Report from CNBC In Brief – Instacart will stop allowing retailers to use its Eversight AI-enabled price testing technology on its grocery delivery platform. The move followed public criticism, a consumer advocacy group study, and scrutiny from lawmakers and...
Google Sues to Stop Massive Scraping of Its Search Results
Report from Reuters In Brief – Google has filed a federal lawsuit accusing SerpApi of illegally and massively circumventing its technical safeguards intended to block automated scraping of search results with the intent of accessing and reselling copyrighted and...
Meta Names Highly-Connected Republican Banker as Company President
Report from The Hill In Brief – Meta has announced the appointment of Dina Powell McCormick as its new president and vice chair as it accelerates investment in artificial intelligence and its “superintelligence” initiative. In the role, Powell McCormick will oversee...
TikTok Will Roll Out Age Estimation Technology in Europe
Report from Reuters In Brief – TikTok will start rolling out a new technology-based age-estimation regime across Europe in the coming weeks with the goal of more effectively identifying and removing accounts belonging to children under 13. The new system follows a...
US TikTok Spinoff Deal Backed by President Trump Finally Completed
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The business deal to spin off the US operations of TikTok from Chinese parent company ByteDance has been finalized, likely securing the app’s ability to operate in the American market. The new US-based entity includes Oracle, Silver...
EU Commission Opens DSA Investigation of Grok’s Sexualized Images on X
Report from CNBC In Brief – The European Commission has announced a new Digital Services Act (DSA) investigation of X and its integration of AI chatbot Grok with functionality that allowed users to create and post realistic manipulated images that could include...
South Korea Faces US Blowback After Enacting Online Disinformation Law
Report from Korea JoongAng Daily In Brief – South Korea’s recent amendment to the Network Act aimed at suppressing online misinformation quickly sparked sharp criticism from the United States who argued that it risks chilling lawful speech and creates barriers for US...
Government Pressure Forces Grok to Back Down on “Sexualized” Photo Edits
Report from Reuters In Brief – Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has announced that it is preventing Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X, from editing images of real people to put them in revealing clothing such as bikinis. The move represents a major...
Meta Announces Plans to Use Age Verification Tool Developed in Singapore
Report from Financial Times In Brief – Meta has announced plans to adopt a new age-verification credential, AgeKeys, developed by Singapore-based start-up k-ID, as it responds to intensifying global online safety regulation. The reusable, passkey-based credential is...
Apple is Appealing Big UK Court Loss on App Store Pricing
Report from Guardian In Brief – Apple has appealed the 2025 decision of the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) that the iPhone giant violated competition law by imposing excessive App Store commissions on developers, leading to overcharges being passed on to...
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Amazon Wins Preliminary Injunction Over Perplexity’s Shopping Assistant
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – US District Judge Maxine Chesney has granted Amazon a preliminary injunction blocking the use of an AI-powered shopping assistant created by Perplexity AI on Amazon’s website. Chesney determined that Amazon is likely to succeed...
Utah Taxes Advertising Revenue of Big, Addictive Social Media Companies
Report from Utah News Dispatch In Brief – Utah’s legislature has passed SB287, a bill imposing a 4.7% tax on the targeted advertising revenues of the largest social media companies. The bill targets digital platforms that generate at least $1 million in targeted...
Microsoft Opposes Immediate Pentagon Blacklisting of Anthropic
Report from Reuters In Brief – Microsoft is backing Anthropic in its legal challenge to the US Department of Defense (DoD) labeling the AI developer a supply-chain risk and blocking the company’s AI services from being used on any defense contracts. The...
White House Kills Some Utah AI Bills but Several Reach Governor Cox
Report from the Transparency Coalition In Brief – Efforts by officials in Republican-dominated Utah to position the state as a leader in regulating AI faced resistance from the Trump White House, which labeled one AI safety proposal “unfixable” and warned that some...
Meta to Add Digital Services Tax Surcharge to Ad Buys in Six Countries
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Meta has announced that it will soon add a “location fee” to advertising purchases targeting users in several countries to offset the cost of national digital services taxes (DSTs). The policy will begin in May, with full billing...
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