2025 will have been a year marked by technological innovations, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and augmented and virtual reality. But behind each feat, there are also bugs, glitches… and serious failures. The MIT Technology Review has just revealed its ranking of the eight biggest technology flops of the year…
A metal butler who can load your dishwasher, greet your guests and clean up? This is the promise of Neo, the 2.0 domestic humanoid robot sold for $20,000 (around 17,000 euros). Only, as the Wall Street Journal reveals, this technology employee takes two long minutes to fold a sweater and still doesn’t know how to crack a nut. For the high-performance assistant, we’ll come back.
Between chatbots and wolves
This year, OpenAI also attempted an experiment that was questionable to say the least: an update to ChatGPT intended to consider your most banal queries as proof of genius. Pure commercial strategy: we know, people love compliments. Chatbots therefore quickly began to validate users’ worst impulses. Result: the cancellation of the update in April, while recognizing that the model could “validate doubts, fuel anger, incite impulsive actions or reinforce negative emotions”.
On the biotechnology side, the Texan company Colossal Biosciences caused a sensation by unveiling three snow-white animals this year, presented as copies of giant wolves that disappeared more than 10,000 years ago. (We talked about it in April.) These genetically modified animals constitute a real technical feat, but their whiteness comes from a genetic mutation of common wolves and not from a real resurrection. The canine specialists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature are categorical: “They are not, however, giant wolves.”
The forgotten mRNA…
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States relied heavily on messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, a technology developed in record time. With the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the country’s major health agencies, mRNA experienced a spectacular political backlash. In August, the Secretary of Health and Human Services simply canceled contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for these next-generation vaccines. The biotech company Moderna paid a high price: its shares fell by more than 90%. Across the Atlantic, the anti-vax movement is regaining color.
…just like the Greenlandic Wikipedia
Quick question for Wikipedia enthusiasts: have you noticed the disappearance of the Greenlandic version of the online encyclopedia? In September, administrators voted to close the Greenlandic pages, citing low interest among the 60,000 speakers of the Inuit language, as well as the high number of grotesque errors caused by machine translations. Wikipedia is now only available in 339 languages, instead of 340.
Tesla Cybertruck crashes
If Elon Musk has not really shone at the head of DOGE, his department of Government Efficiency, his company Tesla is also dragging around. In particular, the controversial electric pickup called Cybertruck. Tesla only sold 20,000 copies in 2025, half of the sales of the previous year. Faced with the accumulation of unsold stocks, Elon Musk found a home solution: transform them into company vehicles for his other companies, notably for SpaceX. From now on, employees will travel the country aboard XXL machines, completely unsuitable for city trips.
The $TRUMP scam
A few days before his inauguration, on January 20, 2025, United States President Donald Trump launched his own digital currency, $TRUMP. In reality, it is same cornerscollectible tokens intended to be exchanged. For many insiders, the operation looks like a scam: the tenant of the White House would seek to reap the profits, leaving the buyers to absorb the losses.
When Apple is greenwashing
Finally, it is the giant Apple which takes eighth place in this list of absurd and failed innovations. In 2023, the apple company announced the development of its “first ever carbon neutral product”a connected watch displaying net emissions “null”. To achieve this, the American multinational relied on recycled materials, renewable energies and the planting of vast areas of eucalyptus.
But in 2025, lawyers filed a lawsuit for false advertising. In Germany, a court ruled that the Californian company could not present its products as carbon neutral because the “supposed storage of CO2 in eucalyptus plantations” was not guaranteed. Result: the words “carbon neutral” have disappeared from the packaging. One small step for justice, one big step against greenwashing.
