I think one of the general ideas between this and the other cyberpunk thread is that modern cyberpunk doesn't want to tackle emerging issues as we approach our very real scifi dystopia. So here's a rough idea I've cultivated during the past weeks media blitz about AI companions for lonely people.

Every choom thinks they're the next top fixer or mission lead if they can just find a crew that'll shut up and obey their flawless instructions. Drones are pretty much only for megacorps due to cost, maintenance, and the daemons. Out of nowhere a mysterious shipment of Raven MicroCyb Gemini appear; their biopod interfaces are broken but the neural implants can be rewired to accept remote daemon commands. At the same time a group of university students have assembled a massive daemon core at NC University that uses the CitiNet to issue commands anywhere in Night City to specially modified control nodes. While this can be rented for research, the daemon core is combat potent (+14 is nothing to sneeze at) and weirdly can interact like our world's LLM's (hold shallow conversations, make art, etc). MCR begins leasing the Gemini (like a Tesla if you miss payments they'll have it march right back) and the students can provide access to their core for a subscription fee.

The themes I'd wanna explore would be the players seeing other crews who seemed like friends breaking up over petty arguing because they'd rather run with clankers that don't argue, seeing other crews lose everything after missing some payments, or maybe even give up edgerunning entirely as they just want to be praised by their Gemini, even as monthly lease and subscription payments double. But it could be even worse. If every crew gets split two or even four ways suddenly there isn't enough work to go around, and fixers may refuse to pay full rates for clanker runners. I had ideas for more conspiracies like the students being lead by an AI who will take over all the Gemini but frankly this is bleak enough.