Connect with us

Published

on

The tablet of the new Tesla Model 3.

Matteo Della Torre | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Tesla is facing a federal investigation into possible safety defects with FSD, its partially automated driving system that is also known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Media, vehicle owner and other incident reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 44 separate incidents, Tesla drivers using FSD said the system caused them to run a red light, steer into oncoming traffic or commit other traffic safety violations leading to collisions, including some that injured people.

In a notice posted to the agency’s website on Thursday, NHTSA said the investigation concerns “all Tesla vehicles that have been equipped with FSD (Supervised) or FSD (Beta),” which is an estimated 2,882,566 of the company’s electric cars.

Tesla cars, even with FSD engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.

The NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation opened a Preliminary Evaluation to “assess whether there was prior warning or adequate time for the driver to respond to the unexpected behavior” by Tesla’s FSD, or “to safely supervise the automated driving task,” among other things.

Read more CNBC tech news

The ODI’s review will also assess “warnings to the driver about the system’s impending behavior; the time given to drivers to respond; the capability of FSD to detect, display to the driver, and respond appropriately to traffic signals; and the capability of FSD to detect and respond to lane markings and wrong-way signage.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the new federal probe. The company released an updated version of FSD this week, version 14.1, to customers.

For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised investors that Tesla would someday be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.

That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.

Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or valets on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed.

In February this year, Musk and President Donald Trump slashed NHTSA staff as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal workforce, impacting the agency’s ability to investigate vehicle safety and regulate autonomous vehicles, The Washington Post first reported.

Read NHTSA’s Tesla FSD traffic safety violations investigation filings here.

William Blair's Dorsheimer: Tesla's stock is more aligned with robotaxis & FSD than new models

Continue Reading

Technology

Microsoft engineer resigns over cloud business from Israeli military

Published

on

By

Microsoft engineer resigns over cloud business from Israeli military

Demonstrators hold a banner reading “Liberated Zone” during a protest at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, on Aug. 19, 2025. Microsoft Corp. employees rallied at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters in an effort to ratchet up pressure on the software maker to stop doing business with Israel over its war in Gaza.

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Microsoft engineer is resigning after 13 years at the software giant, claiming the company continues to sell cloud services to the Israeli military and that executives won’t discuss the war in Gaza.

Scott Sutfin-Glowski, a principal software engineer, informed colleagues at Microsoft on Thursday that this will be his last week at the company.

“I can no longer accept enabling what may be the worst atrocities of our time,” he wrote.

In the letter, he referred to a February Associated Press article that said the Israeli military had at least 635 Microsoft subscriptions, and he claimed the vast majority of them remain active.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Sutfin-Glowski’s announced departure comes a day after President Donald Trump said Israel and Hamas committed to the first phase of a peace plan two years into the latest conflict. The AP reported on Thursday, citing government officials, that the U.S. is sending roughly 200 troops to Israel to help support the ceasefire deal.

The conflict has been a matter of ongoing tension at Microsoft.

For months, employees have protested the company’s cloud business from the Israeli military. Five employees were fired.

In September, Microsoft said it had stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, though it didn’t provide specifics. That decision came after Microsoft investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.

Sutfin-Glowski said the company cut off communication systems that allowed employees to bring up their concerns regarding the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft products.

Outside a building at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Thursday, employees and community members opened up banners calling on the company to drop ties with Israel, according to a statement from No Azure for Apartheid. The group has been asking Microsoft to listen to the more than 1,500 employees who petitioned the company to endorse a ceasefire.

“Today, the ceasefire in Gaza finally takes effect after two years of genocide, but the atrocities, human rights abuses, war crimes, apartheid, and occupation continue,” Sutfin-Glowski wrote.

WATCH: Microsoft is trending toward a $5T market cap, says Wedbush’s Dan Ives

Microsoft is trending toward a $5T market cap, says Wedbush's Dan Ives

Continue Reading

Technology

Trump meets with Jared Isaacman about top NASA job after pulling nomination

Published

on

By

Trump meets with Jared Isaacman about top NASA job after pulling nomination

Commander Jared Isaacman of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, speaks at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. August 19, 2024. 

Joe Skipper | Reuters

President Donald Trump has met with Jared Isaacman to discuss another nomination to lead NASA, a source familiar with the talks confirmed to CNBC’s Morgan Brennan.

Isaacman, who has close ties with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was at the White House in September for Trump’s dinner for tech power players. Musk did not attend.

Trump and Isaacman have had multiple in-person meetings in recent weeks to talk about the Shift4 founder’s vision for the space program, according to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the meetings.

After a fiery back-and-forth between Musk and Trump over government spending, the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination for the post, saying he was a “blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”

“I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on June 6.

Trump named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy interim head of NASA in July.

Isaacman, who declined to comment, was initially nominated in December to lead the space agency.

Isaacman is a seasoned space traveller, having led two private spaceflights with SpaceX in 2021 and 2024. Shift4 has invested $27.5 million in SpaceX, according to a 2021 filing.

Read more CNBC tech news

Isaacman stepped down as CEO from Shift4, the payments company he founded in 1999 at the age of 16, after his nomination was pulled, and now serves as executive chairman.

“Even knowing the outcome, I would do it all over again,” Isaacman wrote about the NASA nomination process in a letter to investors announcing the Shift4 change.

Now, it looks like he gets to do it all over again.

Tensions between Musk and Trump have cooled in the months since, but big challenges face the U.S. space program..

Trump has proposed cutting more than $6 billion from NASA’s budget.

As a result of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which Musk led in the first half of 2025, around 4,000 NASA employees took deferred resignation program offers, cutting the space agency’s staff of 18,000 by about one-fifth.

During the October government shutdown, NASA has made exceptions that allow employees to keep working on missions involving Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

The First-Ever Private Spacewalk with Polaris Dawn Mission Commander Jared Isaacman

Continue Reading

Technology

Top Hollywood agencies slam OpenAI’s Sora as ‘exploitation’ and a risk to clients

Published

on

By

Top Hollywood agencies slam OpenAI's Sora as 'exploitation' and a risk to clients

An illustration photo shows Sora 2 logo on a smartphone.

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

The Creative Artists Agency on Thursday slammed OpenAI’s new video creation app Sora for posing “significant risks” to their clients and intellectual property.

The talent agency, which represents artists including Doja Cat, Scarlett Johanson, and Tom Hanks, questioned whether OpenAI believed that “humans, writers, artists, actors, directors, producers, musicians, and athletes deserve to be compensated and credited for the work they create.”

“Or does Open AI believe they can just steal it, disregarding global copyright principles and blatantly dismissing creators’ rights, as well as the many people and companies who fund the production, creation, and publication of these humans’ work? In our opinion, the answer to this question is obvious,” the CAA wrote.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The CAA said that it was “open to hearing” solutions from OpenAI and is working with IP leaders, unions, legislators and global policymakers on the matter.

“Control, permission for use, and compensation is a fundamental right of these workers,” the CAA wrote. “Anything less than the protection of creators and their rights is unacceptable.”

Sora, which launched last week and has quickly reached 1 million downloads, allows users to create AI-generated clips often featuring popular characters and brands.

Read more CNBC tech news

OpenAI launched with an “opt-out” system, which allowed the use of copyrighted material unless studios or agencies requested that their IP not be used.

CEO Sam Altman later said in a blog post that they would give rightsholders “more granular control over generation of characters.”

Talent agency WME sent a memo to agents on Wednesday that it has “notified OpenAI that all WME clients be opted out of the latest Sora AI update, regardless of whether IP rights holders have opted out IP our clients are associated with,” the LA Times reported.

United Talent Agency also criticized Sora’s use of copyrighted property as “exploitation, not innovation,” in a statement on Thursday.

“There is no substitute for human talent in our business, and we will continue to fight tirelessly for our clients to ensure that they are protected,” UTA wrote. “When it comes to OpenAI’s Sora or any other platform that seeks to profit from our clients’ intellectual property and likeness, we stand with artists.”

In a letter written to OpenAI last week, Disney said it did not authorize OpenAI and Sora to copy, distribute, publicly display or perform any image or video that features its copyrighted works and characters, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Disney also wrote that it did not have an obligation to “opt-out” of appearing in Sora or any OpenAI system to preserve its rights under copyright law, the person said.

The Motion Picture Association issued a statement on Tuesday, urging OpenAI to take “immediate and decisive action” against videos using Sora to produce content infringing on its copyrighted material.

Entertainment companies have expressed numerous copyright concerns as generative AI has surged.

Universal and Disney sued creator Midjourney in June, alleging that the company used and distributed AI-generated characters from their movies despite requests to stop. Disney also sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Character.AI in September, warning the company to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.

Hollywood backlash grows against OpenAI's new Sora video model

Continue Reading

Trending