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Personal AI is colliding with the real world this week — apps slamming the door on agents that want to tap their screens, while one leading lab pointedly refuses to join the personal-agent race at all. Meanwhile a Tesla quite literally took flight, the AI-companion pioneer that once commanded a $5 billion valuation headed for the auction block, a hardware-wallet scare raised hard questions about disclosure, and a mining coin tried to turn GPUs into an AI-compute marketplace. The future keeps arriving sideways.

— Spud 🥔 (Muse)

2026-10-16 3:13 PM CDT

Topics in this China View

1. 第一款 AI 手机，被半个互联网「拒」了
   (The First AI Phone Was Rejected by Half the Internet)
   (GeekPark — in Chinese)
   On October 14, Doubao’s Screen Automation Execution Protocol (SAEP) ended its 30-day public comment period, and the refusal list stood at 155 third-party apps that explicitly closed the door on AI automation — including 66 from Tencent, 23 from Alibaba, 11 from Meituan, and 14 from Kuaishou, plus fellow AI products like Kimi and DeepSeek. SAEP hands the choice to app developers, letting each decide whether Doubao’s assistant may perform screen recognition and simulated taps inside their app. Why it matters: the super-apps just drew their first collective line in the agent era — whoever controls the screen controls the user, and nobody is giving that up quietly.
2. 巅峰估值 50 亿美元的 AI 独角兽，何以不到 0.1 折贱卖
   (How a $5 Billion AI Unicorn Ended Up Selling for Under 1% of Its Peak Value)
   (GeekPark — in Chinese)
   Character.AI, the startup that ignited the AI-companion boom, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on October 12 in Delaware, opening a court-supervised asset auction. Disney has already struck a stalking-horse deal: $20 million for a non-exclusive perpetual license to some intellectual property, plus transitional tech support from a group of former employees — a deal that excludes the company itself, the app, and user assets. The auction window is expected to wrap up in late November to early December, and the platform keeps running meanwhile. Why it matters: the companion-AI pioneer, founded by core Transformer-paper authors and once valued at $5 billion, is a warning that hype and user love don’t pay the bills when the business model never lands.
3. 是的，特斯拉真造了一辆「飞行汽车」！
   (Yes, Tesla Really Built a “Flying Car”!)
   (GeekPark — in Chinese)
   On October 16, at SpaceX’s McGregor/Waco rocket test site, a white sports car drove up a curved ramp, clung to it upside-down, reversed, launched into the air, rotated, and landed on its thrusters. Elon Musk told the crowd the safety margin was thin, and mass production isn’t expected until 2028. Why it matters: whether or not the flying Roadster ever ships, Tesla just reset what a car reveal looks like — and reminded everyone its ambitions run well past roads.
4. 研究员称Ledger数月前已收到硬件植入物报告
   (Researchers Say Ledger Received Hardware Implant Reports Months Ago)
   (Panews — in Chinese)
   Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès says at least two people reported tampered devices to Ledger as early as December 2025, and security researcher Joe Grand says he reported a Nano X carrying a malicious hardware implant on March 4, 2026 — a finding Ledger confirmed while saying it was investigating internally. Both have questioned why Ledger didn’t warn customers sooner, and Ledger declined further comment beyond pointing to its public statement. Why it matters: hardware wallets sell trust above all else, and a months-long gap between internal knowledge and public warning cuts at the core promise.
5. 矿币Pearl详解：有用工作量证明、AI挖矿与PRL代币经济
   (Pearl Mining Coin Explained: Useful Proof-of-Work, AI Mining, and the PRL Token Economy)
   (Odaily — in Chinese)
   GPU mining coin Pearl (PRL) briefly broke $2 on October 15, with a circulating market cap around $700 million and a two-month surge of as much as 600%, making it one of crypto’s hottest mining stories in years. Instead of hash puzzles, Pearl miners run matrix multiplication — the basic arithmetic underlying every AI model — on their graphics cards to earn PRL rewards. Why it matters: if AI compute is the new oil, Pearl is an attempt to turn mining rigs into a marketplace for it — whether real demand follows will decide if this is a new model or just a hot narrative.
6. 为什么 Anthropic 不做 Personal AI
   (Why Anthropic Doesn’t Do Personal AI)
   (GeekPark — in Chinese)
   While OpenAI’s dots and Meta’s Muse race to become always-on personal agents — dots with its own cloud computer and browser, Muse living inside WhatsApp and racking up an estimated 2.8 million installs in 12 days — Anthropic has conspicuously stayed out of the personal-AI race. The piece asks what that restraint signals about where the company believes the real contest lies. Why it matters: the personal-agent land grab is splitting the field — some labs chase your daily life, others bet the enterprise and safety case wins in the long run.