Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Meta has announced that it will charge AI companies a per message fee for running their chatbots on WhatsApp in regions where regulators force the company to allow chatbots on the platform. The policy will go into effect in Italy on...
Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial Underway in California State Court
Report from PBS In Brief – The initial “bellwether” trial testing claims that major social media platforms are liable for a wide range of mental health injuries because they intentionally designed their products to be addictive to children is underway in Los Angeles...
UK Antitrust Regulator Proposes Google Search Rules Including AI Opt-Outs
Report from Euractiv In Brief – The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced proposed rules to govern how Google operates its search engine, including requiring that the company allow website publishers to opt out of having their content used in...
Paris Prosecutors Continue to Investigate X for Criminal Law Violations
Report from Reuters In Brief – French authorities have raided X’s Paris offices as part of an expanded criminal investigation into the social media platform over its handling of unlawful content. The probe, which began last year as an investigation of the platform’s...
Grok Chatbot Faces Regulatory Criticism for Sexualizing Photo Images
Report from Australian Broadcasting Corporation In Brief – Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X, is facing growing backlash for being capable of digitally altering photos posted on X to depict women, and in some cases apparent children, in revealing clothing,...
New York Enacts Law Requiring Warning Labels on Social Media
Report from Digital Watch In Brief – Governor Kathy Hochul added New York to the list of states that is trying to require social media platforms to display cigarette package-style warning labels that describe their services as employing dangerous “addictive features”...
Google Settles Character.AI Liability Suits Tied to Teen Suicides
Report from Washington Post In Brief – Character.AI and Google have agreed to settle lawsuits regarding teen suicide and self-harm bought by victims’ families in Florida, Colorado, Texas and New York. Character.AI is a role-playing chatbot platform that allows users...
More Enforcement of DMA and DSA Lead EU Digital Policy Agenda for 2026
Report from >Financial Times In Brief – Enforcement of EU digital regulations, including intensifying scrutiny of major US tech companies Google, Meta, Apple and X, is going to mark European digital policy in 2026 and almost certainly bring renewed clashes with the...
Japan Competition Regulator Opens Investigation of AI Search Services
Report from Nippon.com In Brief – The Japan Fair Trade Commission, the country’s competition regulator, has announced an investigation as to whether online search services that use generative artificial intelligence to craft responses could constitute an abuse of a...
New York State Joins California Regulating AI “Safety”
Report from New York Times In Brief – New York followed California and became the second large US state to enact sweeping legislation regulating AI services as Governor Kathy Hochul signed the RAISE Act. The bill establishes a new office within the Department of...
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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...
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...
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