As 2025 comes to an end, tech feels less like a straight line toward a promised future and more like a collection of experiments happening in parallel. This selection of stories offers a small snapshot of where technology found itself toward the end of the year: sometimes impressive, sometimes unsettling, but often a little weird. 

AI-generated video has evolved from those early, uncanny valley clips such as Will Smith awkwardly eating spaghetti into hyper-realistic videos that make people question if what they were watching was real or not. (Or worse, they don’t even think about that at all.) Advances in generative AI and its widespread availability let users turn text prompts into cinematic-style videos complete with synchronized audio, physics-aware motion and even soundtracks quickly and with minimal effort. The rapid spread of these videos sparked both excitement and backlash across creative communities and social platforms. What began as a novelty quickly became a flood of AI-generated content, often called “AI slop,” which raises more questions about authenticity, trust and how easily synthetic media can manipulate attention.  

Virtual reality leaped out of gaming consoles in 2025 and into a full-body sci-fi experiences. Interstellar Arc, a new immersive attraction in Las Vegas, blends VR technology with physical movement and narrative-world building, leading visitors on a “walk” through a 20,000 square-foot virtual spaceship on route to the planet Arcadia. Guided by a silver fox (sadly, not the George Clooney variety), participants wearing wireless headsets navigate a futuristic city called Cosmopolis, encountering massive holograms, including a recreated Carl Sagan. By subtly remapping physical space, the experience tricks the senses into feeling they’re travelling vast terrain inside a physical room, offering an imaginative glimpse at where immersive tech could go next.  

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at CUNY confirmed a phenomenon once thought to be only a theory: time reflections, the temporal counterpart to mirrors for light. By abruptly changing the medium through which electromagnetic waves travel, scientists observed signals reversing in time, effectively creating a “time mirror.” Unlike traditional reflections, time reflections send the end of the signal back first, similar to rewinding a tape. Researchers note that if someone could see a time reflection, that person would see his back before his front. This discovery verifies a 50-year-old theory and could eventually lead to tighter control of wireless signals and future breakthroughs in communications and computing. 

Throughout the year, humanoid robots repeatedly appeared in tech demos, competitions and viral clips, each time reigniting the same mix of fascination and skepticism in people. In Mountain View, California, the Humanoids Summit drew more than 2,000 attendees and showcased walking, talking robots powered by embodied AI while reminding audiences that the humanoid helper is still a long way off.

This year too, Beijing hosted the first ever World Humanoid Robot Games, where more than 500 robots from 16 countries competed in events like soccer, running, boxing and even break dancing. (The New York Times headline: The Athletes at China’s Robot Games Fell Down a Lot.) But one of the most viral appearances of robots in the wild came from the streets of Los Angeles, where a cowboy-hat-wearing humanoid robot wandered West Hollywood, turning into a public spectacle with its flashy reactions to the audience.