California AG warns AI companies about potential legal violations

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued legal advisories warning artificial intelligence companies that many of their current practices may violate state laws. According to an article by Lucas Ropek, the memo identifies three main areas of concern: the use of AI for deception through deepfakes and chatbots, false advertising of AI capabilities, and discriminatory …

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GameOn AI startup founder charged with $60 million fraud scheme

The founder and former CEO of San Francisco-based AI chatbot company GameOn has been indicted on fraud charges. According to Reuters reporter Jonathan Stempel, Alexander Beckman, 41, faces 23 criminal counts for allegedly defrauding investors of over $60 million. His wife Valerie Lau Beckman, 38, was also charged with 16 counts. Prosecutors claim Beckman misled …

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Scale AI faces multiple lawsuits from workers

Scale AI, a company valued at $13.8 billion, is confronting three lawsuits within roughly a month over its treatment of workers. According to Charles Rollet’s report in TechCrunch, the latest class action lawsuit, filed on January 17 in California, involves six workers who claim they suffered psychological trauma from reviewing disturbing content without adequate support. …

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Google and Mistral AI sign content deals with major news agencies

Major technology companies Google and Mistral AI have announced separate partnerships with leading news agencies to enhance their AI chatbot services. Google has entered an agreement with The Associated Press (AP) to incorporate real-time news feeds into its Gemini app, while Paris-based Mistral AI has partnered with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to improve its Le Chat …

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More details about Meta’s use of pirated books to train AI models

Internal documents unsealed in a copyright lawsuit show that Meta used pirated books from LibGen to train its artificial intelligence systems. The revelations emerged from a case filed by several prominent authors, including Junot Diaz, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, as reported by Wired magazine and commented on by Lithub. The documents contain direct quotes …

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OpenAI bot crashes small company’s website during mass data scraping

A Ukrainian-American company, Triplegangers, experienced severe website disruption when OpenAI’s web crawler attempted to scrape its entire database of 65,000 3D human model products. According to Julie Bort’s report in TechCrunch, the incident occurred when OpenAI’s bot sent tens of thousands of server requests using 600 different IP addresses. CEO Oleksandr Tomchuk described the bot’s …

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Zuckerberg approved use of pirated books for Meta’s AI training

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg authorized the use of LibGen, a dataset of pirated e-books and articles, to train the company’s Llama AI models, according to new court documents. The revelation comes from a copyright lawsuit filing reported by Kyle Wiggers in TechCrunch. The lawsuit, Kadrey v. Meta, includes plaintiffs Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Court …

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Anthropic agrees to restrict AI access to copyrighted lyrics

Major music publishers have reached an agreement with AI company Anthropic regarding the use of copyrighted song lyrics. According to reporting by Winston Cho for The Hollywood Reporter, the deal requires Anthropic to maintain existing safeguards that prevent its AI chatbot Claude from accessing or generating protected lyrics. The lawsuit, filed in 2023 by Universal …

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Musk gains support in lawsuit over OpenAI’s corporate structure

Elon Musk’s legal challenge against OpenAI has received new backing from prominent tech investors and AI researchers. According to reporting by Gerrit De Vynck for The Washington Post, the lawsuit aims to prevent OpenAI from transitioning from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. Two tech investors, Antonio Gracias and Gavin Baker, filed sworn declarations claiming …

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OpenAI delays copyright opt-out tool Media Manager

OpenAI has failed to deliver its promised Media Manager tool, which was intended to help creators control the use of their work in AI training data. According to reporting by Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch, the tool was announced in May but has shown no signs of development. Former OpenAI employees told TechCrunch that the project …

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