Most people think of Toyota and picture a Camry, a Tacoma, maybe a Prius. A 7-foot-2 robot shooting free throws at halftime of a professional basketball game? That’s a harder image to conjure. But recently, that’s exactly what happened at Toyota Arena Tokyo, and around 8,400 fans watched it go down live.

The robot is called the CUE7. It smoothly stood up from a seated position, dribbled a basketball and sank a free throw without any human input. The crowd applauded. The engineers probably exhaled. Toyota had officially debuted its most advanced AI-powered humanoid robot, and it chose basketball as the venue.

So why is a car company building basketball robots? And what does any of this have to do with you? More than you might think.

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report

• Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by millions who watch CyberGuy on TV daily.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

AI-POWERED ROBOT SINKS SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE BASKETBALL HOOPS

The CUE7 started from scratch, on purpose

Here’s the thing that makes the CUE7 genuinely different from its predecessors: Toyota’s team discarded everything they had built and started over.

“We made full use of AI, and we discarded everything we had built up and started again from scratch,” said Tomohiro Nomi, research leader for humanoid robots at Toyota’s Frontier Research Center.

That’s not a small statement. The CUE series goes back to 2017, when a group of Toyota employees launched it as a voluntary side project on their own time. It eventually became an official research program, and over nearly a decade, the team stacked up some genuinely impressive hardware. The CUE3 earned a Guinness World Record in 2019 for most consecutive basketball free throws by a humanoid robot (assisted), sinking 2,020 in a row. Then the CUE6 earned the record for the farthest basketball shot by a robot, connecting from about 80 feet 6 inches) away.

So the legacy was already there. What changed with CUE7 was the philosophy behind how it learns.

From human programming to AI that figures it out alone

Earlier versions of the CUE relied on something called model predictive control. Basically, human engineers programmed exactly how the robot should move, step by step. It worked well enough to break world records. But it also had a ceiling. Every new motion required new programming by a human being.

The CUE7 instead uses reinforcement learning powered by artificial intelligence. It learns to shoot the ball based on its own experience and trial and error rather than pre-programmed instructions. The AI acts as an autonomous agent: it tries something, observes the result, adjusts and tries again. Over enough repetitions, it gets good. Really good.

The hybrid control system merges reinforcement learning with model predictive control, creating a robot that adapts to unexpected situations rather than just following a fixed script. Think of it as the difference between a player who memorized every play in the book and one who reads the game in real time. CUE7 is learning to read the game.

What’s actually inside the CUE7 robot

The CUE7 stands about 7 feet 2 inches tall and weighs roughly 163 pounds, making it about 40% lighter than the previous version, which came in around 265 pounds. Toyota pulled that off by simplifying the structure and reducing the number of axles.

It also switched from four wheels to two, which makes its movement faster and more fluid. One moment that really stood out was how smoothly it can rise from a seated position. That kind of motion, especially at this size, takes serious engineering and drew a reaction from a crowd of more than 8,000 people.

For sensing and aiming, the robot uses lidar sensors in its torso to detect its surroundings, along with a stereo camera in its head to calculate distance and angle. It is powered by high-performance batteries adapted from Toyota’s racing tech.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The robot measures the distance to the hoop, calculates the angle, determines the right trajectory and then releases the shot with controlled force. If it misses, it learns from that attempt and adjusts on the next one.

ROBOT PLAYS TENNIS WITH HUMANS IN REAL TIME

The AI that actually makes this work

Toyota trained the system using human motion data, which is what gives CUE7 its surprisingly natural movement. Rather than looking mechanical, its actions mirror how a person actually moves, and that’s by design.

That same combination of real-time calculation and learned experience is what lets it handle something like dribbling (fluid, continuous) alongside shooting (precise, calculated) without the two working against each other.

Toyota says testing that kind of learning in a live environment is a key part of the project.

“We believe it is an exceptionally valuable opportunity to validate a reinforcement-learning-based robot in the inherently uncertain environment of a basketball arena,” Tomohiro Nomi, Head of Humanoid Robotics Research Unit, Frontier Research Center, Toyota Motor Corporation, told CyberGuy. “Moving forward, we will continue developing robots that inspire and bring joy to people.”

What this means to you

You’re probably not buying a robot basketball player anytime soon. But here’s the part worth paying attention to: the same AI that helps CUE7 sink free throws is the technology Toyota is actively developing for manufacturing, automotive systems and real-world robotics.

Basketball demands everything that manufacturing robots struggle with: target identification, distance gauging, trajectory computation, coordinated movement and precise force control, all in sequence and under pressure. Toyota chose basketball specifically because it tests all those capabilities at once, in an environment where success and failure are completely obvious.

The reinforcement learning powering CUE7 could eventually show up in factory robots that adapt mid-shift when production requirements change, in vehicles that handle unexpected road conditions more fluidly, or in home and care robots that need to navigate unpredictable environments. Toyota treats CUE7 as a testbed for vision systems, motion control and coordinated movement, with capabilities that reach well beyond halftime demonstrations into broader real-world applications.

When Toyota teaches a robot to play basketball, it’s really teaching machines how to learn. And that skill transfers. In other words, this is less about basketball and more about teaching machines how to learn physical skills in unpredictable environments. That is where the real impact starts to show up.

THE NEW ROBOT THAT COULD MAKE CHORES A THING OF THE PAST

Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?

Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: Cyberguy.com.

Kurt’s key takeaways 

The CUE7 is a fascinating piece of technology, but the real story isn’t about basketball. It’s about a fundamental shift in how robots are trained, moving away from rigid human programming toward AI systems that learn through experience and adapt on the fly. What started as a voluntary employee side project in 2017 has grown into a genuine proving ground for Toyota’s embodied AI research. Nearly a decade in, the results are landing in front of thousands of live spectators and stacking up Guinness World Records along the way. The CUE7 made a free throw at halftime in front of a packed arena. More importantly, it demonstrated that AI-powered machines can now acquire complex physical skills through trial and error, the same basic way humans do. That’s a shift with implications that reach far beyond the basketball court.

If a robot can teach itself to make free throws better than most humans ever will, purely through AI-driven trial and error, what physical skill do you still believe machines will never be able to learn on their own? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report

• Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by millions who watch CyberGuy on TV daily.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

Copyright 2026 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.

Only the night before, he had posted on Truth Social about the imminent executions of these women, quoting a screenshot that included a collage of eight glamorously backlit, soft-focus portraits. The photos of the women were immediately accused of being AI-generated. “Trump is begging Iranian leaders to not execute 8 AI-generated women. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” said one viral X post.

On top of that, almost immediately after Trump’s announcement, Mizan, an Iranian state news agency, called the president a liar. “Last night, Donald Trump, citing a completely false news story, called on Iran to overturn the death sentences of eight women.” Mizan said that some of the women had already been released and others were facing prison time but not execution, and furthermore said that Tehran had made no concessions — presumably, the status of the women has not changed.

The X account for the Iranian embassy in South Africa, perhaps the most relentless shitposter among Iran’s state-affiliated accounts, was quick to pile on by generating its own set of eight women:

The collage that Trump posted is, at the very least, AI-modified, Mahsa Alimardani, the associate director of the Technology Threats & Opportunities program at WITNESS, told The Verge. But the women themselves are real. The woman in the top right corner of the collage is Bita Hemmati, whose photograph appeared in several news stories in various right-leaning news outlets last week. Hemmati is confirmed to have received a death sentence issued by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court for “operational action for the hostile government of the United States and hostile groups.”

Alimardani named six of the women (Bita Hemmati, Mahboubeh Shabani, Venus Hossein-Nejad, Golnaz Naraghi, Diana Taherabadi, Ghazal Ghalandri), and said that the identities of the final two (said to be Panah Movahedi and Ensieh Nejati) were still unverified. The six verified women participated in protests against the government in January. Aside from Hemmati, none of the other women are reported to have received death sentences.

It’s not surprising that Trump has a careless disregard for the truth; it’s not surprising, either, for the Iranian regime to fudge the details to suit its own narrative, or to make light of real political prisoners in order to dunk on the United States.

The additional wrinkle is that the account mocking Trump for coming to the rescue of “8 AI-generated women” is the very same one that landed South Korean president Lee Jae-myung in hot water when he quoted a misleading labeled video posted by that account. Israeli officials have accused the account of being “well-known for spreading disinformation.” The case of the sketchy Lee Jae-myung quote-post is a story of mingled truth and misinformation, where the post got facts very wrong, but the video — of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers shoving a limp body off a rooftop in Gaza — was real, documenting an event that possibly implicates Israeli forces in a violation of international law.

The case of the eight Iranian protesters also features that same mingling of fact and fiction into a fuzzy distortion that fuels an endless disputation of real human rights violations. Their lives have been reduced to glossy pixels and quote-dunks, the stuff of propaganda and parody. While known liars fight with each other on the internet about who these women are and what will happen to them, they — verifiably six of them, at least — remain real people who exist beyond the Iranian internet blackout.

You probably didn’t expect a travel booking platform to send you into a security spiral. Yet here we are.

Booking.com confirmed that hackers may have accessed customer data, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and booking details. That is enough information to make scam messages look real.

If you’ve booked a hotel or rental through the platform, this is worth your attention.

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report

• Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by millions who watch CyberGuy on TV daily.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

SMART TRAVEL SAFETY TIPS BEFORE YOUR NEXT TRIP

What happened in the Booking.com data breach

The company sent email notifications to affected customers after detecting “suspicious activity involving unauthorized third parties” accessing guest booking information. That’s the corporate way of saying someone got in who shouldn’t have been there.

One user shared the full notification on Reddit, where dozens of others said they received the same message. That suggests this was not an isolated case. The notice warned that anything customers “may have shared with the accommodation” could also have been exposed, meaning the breach went beyond basic account data.

What data was exposed in the Booking.com breach

Booking.com confirmed that financial information was not accessed. Physical home addresses were also not part of the breach, according to the company. So no, someone doesn’t have your credit card number or home address from this incident.

What they do potentially have: your name, email address, phone number and the details of your reservation. That’s enough to craft a convincing phishing message, which some hackers may already be doing.

“At Booking.com, we are dedicated to the security and data protection of our guests,” a Booking.com spokesperson said in a statement to CyberGuy. “We recently noticed some suspicious activity involving unauthorized third parties being able to access some of our guests’ booking information, which may include booking details, names, email addresses and phone numbers and anything that travelers may have shared with the accommodation.”

“Financial information was not accessed from Booking.com’s systems, nor were guests’ physical addresses,” the spokesperson continued. “Upon discovering the activity, we took action to contain the issue. We have updated the PIN number for these reservations and informed our guests.”

APPLE NOW LETS YOU ADD YOUR PASSPORT TO YOUR PHONE’S WALLET

How scammers are using stolen booking data

A user who posted the notification on Reddit said that two weeks before receiving it, they got a phishing message on WhatsApp that included their real booking details and personal information. That timing matters. It suggests hackers may have already been using the data before many customers were notified.

It is not clear whether that earlier phishing attempt is directly tied to this specific breach, but it shows how detailed booking information can be used in targeted scams.

That is what makes this breach more dangerous than it first appears. When scammers know where you are staying and when, they can create messages that feel legitimate. A fake alert about a problem with your reservation or a request to confirm payment details suddenly looks real.

How past incidents highlight potential risks

This breach did not happen in a vacuum. In 2024, hackers infected computers at multiple hotels with a type of consumer-grade spyware known as stalkerware. In one documented case, a hotel employee was logged into their Booking.com admin portal when the software captured a screenshot of the screen, exposing visible customer data.

That detail points to a broader issue. In some cases, vulnerabilities may exist not just within a platform, but across the hotels and systems connected to it. The current breach may follow a similar pattern, though the company has not confirmed how the unauthorized access occurred.

To put the scale in context, Booking.com says 6.8 billion bookings have been made through the platform since 2010. Even a small percentage of affected users represents a large number of people.

NEW FBI WARNING REVEALS PHISHING ATTACKS HITTING PRIVATE CHATS

Ways to stay safe after the Booking.com breach

You don’t have to swear off travel apps to protect yourself. A few targeted steps go a long way.

1) Check for an official notification

Check your email for a message from Booking.com. If you received one, take it seriously rather than filing it away. The company says it has updated PINs for affected reservations, but your account itself may still need attention.

2) Update your password now

Change your Booking.com password, especially if you reuse it anywhere else. Credential stuffing attacks are common after breaches, and reused passwords make it easy for hackers to break into other accounts. A password manager can help you create and store strong, unique passwords so you are not relying on the same one across multiple sites. Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2026 at Cyberguy.com.

3) Turn on two-factor authentication

Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) if you haven’t already. It adds a step, but it also blocks access even if someone has your password.

4) Consider identity theft protection

Even though financial data was not accessed, exposed personal details can still be used in scams or identity theft attempts. An identity protection service can monitor your information, alert you to suspicious activity and provide support if your identity is compromised. See my tips and best picks on Best Identity Theft Protection at Cyberguy.com.

5) Watch for highly targeted phishing messages

Be skeptical of any message that references your booking details, whether it arrives by email, text or WhatsApp. Legitimate companies rarely ask you to click a link and re-enter payment information. Hackers with your booking data can write convincing fakes that look urgent.

6) Verify bookings through official channels

If you get a message about your reservation, do not click the link. Open the Booking.com app or type the website address manually. You can also contact the hotel directly using the number listed on its official website.

7) Add a safety net in case you click something malicious

If you accidentally click a suspicious link, strong antivirus software can help detect malicious websites or downloads before they cause damage. Look for tools that offer real-time protection and phishing detection, not just basic virus scans. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.

8) Limit how your personal data is exposed online

Data brokers collect and sell personal details like your phone number and email address. That makes it easier for scammers to connect stolen booking data to a real person. Removing your information from these sites with a data removal service can reduce how often you are targeted. Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.

9) Report anything suspicious quickly

If you receive a phishing attempt that includes your real reservation details, contact Booking.com directly and report the message to your phone carrier or email provider. Reporting helps shut down scams faster.

Kurt’s key takeaways

Data breaches at major travel platforms are uncomfortable precisely because travel feels personal. Your itinerary, your accommodation and your plans are wrapped up in those booking details, and now someone else may have a copy. The good news is that financial information and home addresses were not part of this breach. The bad news is that the stolen data is detailed enough to be weaponized in targeted phishing attacks, and there’s evidence that it already has been. Booking.com updated its customers, reset PINs for affected reservations and publicly confirmed the incident. That’s more transparency than many companies offer. But the fact that users were receiving phishing messages on WhatsApp two weeks before the formal notification went out is worth sitting with. You can’t control whether the platform you use gets breached. You can control whether you’re an easy target once your data is out there.

How much responsibility should companies like Booking.com take when your personal data fuels scams? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report

• Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by millions who watch CyberGuy on TV daily.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

Copyright 2026 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.