AI just drove on Mars...

Glad you’re here! While everyone else scrolls chaos, you’re scrolling smarter. 🦾

What’s up? NASA’s Perseverance rover just completed the first-ever Mars drives planned entirely by generative AI.

How does it work? Instead of relying on human route planners, NASA engineers used a type of AI known as a vision-language model to analyze Martian terrain and generate safe paths for the rover. The AI used camera data and elevation maps to spot hazards like boulders and sand ripples, then created a series of waypoints for Perseverance to follow. The virtual path was verified through a digital twin simulation to ensure the commands would work with the rover’s onboard systems.

Why is this important? This is a major leap forward for space exploration. As missions go farther from Earth, communication delays make real-time control impossible. AI route planning could allow future missions to respond to tricky terrain more quickly and operate with greater independence—opening the door to smarter, faster, and more ambitious exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

What’s up? Security researchers recently discovered that anyone with a Gmail account could access private chat transcripts between children and their Bondu AI toys.

Want the details? Bondu is a stuffed dinosaur toy with a built-in AI chat feature designed to act like an imaginary friend. But when cybersecurity experts Joseph Thacker and Joel Margolis investigated, they found the company’s parent dashboard—meant for parents and staff—had no proper login protection. This meant that over 50,000 detailed conversations, including children’s names, birthdays, and personal preferences, were publicly accessible. Bondu quickly fixed the issue after being alerted.

Why should you care? This incident highlights a growing concern with AI-enabled toys: not just what the bots say, but how securely they store kids’ data. Even well-meaning products can create serious privacy risks. As these toys become more common, parents and regulators must ask tougher questions about who can access children’s personal information—and how that data is protected.