After Cloudflare started testing new features that would allow websites to block AI crawlers or require payment for scraping, the tech company immediately faced questions over the logistics of the plan.

In particular, website owners and SEO experts wanted to know how Cloudflare planned to block Google's bot from scraping sites to fuel AI overviews without risking blocking the same bot from crawling for valuable search engine placements.

Last week, a travel blogger raised questions about the blocking and so-called pay-per-crawl features and pushed Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince to respond on X (formerly Twitter):

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Linda Yaccarino has announced she is stepping down as CEO of X, one day after the platform was forced to take action to stop its chatbot Grok from praising Hitler and amplifying harmful antisemitic stereotypes.

In her announcement, Yaccarino does not mention Grok or any reason for her departure. Instead, Yaccarino broke down what she views as her greatest accomplishments over two years at X, taking credit for helping X "turn around" its financial woes while thanking X owner Elon Musk for giving her "the opportunity of a lifetime."

"I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App," Yaccarino said.

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After months of backlash over alleged pollution concerns, xAI has finally secured an air permit covering some of the methane gas turbines powering its Colossus supercomputer data center in Memphis, Tennessee.

On Wednesday, the Shelby County Health Department granted xAI an air permit that allows it to power 15 gas turbines while adhering to a range of restrictions designed to minimize emissions. Expiring on January 2, 2027, the permit requires xAI to install and operate the best available control technology (BACT) by September 1 to ensure emissions do not exceed certain limits.

Any failure to comply could trigger enforcement actions by the Environmental Protection Agency or the county health department, the permit notes.

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Elon Musk's X arguably revolutionized social media fact-checking by rolling out "community notes," which created a system to crowdsource diverse views on whether certain X posts were trustworthy or not.

But now, the platform plans to allow AI to write community notes, and that could potentially ruin whatever trust X users had in the fact-checking system—which X has fully acknowledged.

In a research paper, X described the initiative as an "upgrade" while explaining everything that could possibly go wrong with AI-written community notes.

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Last week, OpenAI raised objections in court, hoping to overturn a court order requiring the AI company to retain all ChatGPT logs "indefinitely," including deleted and temporary chats.

But Sidney Stein, the US district judge reviewing OpenAI's request, immediately denied OpenAI's objections. He was seemingly unmoved by the company's claims that the order forced OpenAI to abandon "long-standing privacy norms" and weaken privacy protections that users expect based on ChatGPT's terms of service. Rather, Stein suggested that OpenAI's user agreement specified that their data could be retained as part of a legal process, which Stein said is exactly what is happening now.

The order was issued by magistrate judge Ona Wang just days after news organizations, led by The New York Times, requested it. The news plaintiffs claimed the order was urgently needed to preserve potential evidence in their copyright case, alleging that ChatGPT users are likely to delete chats where they attempted to use the chatbot to skirt paywalls to access news content.

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Now that Meta has largely beaten an AI training copyright lawsuit raised by 13 book authors—including comedian Sarah Silverman and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz—the only matter left to settle in that case is whether Meta violated copyright laws by torrenting books used to train Llama models.

In an order that partly grants Meta's motion for summary judgment, judge Vince Chhabria confirmed that Meta and the authors would meet on July 11 to "discuss how to proceed on the plaintiffs’ separate claim that Meta unlawfully distributed their protected works during the torrenting process."

Chhabria's order suggested that authors may struggle to win this part of the fight, too, due to a lack of evidence, as there has not yet been much discovery on this issue that was raised so late in the case. But he also warned that Meta was wrong to argue its torrenting was completely "irrelevant" to whether its copying of books was fair use.

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Artificial intelligence companies don't need permission from authors to train their large language models (LLMs) on legally acquired books, US District Judge William Alsup ruled Monday.

The first-of-its-kind ruling that condones AI training as fair use will likely be viewed as a big win for AI companies, but it also notably put on notice all the AI companies that expect the same reasoning will apply to training on pirated copies of books—a question that remains unsettled.

In the specific case that Alsup is weighing—which pits book authors against Anthropic—Alsup found that "the purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative" and "necessary" to build world-class AI models.

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After a court ordered OpenAI to "indefinitely" retain all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, of millions of users, two panicked users tried and failed to intervene. The order sought to preserve potential evidence in a copyright infringement lawsuit raised by news organizations.

In May, Judge Ona Wang, who drafted the order, rejected the first user's request on behalf of his company simply because the company should have hired a lawyer to draft the filing. But more recently, Wang rejected a second claim from another ChatGPT user, and that order went into greater detail, revealing how the judge is considering opposition to the order ahead of oral arguments this week, which were urgently requested by OpenAI.

The second request to intervene came from a ChatGPT user named Aidan Hunt, who said that he uses ChatGPT "from time to time," occasionally sending OpenAI "highly sensitive personal and commercial information in the course of using the service."

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Anyone whose phone number is just one digit off from a popular restaurant or community resource has long borne the burden of either screening or redirecting misdials. But now, AI chatbots could exacerbate this inconvenience by accidentally giving out private numbers when users ask for businesses' contact information.

Apparently, the AI helper that Meta created for WhatsApp may even be trained to tell white lies when users try to correct the dissemination of WhatsApp user numbers.

According to The Guardian, a record shop worker in the United Kingdom, Barry Smethurst, was attempting to ask WhatsApp's AI helper for a contact number for TransPennine Express after his morning train never showed up.

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Critics have long warned that Donald Trump's pro-cryptocurrency push as president, coupled with his links to his family's growing crypto empire, creates substantial conflicts of interest that must be probed.

But so far, nothing has stopped Trump's family from seemingly benefiting from the presidency while expanding their empire. And now, Trump is rushing regulation through Congress that many Democrats fear could create his biggest conflict of interest yet.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a bill that will regulate stablecoins in the US, establishing guardrails and consumer protections that may spur wider crypto adoption nationwide. Unlike more volatile forms of cryptocurrency—like Trump's controversial memecoin—stablecoins' value can be pegged to the US dollar. The crypto industry is hoping the House of Representatives will quickly send the bill to Trump's desk, which Trump has demanded happen by August.

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After thermal imaging appeared to show that xAI lied about suspected pollution at its Colossus supercomputer data center located near predominantly Black communities in Memphis, Tennessee, the NAACP has threatened a lawsuit accusing xAI of violating the Clean Air Act.

In a letter sent to xAI on Tuesday, lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) notified xAI of the NAACP's intent to sue in 60 days if xAI refuses to meet to discuss the groups' concerns that xAI is not using the requisite best available pollution controls. To ensure there's time for what the NAACP considers urgently needed negotiations ahead of filing the lawsuit, lawyers asked xAI to come to the table within the next 20 days.

xAI did not respond to Ars' request to comment on the legal threat or accusations that it has become a major source of pollutants in Memphis.

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The White House confirmed that Donald Trump has extended the deadline for a TikTok sale for a third time, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Now, China-based ByteDance has 90 days to divest its US assets or potentially be forced to shut down US operations. Trump's announcement came one day before the June 19 deadline he established through his last extension. That extension was necessary after Vice President JD Vance failed to make a "high-level" deal expected in April, which Politico branded a "make or break moment" where Vance could have secured a big win.

Yesterday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that China was holding up the sale, suggesting that China may have an upper hand in TikTok negotiations, and perhaps TikTok is losing its sheen as a US bargaining chip in Trump's bigger trade war.

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As artificial intelligence has advanced, AI tools have emerged to make it possible to easily create digital replicas of lost loved ones, which can be generated without the knowledge or consent of the person who died.

Trained on the data of the dead, these tools, sometimes called grief bots or AI ghosts, may be text-, audio-, or even video-based. Chatting provides what some mourners feel is a close approximation to ongoing interactions with the people they love most. But the tech remains controversial, perhaps complicating the grieving process while threatening to infringe upon the privacy of the deceased, whose data could still be vulnerable to manipulation or identity theft.

Because of suspected harms and perhaps a general repulsion to the idea of it, not everybody wants to become an AI ghost.

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Late Thursday, OpenAI confronted user panic over a sweeping court order requiring widespread chat log retention—including users' deleted chats—after moving to appeal the order that allegedly impacts the privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally.

In a statement, OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap explained that the court order came in a lawsuit with The New York Times and other news organizations, which alleged that deleted chats may contain evidence of users prompting ChatGPT to generate copyrighted news articles.

To comply with the order, OpenAI must "retain all user content indefinitely going forward, based on speculation" that the news plaintiffs "might find something that supports their case," OpenAI's statement alleged.

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On the heels of an OpenAI controversy over deleted posts, Reddit sued Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing the AI company of "intentionally" training AI models on the "personal data of Reddit users"—including their deleted posts—"without ever requesting their consent."

Calling Anthropic two-faced for depicting itself as a "white knight of the AI industry" while allegedly lying about AI scraping, Reddit painted Anthropic as the worst among major AI players. While Anthropic rivals like OpenAI and Google paid Reddit to license data—and, crucially, agreed to "Reddit’s licensing terms that protect Reddit and its users’ interests and privacy" and require AI companies to respect Redditors' deletions—Anthropic wouldn't participate in licensing talks, Reddit alleged.

"Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to agree to respect Reddit users’ basic privacy rights, including removing deleted posts from its systems," Reddit's complaint said.

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OpenAI is now fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering—after news organizations suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence.

"Before OpenAI had an opportunity to respond to those unfounded accusations, the court ordered OpenAI to 'preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying)," OpenAI explained in a court filing demanding oral arguments in a bid to block the controversial order.

In the filing, OpenAI alleged that the court rushed the order based only on a hunch raised by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs. And now, without "any just cause," OpenAI argued, the order "continues to prevent OpenAI from respecting its users’ privacy decisions." That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said.

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College students who have reportedly grown too dependent on ChatGPT are starting to face consequences after graduating and joining the workforce for placing too much trust in chatbots.

Last month, a recent law school graduate lost his job after using ChatGPT to help draft a court filing that ended up being riddled with errors.

The consequences arrived after a court in Utah ordered sanctions after the filing included the first fake citation ever discovered in the state hallucinated by artificial intelligence.

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With the federal hiring freeze lifting in mid-July, the Trump administration has rolled out a controversial federal hiring plan that critics warn will politicize and likely slow down the process rather than increase government efficiency.

De-emphasizing degree requirements and banning DEI initiatives—as well as any census tracking of gender, race, ethnicity, or religion to assess the composition of government—the plan requires every new hire to submit essays explaining which executive orders or policy initiatives they will help advance.

These essays must be limited to 200 words and cannot be generated by a chatbot, the guidance noted. While some applicants may point to policies enacted by prior presidents under their guidance, the president appears to be seeking to ensure that only Trump supporters are hired and that anyone who becomes disillusioned with Trump is weeded out over time. In addition to asking for a show of loyalty during the interview process, all federal workers will also be continuously vetted and must agree to submit to "checks for post-appointment conduct that may impact their continued trustworthiness," the guidance noted, referencing required patriotism repeatedly.

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In some ways, Getty Images has emerged as one of the most steadfast defenders of artists' rights in AI copyright fights. Starting in 2022, when some of the most sophisticated image generators today first started testing new models offering better compositions, Getty banned AI-generated uploads to its service. And by the next year, Getty released a "socially responsible" image generator to prove it was possible to build a tool while rewarding artists, while suing an AI firm that refused to pay artists.

But in the years since, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters recently told CNBC that the media company has discovered that it's simply way too expensive to fight every AI copyright battle.

According to Peters, Getty has dumped millions into just one copyright fight against Stability AI.

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After weeks of arguments in the Federal Trade Commission's monopoly trial, Meta is done defending its decade-plus-old acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp—at least for now.

The seven-week trial ended Tuesday, with the FTC urging Judge James Boasberg to rule that a breakup is necessary to end Meta's alleged monopoly in the "personal social networking services" market, where Meta currently faces sparse competition among other apps connecting friends and family. As alleged by the FTC, Meta's internal emails laid bare that Meta's motive in acquiring both Instagram and WhatsApp was to pay whatever it took to snuff out dominant rivals threatening to lure users away from Facebook—Mark Zuckerberg's jewel.

Talking to Bloomberg, Meta has maintained that the FTC's case is weak, seeking to undo deals that the FTC approved long ago while ignoring the competition Meta faces from rivals in the broader social media market, like TikTok. But Meta's attempt to shut down the case mid-trial was rebuffed by Boasberg, who has signaled he will take months to weigh his decision.

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