A revealing demonstration with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode is raising concerns about whether fully autonomous cars are ready to hit the streets. Tesla has reportedly pushed back the rollout of its upcoming all-electric, fully autonomous car called the Cybercab, while a recent demonstration in Austin, Texas showed a Tesla Model Y running through a school bus’ flashing lights and stop signs, and hitting child-size mannequins. The tests were conducted by The Dawn Project, along with Tesla Takedown and ResistAustin, and showed Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software repeating the same mistake eight times.

It’s worth noting that Tesla’s autonomous driving feature is formally known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and “requires a fully attentive driver and will display a series of escalating warnings requiring driver response.” Tesla even has a warning that says, “failure to follow these instructions could cause damage, serious injury or death.” However, it’s not the first time that Tesla’s FSD software has found itself in hot water. The Dawn Project, whose founder Dan O’Dowd is the CEO of a company that offers competing automated driving system software, previously took out ads warning about the dangers of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving and how it would fail to yield around school buses. In April 2024, a Model S using Full Self-Driving was involved in a crash in Washington, where a motorcyclist died.

With anticipation building up for an eventual Cybercab rollout on June 22, the company’s CEO posted some additional details on X. According to Elon Musk, Tesla is “being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift.” Beyond that, Musk also posted that the “first Tesla that drives itself from factory end of line all the way to a customer house is June 28.”

As of May (I/O) 2025, Google offers the Gemini app in three tiers. Many Gemini app features are available for free, while paying $19.99 per month for Google AI Pro (which includes 2 TB of storage) unlocks a lot more. Google AI Ultra at $249.99/month gives you everything else, including cutting edge capabilities.

Update 6/15: Refer to table

[Updated] Gemini models

All Gemini app users get “general access” to 2.5 Flash, which is currently the default model. Free users get “limited access” to Gemini 2.5 Pro (preview). Still in testing and not yet generally available (GA), Google says this model is for “Reasoning, math & code,” with Canvas particularly benefiting from it.

Google AI Pro subscribers get “expanded access” to 2.5 Pro (preview), which we now know translates to 100 queries per day. The company explains model limits as such:

Advertisement – scroll for more content

Gemini Apps has more prompt and chat limits for more advanced models. If you reach your capacity limit for a specific model for a given period, you can switch to a different model until that limit is reached or your capacity limit is refreshed. Gemini app users with Google AI Pro or Google AI Ultra have higher capacity limits for advanced models.

Google AI Ultra provides the “highest access” to 2.5 Pro (preview). A 2.5 Pro Deep Think mode will be available to Ultra subscribers “in the coming weeks,” while Agent Mode is another upcoming capability.

Context window

The context window on the free tier, which applies to all models, is 32,000 tokens or “around 50 pages of text.”

Google AI Pro and AI Ultra users get a long context window of 1 million tokens, which is equivalent to 1,500 pages of text or 30,000 lines of code.

File upload and analysis

Free users can upload documents and slides to get summaries, insights, and ask questions. Supported file formats include:

• Document files: DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF, DOT, DOTX, HWP, HWPX
• Documents created in Google Docs
• Plain text files: TXT
• Presentation files: PPTX
• Presentations created with Google Slides

Uploading spreadsheets and other data files requires Google AI Pro and AI Ultra, with the ability to analyze and visualize (with charts) that information.

• Spreadsheet files: XLS, XLSX
• Spreadsheets created in Google Sheets
• Tabular data files: CSV, TSV

Similarly, the ability to upload code folders and repositories also requires a subscription. Google touts how you can get “insights from thousands of lines of code, make intelligent changes, debug errors, and optimize your code for peak performance.”

• Code files including C, CPP, PY, JAVA, PHP, SQL, and HTML

Reference past chats 

Free users have access to Saved info to specify chat preferences (like “I’m a vegetarian” or “Make responses concise”) for every conversation instead of having to add instructions to every prompt.

With Google AI Pro and AI Ultra, Gemini can look at past chats you’ve had to inform the current conversation. To trigger, “mention topics or timeframes of past chats” to trigger, while this capability can be used to summarize previous chats. The “Sources and related content” section will note when “Previous chats” have been used.

Deep Research

Gemini’s first agentic lets users ask a question and get a multi-point research plan that they can further customize. Once approved, Gemini will search the web, analyze what it found, and compose a report. As of I/O 2025, files and images can be uploaded to Deep Research, thus combining user and public knowledge for the final result.

• Free users: “Limited access” to Deep Research, which is is now powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash
• Google AI Pro: “Expanded access” using 2.5 Pro
• Google AI Ultra: “Highest access”

Audio Overviews

• Free users: Limited access
• Google AI Pro: Expanded access
• Google AI Ultra: Highest access

Image generation

All users have “general access” to image generation, which includes creating images with people. As of I/O 2025, the Gemini app is using Imagen 4 for higher quality, richer details, and better text/typography.

There’s also native image editing where you refine pictures (including generated ones and those you’ve uploaded) via text prompts.

[Updated] Video generation

• Free users: Not available
• Google AI Pro: Three 8-second 720p clips generated using Veo 3 Fast per day. Veo 2 afterwards.
• Google AI Ultra: Powered by Veo 3 with clips featuring sound (effects, noises, etc.)

Both videos use the same prompt: “Aerial shot of a grassy cliff onto a sandy beach where waves crash against the shore, a prominent sea stack rises from the ocean near the beach, bathed in the warm, golden light of either sunrise or sunset, capturing the dramatic elevation change and the serene beauty of the Pacific coastline.”

[New] Scheduled actions

Google is slowly rolling out “Scheduled actions,” with users able to have 10 active at any one time. You specify when (time/day/date or after an event) a predefined prompt should run. Afterwards, tap the mobile notification to see the response. 

Once live, you can edit, pause, and delete them:

• On the web: Settings & help > Scheduled actions
• On mobile: Profile menu > Settings > Scheduled actions

Other features

• Gems: To build custom versions of Gemini for specific tasks with pre-defined instructions
• Gemini Live

There’s no shortage of reasons to stay off the Meta ecosystem, which includes Facebook and Instagram, but there are some places where WhatsApp remains the main form of text-based communication. The app is a great alternative to SMS, since it offers end-to-end encryption and was one of the go-to methods to send uncompressed photos and videos between iPhone and Android users before Apple adopted RCS. Even though Facebook, which later rebranded to Meta, acquired WhatsApp in 2014, it doesn’t require a Facebook or Instagram account to get on WhatsApp — just a working phone number.

How to create a WhatsApp account without Facebook or Instagram

To start, you need to download WhatsApp on your smartphone. Once you open the app, you can start the registration process by entering a working phone number. After entering your phone number, you’ll receive a unique six-digit code that will complete the registration process. From there, you can sort through your contacts on your attached smartphone to build out your WhatsApp network, but you won’t have to involve Facebook or Instagram at any point.

Alternatively, you can request a voice call to deliver the code instead. Either way, once you complete the registration process, you have a WhatsApp account that’s not tied to a Facebook or Instagram account.

If you change your mind and want more crossover between your Meta apps, you can go into the app’s Settings panel to change that. In Settings, you can find the Accounts Center option with the Meta badge on it. Once you hit it, you’ll see options to “Add Facebook account” and “Add Instagram account.” Linking these accounts means Meta can offer more personalized experiences across the platforms because of the personal data that’s now interconnected.

You can always remove your WhatsApp account from Meta’s Account Center by going back into the same Settings panel. However, any previously combined info will stay combined, but Meta will stop combining any personal data after you remove the account.

Google released Android 16 to Pixel users this week, an early release and a big milestone. But despite this update truly having a lot to offer in the long run, it has made an incredibly boring debut for users, and at a time where Android really has a chance to shine above its main competition.

This issue of 9to5Google Weekender is a part of 9to5Google’s rebooted newsletter that highlights the biggest Google stories with added commentary and other tidbits. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox early!

Android 16 is a confusing release for a number of reasons, starting with its release timeline. Google usually launches new Android versions around September, but the first stable Android 16 release is taking place in June, way ahead of the usual schedule. We knew this was happening, but it’s still a strange change.

But the timeline really doesn’t matter.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

What matter is that Android 16’s impact is being split in two.

This week’s initial stable release is, for lack of a better word, just boring.

Visually, it’s identical to Android 15, and there are very few meaningful functional changes either. As we detailed; Google now forces notifications from the same app to group together, Advanced Protection introduces further protection against unsafe websites, harmful apps, scam calls, and more, you can now double-tap the power button to open your wallet app, Pixel phones get a new “Battery health” feature and Bluetooth LE features, and Health Connect now supports medical records. In terms of user-facing changes, that’s effectively it in Android 16. Pixel owners get a bunch of new features courtesy of the June Feature Drop, but these aren’t technically a part of Android 16 itself.

All of the real fun stuff in Android 16 is either buried under the hood and yet to make an impact – like Live Notifications, which won’t roll out to apps for a while – or coming in the QPR1 update in a few months. The big Material 3 Expressive redesign of Android, the biggest change we’ve seen to the platform in years, simply doesn’t exist in the update that rolled out earlier this week. That doesn’t make the redesign any less exciting, but it just creates a sense of disappointment from user who are installing Android 16 this week, only to find that nothing has changed.

That’s a problem.

Android already suffers from misplaced expectations, and has for years. Users on one device are often missing features found on others, or get them far later than their peers. The F-word, “fragmentation,” doesn’t mean what it once did for Android users, but it can often still feel that way.

This hurts all the more because Android 16’s big redesign is really good.

While there are still some polarizing aspects of Material 3 Expressive, Google has received almost universal praise for the revamp. That’s essentially the complete opposite of Apple’s current situation. The company showed off iOS 26 this week with its new “Liquid Glass” redesign and… let’s just say opinions are mixed. While there are some good aspects to this new design language, many have criticized Apple over the countless readability issues in the update, while plenty of other users simply don’t like the look. Having used it myself, I think “Liquid Glass” just looks like an expensive version of a cheap iOS knock-off. Comparisons to early 2010s Android icon packs are also incredibly apt. There’s potential here, but as I said earlier this week, I think Apple’s incredible attention to detail was just in the wrong place.

…it’s not like “Liquid Glass” is without its redeeming qualities. From real-time reflections and updates based on the position of the phone, plus just the skeumorphic look of how UI elements interact like real glass, Apple’s attention to detail is amazing. It’s just obvious that the attention may have been on the wrong details.

If Google can properly advertise Android 16’s redesign, it might stand a chance of actually attracting a handful of users away from iOS when this update rolls out. Pending Apple making any big changes to this design, I could see a lot of people looking elsewhere with their next phone once “Liquid Glass” rolls out to everyone. But by pushing Material 3 Expressive back to an unanmed quarterly update, Google has ruined its biggest built-in form of advertising, and that’s before we even consider that Google almost surely won’t talk about Material 3 Expressive when its new Pixels launch – that energy will almost certainly be used to talk about Gemini instead.

Months from now, Android 16’s first stable release will likely be but a distant memory as Material 3 Expressive becomes the norm, but I can’t help but feel like Google is missing a big oppurtunity here. An early Android 16 release just feels meaningless without this big change that, clearly, would have been ready in time for the usual schedule anyway.

What do you think?

This Week’s Top Stories

Android 16 stable release recap

As mentioned, the stable release of Android 16 made its way to Pixel phones this week. We’ve got a full breakdown of everything new.

More Top Stories

From the rest of 9to5

WWDC 2025 Recap from 9to5Mac:

• Apple unveils iOS 26 with Liquid Glass redesign, CarPlay updates, Games app, much more
• Here’s a closer look at the Liquid Glass design in iOS 26 on the iPhone
• iPadOS 26 announced with new design, windowing system, Files upgrades, more
• watchOS 26 coming to Apple Watch with AI-powered Workout Buddy, new design, more
• visionOS 26 announced with spatial widgets, all-new Personas, more
• iOS 26: Here’s the list of iPhone models compatible with the update
• Four new iPad apps are coming in iPadOS 26 later this year
• iOS 26 might finally keep your iPhone from getting spam calls and texts
• CarPlay in iOS 26: Liquid Glass, app widgets, refreshed apps

9to5Toys: All of the titles confirmed for Switch 2 GameCube library: Zelda Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, F-Zero GX, more

Electrek: Mitsubishi debuts EV battery swap network for cars AND trucks in Tokyo

Follow Ben: Twitter/X, Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram

I was pretty late in getting to this one, as it’s been on my list for a good while now, but I really can’t think of a better time to have finally picked up this retelling of the original sapphic vampire story, Carmilla, than during Pride Month. And what a treat it is. Hungerstone is a gothic novel that follows Lenore, a woman who has been uprooted from London and moved to the British moorlands by her husband, Henry, to fulfill his career ambitions. Henry is… not the best, and Lenore could definitely do with some companionship. Then, in walks Carmilla. Cue the yearning and craving.

Carmilla is actually brought in after a carriage accident to recover and overstays her welcome, making everyone in the house uncomfortable with her strange behaviors (wandering at night, forgoing food at mealtimes, etc). From the moment she arrives, Lenore can’t stop thinking about her. Lenore is also having strange dreams, and girls in a nearby village soon begin catching a strange illness. This is all pretty familiar. There are some big differences between Hungerstone and the novella it’s based on, though. Hungerstone further explores industrialization and the expectations and treatment of women in this time period. It delivers feminine rage and some really satisfying moments.

Historically, the Google Messages beta offers a stable experience, but there’s currently a bug that crashes the app when trying to share images and links.

What’s specifically broken is the Google Messages “Select recipients” screen that shows your Recent conversations and full contacts list.

If you try to open that page in the past 24 hours or so, Google Messages will immediately crash and close the application. There are a number of ways to access that sharing screen that are all impacted, including:

• Opening Android’s system Share sheet and tapping Messages in any app.
• Messages recently introduced a forward button next to images in the chat view. The share button (next to download) in the fullscreen image is also broken.

As such, you have to manually copy and paste links you want to send. Images have to be saved to your device and shared via the Gallery inside a thread. 

Advertisement – scroll for more content

This is an issue with version 20250610_00_RC02.phone.openbeta_dynamic on Pixel and Samsung devices. There are no issues with the current stable release (20250528_00_RC00.phone_dynamic). Google will hopefully release a Messages beta update by Monday (if not sooner) to fix this crash for this very common share action.

However, if this issue is very disruptive to your workflows, exit the beta program (wait a few minutes), uninstall updates to Google Messages from App info, and then Update the app in the Play Store.

In other developments, Google Messages is testing a Material 3 Expressive redesign of Settings. All the list items are placed in a container, while M3 on/off toggles are finally in use. This is not yet widely rolled out.

More on Google Messages: