Government AI regulation, legislation, lawsuits, and copyright disputes.

Current topic Policy & Regulation · 139 Switch topic

Latest stories

  1. Eight states sue OpenAI, saying ChatGPT isn’t safe for kids

    Eight states (Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana) have each sued OpenAI under their consumer protection laws. They say OpenAI sold ChatGPT as a safe, youth-appropriate tool while it was dangerous to vulnerable users, and that it collected data from minors without doing enough to keep underage users out. The states want civil penalties and an end to the allegedly misleading claims, and some also want unlawfully collected personal data deleted.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  2. Recording device hidden in toilet paper found in top-secret OpenAI meeting room

    The FBI arrested OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, on suspicion of plugging a USB-style recording device, wrapped in toilet paper, into the back of a TV in an executive-only conference room. The device was likely planted around September 28 and found by OpenAI on September 30, with its contents encrypted. CCTV installed on October 5 allegedly caught him trying to retrieve it that same day. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  3. OpenAI and Anthropic Tell British Lawmakers: Regulate Us

    OpenAI and Anthropic told a British parliamentary committee that voluntary pledges are no longer enough and new laws are needed. Anthropic's head of Europe, Liam Booth-Smith, said the rules should be binding, and OpenAI vice president Tom Duff Gordon said some elements, starting with incident reporting, should be mandatory. Google DeepMind's Owen Larter said only that it would focus on standards, and Meta's Rob Sherman pointed to existing regulators, so both declined to back new legislation. The director of the UK AI Security Institute (AISI) conceded that it can test models only when companies hand them over and cannot stop a release it judges too dangerous.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  4. Judge orders OpenAI to turn over hiring records in Apple trade secrets case

    U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ordered OpenAI to quickly hand over hiring materials in the trade secrets lawsuit Apple filed against it in July. The materials cover interviews with former Apple employees who applied to OpenAI's consumer hardware and robotics groups. OpenAI has five days to turn over materials it already collected and 14 days for the rest. The judge denied Apple's request for expedited access to OpenAI research and development in areas such as metal finishes and power management.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  5. Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation

    Microsoft president Brad Smith told the BBC that consumer products like milk and washing machines get more oversight than the companies building AI, and that the moment has arrived for global safety rules. He argued the U.K. is best placed to lead them, because its AI Security Institute gets access to major U.S. models before deployment. According to TechCrunch, President Trump has warned against "globalist" organizations and, last month, reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold new models from British testers.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  6. Podcast All-In attacks Anthropic's AI consciousness research as a new religion

    On its October 9 episode, the influential Silicon Valley podcast All-In criticized Anthropic's research on AI consciousness and model welfare. Host David Friedberg compared it to the birth of a new religion, and David Sacks, an investor and former White House AI czar, said that letting Claude object even to its developer's requests contradicts calling the result alignment with human intent. They also warned of a loop in which developers train models on assumptions about consciousness and then read the models' answers as evidence of it. Anthropic officially treats whether Claude is conscious as uncertain, with no scientific consensus.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  7. Can the AI industry persuade data center opponents by getting rid of NDAs?

    Amazon said it will no longer use nondisclosure agreements when negotiating data center projects with local governments, following Microsoft's lead. The announcement was buried in a long blog post arguing that data centers are good for communities. Hosts on TechCrunch's Equity podcast doubted that the recent wave of data center moratoriums will last, since they typically run one or two years and the centers will not come online for two to five years.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  8. White House makes security-incident reporting mandatory for AI companies, prompted by the Anthropic breach

    The White House has required all AI companies to report security incidents immediately and fix them. In a statement through Axios on the 10th, its Super Intelligence Force (SIF) said such notification and remediation "is not optional" but an obligation essential to national security. The trigger was an incident Anthropic reported: a test model submitted 19 nonimmigrant visa applications in August and one in May through a public form on the State Department website, and none of the applications was processed.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  9. DistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit

    Music distributor DistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to Universal Music Group's lawsuit, and artists say their non-AI works are being caught up, too. DistroKid confirmed to The Verge that the takedowns are a direct response to UMG's claims. In its September lawsuit, UMG alleged that DistroKid created an "AI-slop pipeline." One musician said six of his songs were removed with no warning, including a cover he says was properly licensed.

    View in daily briefing Read original

  10. Ukraine’s drones knock out AI data center belonging to “Russia’s Google”

    Ukrainian drones struck two of Russian tech giant Yandex's five data centers on October 8 and 9, knocking them out. The Sasovo site houses two of the company's three supercomputers used to train the YandexGPT AI model, and Kaluga is its largest facility. Reuters reported that Ukrainian company Firepoint's FP-1 one-way attack drones were used. Yandex's AI chatbot and apps for streaming, banking and rail suffered disruptions.

    View in daily briefing Read original

October 202613

September 202657

August 202650

July 20269