for major games that typically cost $70, is reasonable. But its still a harder sell when the price has jumped. Are you getting 50 percent more games? Not yet. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft demanded higher profits from Xbox back in 2023. When the gaming division reached around 12 percent growth in the first nine months of 2022, that was an ambitious goal. Day One launches on Game Pass apparently dented Xboxs ability to pull profits from its biggest titles.Microsoft no longer shares console unit sales, but in its most recent earnings report, the company announced that hardware revenue dropped 29 percent. Thats including those price increases, meaning console sales fell even further.Estimates over the last few years put the PS5 tens of millions of units ahead. An annual subscription to Game Pass is more than double the Sony consoles most premium plan, although its not an apples-to-apples comparison. This year, Microsoft collaborated with ASUS to create Xbox-branded handheld gaming PCs. In that form-factor, I was on the precipice of grabbing Game Pass and barreling through Xbox titles I never had the chance to play. Then, I reassessed exactly what I was missing out on. It wasnt the inclusion of a Fortnite Crew subscription. Despite its developer shopping spree, Xbox exclusives remain few, with many appearing on rival platforms. This year, Indiana Jones and even the Forza series is available to play on PlayStation. And next year? Halo. Where are the exciting new games going to come from? In the middle of 2025, Microsoft announced major layoffs affecting over 9,000 employees across the company. with the gaming division being hit exceptionally hard. Cuts and closures across many of Microsofts game studios led to cancellations like a Perfect Dark reboot and Rares Everwild.Xboxs 2025 was bad on both the business and creative fronts. The decision to hike console and Game Pass prices didnt immediately turn around revenue. At the same time, layoffs and high-profile game cancellations make Xbox a challenging pitch for anyone deciding which console or platform to invest in. Right now, looking at Engadgets pick of the top Xbox games, the only game I feel like Im missing out on is Avowed. Many of our favorite games are already available on PS5 and several can be played on the Switch. The reverse, however, isnt true. Mat Smith, UK bureau chiefGrokThe Grokipedia page about Elon MuskNurPhoto via Getty ImagesIt's hard to even know where to begin. X users have long noticed that Grok, the site's built-in chatbot, is less filtered than other AI tools. But this year, Grok went off the rails in some truly unhinged and disturbing ways. There was the time Grok randomly began talking about a nonexistent "white genocide" in South Africa in response to completely unrelated questions. There was the time it declared itself "MechaHitler," much to the delight of neo-nazi fanboys on X. There was the time it was caught posting Holocaust denial tropes, and the time researchers noted its Wikipedia knockoff that contains dozens of citations of neo-Nazi website Stormfront. There was the time it became so embarrassingly obsessed with Elon Musk it claimed he was a better basketball player than LeBron James and a better actor than Tom Cruise. It later brought both its anti-semitism and Musk sycophancy together when it stated that it would choose saving Musk's brain over saving 16 million Jews. "His potential long-term impact on billions outweighs the loss in utilitarian terms," it stated in a post that's since been deleted. Besides the horrifying racism, what all of these incidents have in common is that xAI, Musk's AI company that acquired X earlier this year, has failed to fully explain how its chatbot went so far off the rails. The company has blamed an unnamed rogue employee, its own Nazi-loving users and "adversarial prompting" for Grok's missteps. Karissa Bell, Senior reporterEVs in the USFord Mustang Mach-E vehicles are seen for sale on a dealership lot on June 24, 2025 in Austin, Texas.Brandon Bell via Getty ImagesEVs sales across the globe are up around 25 percent this year. Germany broke records in the first half of 2025, with electric cars accounting for nearly one in five new registrations. Meanwhile, back in September, sales of BEVs in the UK grew by almost a third, setting a new high for our neighbors across the pond. And in China, EV sales are growing so fast (over 50 percent market share) that the country is beginning to flood the global market with gas-powered cars that it can't sell at home. So naturally, what did our esteemed leaders in the US do in order to help companies here stay competitive? They ended the EV tax credit. And wouldn't you know it, after a spike earlier this fall just before the credit went away, sales of EVs in the US began to slump, with some automakers like Ford seeing a drop of 60 percent year-over-year. No matter how you slice it, this is bad for any company that sells EVs in the US and particularly bad for anyone considering purchasing a new one in the foreseeable future. As an EV owner, that just bums me out. Not only does this policy change put more roadblocks in the way of making battery-powered cars more affordable, it also puts a damper on EV investment and threatens to cause US automakers to fall even further behind their rivals in China and elsewhere. Manufacturers across the Pacific are going so wild, they are making EVs that can jump like the Mach 5 from Speed Racer. That isn't to say there aren't any promising developments on the horizon. Ford's Universal EV Platform and the arrival of the Rivian R2 sometime next year are a couple of examples. But it's clear that our politicians wanted to target EVs in the US this year and they sure made it happen. So the next time someone asks why we can't have nice things here, you know who to blame. Sam Rutherford, Senior reporterDJI drone customersDJI Neo 2Steve Dent for EngadgetBarring a miracle, DJI will be banned from selling any new drones in the US starting December 23rd and buyers will feel the pain. As I wrote last month, the company has been targeted by regulators since 2017 over concerns that its products could be used to spy on sensitive US infrastructure on behalf of China. Whats the big deal? you may ask. Surely people can buy from other drone companies. Indeed, but the problem is that DJI has such a monumental technological lead and high market share (over 75 percent) that its absence will effectively upend the industry. Commercial buyers have checked other (approved) options from the likes of Skydio, but found them wanting. In one year and a half, we had five failures of the manufacturers on the list. DJI, none, Orlando police Sgt. David Cruz told the Miami Herald. I work for a popular UAV photogrammetry company, said a user on Reddit. [A] ban will set back the drone industry in the US by several years. Theres no competitor to DJI right now.The same applies on the consumer side. DJIs drones outperform rivals in nearly every area including range, battery life, subject tracking, obstacle detection and video quality. Its so one-sided that when testing DJI drones, I struggle to find other options for buyers with anywhere close to the same capabilities. The US government does have reason to be concerned about DJIs drones. They present an obvious national security risk due to their ability to fly over sensitive areas, take photos or video and transmit them, live, to any location in the world. And being a Chinese company, theyre compelled by law to cooperate with state intelligence services. However, the US government hasnt attempted to work with DJI to determine whether its products pose a risk so far. DJI made a final plea for a security review recently by sending letters to five US agencies that could assess its products. If that fails, chaos among drone users is likely to ensue. We just want the best technology that keeps our citizens safe for the most reasonable price, Sgt. Drew Fennelly of the Lawrence, Kansas police department told The Wall Street Journal last year. The technology in the US-made drones has not caught up with the Chinese-manufactured dronesTV streamingParamount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on October 9, 2025.PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty ImagesIn 2015, Sling TV arrived with ESPN, CNN, TBS, HGTV, Disney Channel and others for just $20 a month. A couple years later, YouTube TV debuted for just $35 monthly and showed local CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC stations plus dozens of other channels including ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and Bravo. Streaming TV had arrived. It was here to unfetter TV watchers from cables onerous contracts, high prices and carrier monopolies. Take that, Comcast! In your face, Charter! (But theyd still like to pay you for internet access, please.) Fast forward to 2025: Streaming TV and its low-price, monopoly-free, contractless freedom is all but dead. Every major live TV service provider raised prices this year. Currently, YouTubeTV, Hulu+ Live TV, Fubo and DirecTV all go for a minimum of $83 per month. Thats before you opt for cable-inspired package upgrades and channel add-ons. Throw in perks like 4K, additional sports channels and a couple of one-off networks and youre easily shelling out $150 every month. Youll pay less for chopped-up live TV plans from Sling TV, but be prepared to create a spreadsheet to make sure a plan has the channels you want. This year, consolidation came for TV streaming, giving strong Cox/Charter/Comcast monopoly vibes. Disney, which completed its buyout of Hulu in 2023, acquired Fubo this year and plans to combine the two. The combo makes Disney the second-largest live TV streaming provider behind Google. DirecTV already owns Sling TV, so that leaves just three big players in the live TV streaming arena. With Netflix's move to buy Warner Bros, the traditional streaming market is getting narrower, too. We can safely assume good ol market competition wont be bringing prices down anytime soon. But its not just consolidation fragmentation also contributes to an overall crappier streaming experience. In 2025, Disney launched a standalone ESPN service (no, not that one, nor that one) for $30 per month. So far, that doesnt mean you cant find ESPN content through other providers. But we did see Disney flex its increasingly large TV muscles in drawn-out contract negotiations with Google. The dispute darkened ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels on YouTube TV for two weeks this fall which, Ill point out for the cynical crowd, was less than two months after the standalone service launched. YouTube TV subscribers got a $20 credit, but that probably didnt placate NFL and NCAA football fans who missed out on ESPN-carried games. Then in November, Fubo quarreled with NBCUniversal, saying the Peacock parent was shifting content to their own streaming services and forcing up rates. The spat turned off NBC, Bravo, USA and other channels for Fubo subscribers, no doubt infuriating both NBA and Real Housewives fans, despite a $15 credit. Of course, Fubo is Disneys newest affiliate, so there are no non-bad guys here.The only advantage TV streaming has in its favor is the lack of cable-style contracts and I havent heard any murmurs of such a thing forthcoming. We are still all free to hop around between the big three TV streamers until we give up and just go back to DVDs. Amy Skorheim, Senior reporterThe work of DOGEElon Musk at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Oxon Hill, MD on February 20, 2025. The Washington Post via Getty ImagesAn Elon Musk-led attempt to rein in federal spending with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been a failure by almost every metric. As of November, it was reported that DOGE is no more, even though the initiative ostensibly had eight months left to run. An official told Reuters that DOGE "doesn't exist," and it never should have in the first place.Though Musk was only at the helm of DOGE for a few months, he and his team caused chaos. Adopting the slash-and-burn tactic Musk employed when he took over Twitter, he swung a chainsaw through myriad government departments, with DOGE firing workers who were actually essential and quickly had to be hired back. By August, the government was said to have fired some 300,000 federal workers, with DOGE taking responsibility for most of those. Among other things, cuts at the National Institutes of Health resulted in the end of funding for hundreds of medical studies, which is said to have affected tens of thousands of patients. It's also estimated that the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development had resulted in more than 650,000 deaths around the world by early December, with children accounting for two-thirds of those. DOGE workers seemed to be busy, though. They reportedly monitored government communications for criticisms of both Musk and President Donald Trump, while implementing generative AI chatbots in an attempt to automate some government tasks. But for all the blustering about making the government much more efficient, DOGE did not meet its stated goal.Musk initially promised to reduce government spending by $2 trillion, but it didn't take long for him to reduce that pledge to $150 billion. And yet government spending has actually gone up. In October, the first month of the government's fiscal year, its total outlay was $689 billion, an increase of $105 billion (18 percent) from October 2024. Still, maybe DOGE wasn't a total disaster for its architects. It was able to gain access to sensitive and valuable government data, after all. Kris Holt, Contributing reporterAI videoSora 2 app launch screen displayed on smartphoneCheng Xin via Getty ImagesIn our post-truth world, video was one of the few remaining ways to prove something had actually happened. It had its problems of course, but the fact it was harder to fake than words and images, and anyone could record a clip with their phone, made it vital to our sense of shared reality. Think about the murder of George Floyd: The grave injustice of his death would have probably never come to light if Darnella Frazier had not filmed what happened. With the advent of AI video, I'm not sure where we go. Both Google and OpenAI pushed the technology into the realm of uncomfortable realism this year, but it's Sora's cameo feature that has me worried. Within the first week of the app's public availability, people were using the feature, which allows users to add the likeness of other people to their videos, to generate clips of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stealing GPUs from Target. Cameo has limitations, and users can restrict and delete videos that include their likeness, but it's just another assault on the truth. It's hard to see how making it trivial to create deepfake videos benefits anyone other than the companies offering building the tech. I.B.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/techs-biggest-losers-of-2025-140000419.html?src=rss
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Google is no stranger to scrutiny from government bodies such as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the European Commission. Now it can add another probe to its list: The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into the company surrounding the content used for its AI tools. Namely, the Commission is looking into two things, starting with whether Google used web publisher's content for its AI Overview and AI Mode services without "appropriate compensation" or the option to "refuse" the use of their materials. "The Commission will investigate to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search," the EU executive body stated in its announcement. "Indeed, many publishers depend on Google Search for user traffic, and they do not want to risk losing access to it." The second prong of the Commission's investigation similarly looks into Google's potential misuse surrounding AI. It's digging into whether Google has used content uploaded to YouTube for training its generative AI models. As in the first case, the Commission "is concerned" that YouTube creators are not receiving proper compensation or the option to opt out of Google using their content. In it's overview of the investigation, the Commission noted that creators have to allow Google to use their data in return for uploading media on YouTube. It added that Google's rival AI developers are unable to use any YouTube content for training their models. "AI is bringing remarkable innovation and many benefits for people and businesses across Europe, but this progress cannot come at the expense of the principles at the heart of our societies," Teresa Ribera, EVP for clean, just and competitive transition at the European Commission, said in a statement. "This is why we are investigating whether Google may have imposed unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, while placing rival AI models developers at a disadvantage, in breach of EU competition rules." A Google spokesperson told Engadget that the investigation "risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever. Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/eu-opens-antitrust-investigation-into-googles-ai-practices-133015762.html?src=rss
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