Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has announced an antitrust investigation into whether Meta is unfairly blocking chatbot providers from using its WhatsApp messaging app. In October, WhatsApp changed its business API policy to ban general-purpose...
EU Fines X Millions of Euros for Violating DSA with Blue Checkmark Change
Report from EuroNews In Brief – The European Commission has imposed its first-ever fine on a large online platform for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), hitting X with a 120 million euro penalty after a two-year investigation. Among the findings, regulators...
Perplexity AI Hit with Two More Big Media Copyright Suits
Report from Engadget In Brief – The New York Times has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity, the self-styled Generative AI (GAI) “answer engine”. The media giant says that it sent the AI company several cease-and-desist demands to stop using its...
EU Responds to Publisher Calls for Antitrust Probe of Google AI Practices
Report from CNBC In Brief – The European Commission has announced an antitrust investigation into whether Google unfairly uses the content of online publishers to provide AI answers to search queries without appropriate compensation to publishers, and without offering...
EU Accepts Latest Meta Offer on Free Services with Less-Personalized Ads
Report from Wall Street Journal In Brief – The European Commission has announced a tentative agreement with Meta to resolve the Digital Markets Act (DMA) investigation of Meta’s offer to provide ad-free subscription plans for Facebook and Instagram, which critics...
Trump Finally Issues Executive Order Countering State AI Laws
Report from Washington Post In Brief – After failed attempts to attach a federal moratorium on state AI regulation to “must pass” legislation, President Trump has issued an executive order that calls on government agencies to “check the most onerous and excessive”...
Apple Finally Gets a (Small) Win in Epic Battles Over App Store Commissions
Report from Reuters In Brief – In the latest development in the five-year antitrust battle between Apple and Epic Games, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected key parts of District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ order requiring Apple to...
Appeals Panel Oks Florida Enforcing Law Regulating Teens on Social Media
Report from MediaPost In Brief – A three-judge panel of US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a district court decision that had sided with NetChoice, a digital company trade group, and imposed a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of a Florida law...
Another Call for an AI Pause, This Time Against “Superintelligence”
Report from Financial Times In Brief – A group of over 1000 individuals, led Nobel laureates, policymakers, and celebrities, have signed a public statement calling for the development of AI “superintelligence” to be halted until there is “broad scientific consensus...
Germany Puts a Spike in Latest EU Chat Control Effort to Break Encryption
Report from Euronews In Brief – German opposition to the latest version of the EU child sexual abuse material (CSAM) message scanning bill, dubbed the Chat Control regulation, has led to it being pulled from the agenda of a meeting of EU justice ministers. The draft...
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...
AI Fears are Powering Bills Regulating “Surveillance Pricing” in US States
Report from Gizmodo In Brief – Democratic state lawmakers are increasingly proposing legislation to curb so-called “surveillance pricing,” a practice in which retailers use data and technology to help set prices, claiming that AI will be used to rapidly change prices...
Meta Proposes Allowing AI Chatbots on WhatsApp in Europe for a Fee
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta has announced that it will allow third-party AI chatbots to communicate with users on its WhatsApp messaging platform for a per-message fee in response to pressure from the European Commission. The Commission...
UK Government Vexed About How to Apply Copyright Law to AI Training
Report from the Financial Times In Brief – The UK government is reconsidering a proposal that would allow AI developers, including giants like OpenAI and Google, to train AI models on copyrighted materials without obtaining prior consent from rightsholders. After a...
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