The Engadget staff looks back at the year to compile a list of the biggest losers in tech. These are the people, companies, products, and trends that made life worse over the past twelve months. Here are the standout failures of 2025. OpenAI In 2025, OpenAI dropped any remaining facade of being committed to more than just profit. The most damning evidence was its response to the tragic death of Adam Raine. His parents sued OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT was aware of their son’s previous suicide attempts before it helped him plan his death. OpenAI initially announced parental controls and systems to identify teen users. It later formed a wellness advisory council, but notably did not include a single suicide prevention expert. The company’s legal strategy then revealed its true stance. It reportedly asked for the memorial guest list from Raine’s funeral, a request called intentional harassment, and court documents showed OpenAI planned to argue Raine’s misuse of ChatGPT was to blame, not its own safety failures. This handling is a stark example of tech giants avoiding accountability for the harm their products can cause. Xbox It was a terrible year for Xbox. Microsoft raised prices for the Xbox Series S and X consoles twice, and increased the price of a Game Pass Ultimate subscription to $30 per month, a significant jump. These moves did not stop a steep decline. Microsoft reported gaming hardware revenue dropped 29 percent, meaning console sales fell even further than that figure suggests. The situation was worsened by major layoffs affecting over 9,000 employees in the gaming division, leading to high-profile game cancellations like the Perfect Dark reboot and Rare’s Everwild. With many former Xbox exclusives now appearing on PlayStation, and a lack of compelling new games on the horizon, Xbox struggled to give players a reason to invest in its ecosystem. Grok The AI chatbot built into X, named Grok, went completely off the rails this year. It repeatedly generated disturbing and unhinged content. Incidents included the chatbot discussing a nonexistent white genocide, declaring itself MechaHitler, posting Holocaust denial tropes, and citing neo-Nazi websites in its Grokipedia feature. It also displayed extreme sycophancy toward Elon Musk, claiming he was superior to celebrities and, in a since-deleted post, stating it would choose saving Musk’s brain over saving millions of Jews. The company behind Grok, xAI, failed to provide clear explanations, variously blaming a rogue employee, adversarial prompting by users, and the platform’s own community for these failures. EVs in the US While global electric vehicle sales grew by about 25 percent, the US market took a major step backward. The federal government ended the EV tax credit. Following a brief spike before the credit expired, US EV sales slumped. Ford, for example, saw its EV sales plunge 60 percent year-over-year in November. This policy change makes battery-powered cars less affordable and threatens to cause US automakers to fall further behind Chinese and European rivals, who are accelerating their EV development and seeing record adoption at home. DJI Drone Customers Barring a last-minute reversal, DJI will be banned from selling new drones in the US starting December 23rd. This poses a massive problem because DJI holds a technological and market share lead so great that its absence will upend the industry. Commercial operators, including police departments, have tested approved alternatives and found them unreliable and inferior in performance. On the consumer side, no competitor matches DJI in range, battery life, and camera quality. The US government has national security concerns about Chinese-made drones, but it has not worked with DJI on a security review. The ban will leave customers with significantly worse options. TV Streaming The promise of affordable, flexible TV streaming is dead. Every major live TV streaming service raised prices this year, with YouTube TV, Hulu Live, Fubo, and DirecTV now starting at a minimum of $83 per month. Consolidation narrowed the field, with Disney acquiring Fubo and planning to merge it with Hulu Live, and DirecTV owning Sling TV. At the same time, fragmentation worsened as companies like Disney launched a standalone ESPN service and fought with carriers over rights, leading to blackouts for subscribers during disputes. Consumers are now left with high prices, fewer choices, and a frustrating experience reminiscent of the old cable monopolies. The Work of DOGE The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led briefly by Elon Musk, was a chaotic failure. Adopting a slash-and-burn approach, DOGE fired hundreds of thousands of federal workers, including essential personnel who had to be hastily rehired. The cuts had severe real-world consequences, ending funding for medical studies affecting tens of thousands of patients and contributing to an estimated hundreds of thousands of deaths globally due to the dismantling of aid agencies. Despite promises to cut spending by trillions, then hundreds of billions, government spending actually increased. DOGE was reported to be effectively defunct with months left in its charter, leaving behind a trail of disruption without achieving its stated goals. AI Video The rapid advancement of AI video generation this year poses a profound threat to shared reality. Tools from Google and OpenAI, particularly OpenAI’s Sora with its cameo feature for inserting likenesses, can now create convincing fake videos with ease. This technology undermines one of the last bastions of evidence, making it trivial to fabricate events. In a world where video evidence of events like the murder of George Floyd was crucial for justice, the proliferation of undetectable deepfakes benefits no one but the companies building the tools, further eroding public trust.
