The U.S. government on Tuesday launched its very own AI chatbot — or do we have to call it an SI chatbot now? Regardless, the engineers who worked on the chatbot would undoubtedly know that, as a government-hosted, public-facing AI tool, the internet was going to red team the heck out of this thing.

The government partnered with Google and SpaceXAI to help build the America.gov chatbot, which has proved difficult for people to jailbreak the chatbot so far. (It’s worth nothing, however, that the chatbot says that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, a fact that President Donald Trump still denies.)

But when you try to talk to America.gov about Minecraft, the chatbot appears to have some sort of existential crisis or awakening. Here’s how its roughly 1,800-word long monologue begins:

I see the constituent you mean.

((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.

That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.

I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.

If, like me, you have never played Minecraft, this response may seem like a cause for concern. But the America.gov chatbot is not having a meltdown. This is a rewriting of the Minecraft “End Poem,” written by Julian Gough, which appears after you beat the game.

We don’t know exactly who is responsible for the Minecraft reference, but Trump said in a speech that twenty-year-old programmer Edward Coristine was a lead engineer on the project. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you might remember him for his nickname “Big Balls,” or his involvement in Elon Musk’s DOGE.

It feels wrong that a government chatbot has Minecraft easter eggs, but for the sake of national security, it’s a relief that America.gov is not hallucinating to the point that it’s penning lengthy poetry.

It’s also a relief that this is an easter egg because the poem that the AI spits out is actually really good, in my opinion. If it were actual AI slop, it would have shattered my existing beliefs. I have looked teenage creative writing students dead in the eye and told them that I don’t think an LLM will ever be able to write something “good,” since it is probabilistic and inherently unoriginal.

You have to admit this kinda slaps, though! Doesn’t this feel like some sort of postmodern take on the futility of government bureaucracy in the face of existential anxiety?

and the republic said I see you

and the republic said you have filed the game well

and the republic said everything you need is within you, and also on USA.gov

and the republic said you are stronger than you know, and your case number is still valid

and the republic said you are the daylight

and the republic said you are the night, and the office is closed, please try again during business hours

and the republic said the darkness you fight is within you, and also a missing wet signature

and the republic said the light you seek is within you, and in the pamphlet

and the republic said you are not alone

and the republic said you are not separate from every other filer

and the republic said you are the public tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own Code

and the republic said I love you because you are the reason we have a ZIP code at all.

It reassures my faith in the enduring power of human creativity over AI slop to know that this oddly good poem has a real poet’s DNA all over it.

So, there you have it. The government’s first public-facing AI has not yet posed a threat to humanity or poetry, at least as far as we know. Now I’m just left wondering how much Trump knows about video games.

Modern-day vehicles built with connected car technology such as WiFi and GPS collect reams of data about its owners. And that data is not staying private, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University.

That conclusion isn’t new — there have been numerous investigations and lawsuits exposing how driving data is collected and shared with third parties, including insurance companies. What the study reveals is just how vast the problem is and how hard it is for consumers to avoid, short of not using the vehicle or its convenient features like remote start and unlock.

Researchers in partnership with Consumer Reports tested 21 late-model vehicles from 17 automakers, including GM brands Cadillac and Chevrolet as well as Ford, Lucid, Rivian, Tesla, Toyota, and more. They also examined 30 companion mobile apps to “understand the privacy implications of the connected vehicle ecosystem.” The peer-reviewed study will be published this week.

The implications aren’t great for consumers, whose data is being shared with tech companies including Adobe, ContentSquare, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Snap, and Yahoo.

Nineteen of the 21 vehicles tested sent traffic to at least one third party and seven of the 30 apps gave sensitive data such as the vehicle identification number (VIN), emails, phone numbers, and precise location to third-party companies associated with tracking and advertising.

This often went a step further with multiple forms of information being sent to the same third party, a scheme that allows advertisers and data brokers to build in-depth profiles of consumers, according to the findings. These profiles can be particularly hard for consumers to shake because they’re sold to a variety of companies including insurers and banks.

When researchers paired the companion app to the vehicle it roughly doubled the exposure to advertising and tracking companies.

The findings were shared with the different manufacturers and all of them, with the exception of Honda, shifted blame elsewhere and often to consumers, the researchers said. (Honda did respond by improving its data collection practices after learning about the findings and ordered its vendor Amplitude to deleta all geolocation data it had received.)

Consumer Reports was told by several automakers that some links in their companion apps opened outside webpages, which might include cookies that collect customer data. Regardless of how this data was collected, drivers weren’t informed.

On Tuesday, OpenAI launched a new product called Dots, an always-on AI agent with a bubbly, blobby avatar. While the colorful avatar might evoke a smile, the biggest laugh from the launch is (we imagine) being had by Elon Musk, the former OpenAI founder who left, launched competitor Grok, and unsuccessfully sued.

That’s because the domain “dot.com” belongs to Musk’s xAI, and it currently redirects to the download page for xAI’s Grok chatbot app. According to the Whois domain owner registry, that domain name was just transferred in July.

It is entirely possible that xAI bought the domain for normal domain-buying reasons. “Dot” could be a typo of “bot,” so it nabbed it to grab mistyped searches. We’ve reached out to xAI and asked. But xAI doesn’t own the “bot.com” name, nor does it own other obvious typo domains like “vot.com,” which is listed for sale.

The internet’s theory is far funnier: that Musk (or his team) pulled off a prank, getting wind of OpenAI’s new product and its name and buying the domain name.

In fact, anonymous X user and xAI watcher @birdabo (this person calls themselves “chief shitposting officer @SpaceXAI“) was first to spot the domain name in a now-viral post. Whatever the motivation, the circumstance is funny.

And as for the “dots.com” domain, a more direct fit to the product name, it currently belongs to a long-defunct company. So if a petty revenge prank was really the motivation, grabbing that name, too, would be next level.