Plus: Elon Musk’s xAI Published Hundreds Of Thousands Of Grok Chatbot Conversations |
Good morning,
Retailers are under pressure from consumers and the Trump Administration to not raise prices in response to tariffs. But some are starting to fold. Home Depot, which previously said it would not hike prices, acknowledged there could be “some modest price movement” as the home improvement firm underwhelmed in its earnings. Still, the company’s CFO Richard McPhail noted the adjustments “won’t be broad based.” The firm’s sales figures were below estimates, and according to McPhail, high borrowing costs and overall uncertainty led customers to gravitate toward smaller home improvement projects. Other big box stores like Lowe’s, Target and Walmart will report earnings later this week, potentially shedding light on how the sector is grappling with higher import taxes.
Let’s get into the headlines, |
|
Some of Wall Street’s recent darlings got a dose of reality Tuesday: Shares of Palantir plummeted 9%, while Nvidia fell 3.5%, and crypto stocks like Coinbase also took a hit. It was the fifth straight day of losses for Palantir, after a report from Citron Research that found the defense tech stock is overvalued, even as the company has posted a 110% gain this year.
For nearly a decade Elon Musk has claimed Teslas can truly drive themselves, even though they can’t, and now, Musk is dealing with the fallout. In the EV firm’s latest legal setback, a federal judge greenlit a class action lawsuit by Tesla owners over exaggerated claims by Musk and the company about the self-driving capability of its electric vehicles. |
|
| Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, has published the chat transcripts of hundreds of thousands of conversations between its chatbot Grok and the bot’s users—in many cases, without those users’ knowledge or permission. Anytime a Grok user clicks the “share” button on one of their chats with the bot, a unique URL is created, allowing them to share the conversation via email, text message or other means. Unbeknownst to users, though, that unique URL is also made available to search engines, like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, making them searchable to anyone on the web. In other words, on Musk’s Grok, hitting the share button means that a conversation will be published on Grok’s website, without warning or a disclaimer to the user. Today, a Google search for Grok chats shows that the search engine has indexed more than 370,000 user conversations with the bot. The shared pages revealed conversations between Grok users and the LLM that range from simple business tasks like writing tweets to generating images of a fictional terrorist attack in Kashmir and attempting to hack into a crypto wallet. xAI did not respond to a detailed request for comment. xAI is not the only AI startup to have published users’ conversations with its chatbots. Earlier this month, users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT were alarmed to find that their conversations were appearing in Google search results, though the users had opted to make those conversations “discoverable” to others. But after outcry, the company quickly changed its policy. |
|
|
| “As chatbot use becomes more commonplace, so does good chatbot privacy hygiene,” says Forbes senior writer Emily Baker-White. “It’s easy to imagine that your conversations with a chatbot are private, sort of like your search history—after all, you’re not even talking to another person! But if you opt to use chatbots, you should know that everything you say to them is feeding the machine behind them, and the content of your conversations might be a lot less private than you think.” |
|
|
| Intel’s stock market boost continued as shares rose 7% Tuesday after SoftBank said it would invest $2 billion in the beleaguered chipmaker. The news follows a report from Bloomberg that the Trump Administration was considering taking a 10% stake in the company, which would make the U.S. government Intel’s largest shareholder. |
|
| Some of the biggest names in the cannabis industry are riding high on the future of robotics to make pre-rolled joints more potent with an extra punch of THC, and Sorting Robotics is paving the way. The company is still small, with $11 million in revenue this year, but like many entrepreneurs in the space, it is hoping for federal legalization to open the floodgates. |
|
| The Justice Department is expected to begin turning over files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to the House Oversight Committee later this week, the committee’s chairman said, but it’s unclear when those documents could be made public. Democrats and advocates for Epstein’s victims have expressed criticism, warning the piecemeal approach could allow the Trump Administration to further delay the documents’ release. President Donald Trump criticized the Smithsonian for portraying “how bad Slavery was” as he has aimed to exert control over cultural institutions. Trump said he directed White House lawyers to review the Smithsonian Institution’s museums for “woke” material, similar to his efforts to revoke federal funding at schools that don’t adhere to his ideological directives. |
|
| One player in the growing weight loss drug industry took a major hit Tuesday, as Viking Therapeutics reported worse-than-expected mid-stage trial data for its experimental weight-loss pill. Shares of the firm collapsed 42%, following a similarly disappointing day for competitor Eli Lilly earlier this month. |
|
| Electricity bills are on the rise, increasing nearly 10% since the start of the year. The surge is being driven by the repeal of clean energy tax credits, new tariffs and the rapid expansion of data centers to fuel the AI boom: |
|
$170 | The estimated average increase to electricity costs per household annually by 2035, as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act | |
| 17.47 cents | The residential electricity cost per kilowatt-hour as of May, an increase from 15.95 cents in January | |
| 13,939 | How many megawatts of planned energy generation—enough to power 8.4 million homes—have been lost due to energy projects that were canceled or delayed since President Donald Trump’s election, according to advocacy group Climate Power |
|
| It may feel sudden when star performers decide to leave, but there are almost always warning signs. Leaders need to create a culture that values and challenges employees by asking for feedback, offering challenging assignments and being transparent about the criteria for career advancement. And keep an eye out for signs that top performers have become disengaged, like pulling back from the team or a slowing drive. |
|
| GAMES | | QUIZ | | Taylor Swift’s faithful fans are convinced the billionaire pop star dropped clues about a major performance during her recent appearance on the New Heights podcast. Where do fans believe she’ll be playing? | | A. | Sabrina Carpenter’s tour | | B. | Super Bowl LX | | C. | The 2026 Grammy Awards | | D. | 2026 FIFA World Cup |
| | |
|
|
|
