Now OpenAI is getting sued by the dictionary; Quartz, March 17, 2026

 Quartz Staff, Quartz; Now OpenAI is getting sued by the dictionary

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sued the ChatGPT maker, accusing it of copying almost 100,000 articles to train its AI models

"Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed suit against OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT maker copied their copyrighted content without authorization to train its large language models,

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court last week, alleges that OpenAI used close to 100,000 Britannica articles to train its models, and that ChatGPT responses frequently reproduce or closely paraphrase Britannica's reference content, including encyclopedia articles and dictionary entries. The complaint also alleges OpenAI uses a retrieval-augmented generation system to pull from Britannica's content in real time when generating responses."

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog; The Guardian, March 17, 2026

Martin Gelin, The Guardian ; ‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog

"The US is no longer a democracy. One of the most credible global sources on the health of democratic nations now says this outright. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at Gothenburg University reaches the alarming conclusion in its annual report, that the US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey.

“Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country,” says Staffan Lindberg, founder of the institute.

Since 2012, Lindberg has led his small group of researchers in Sweden to become the world’s leading source for analysis of the health of global democracy. In their latest report, published on Tuesday, they conclude that the US, for the first time in more than half a century, has lost its long-term status as a liberal democracy. The country is now going through a rapid process of what the report’s authors call “autocratisation”...

A record 41% (3.4 billion) of the world’s population currently resides in countries where democracy is deteriorating, the report claims, adding that Washington is leading this global turn away from democracy.

The researchers use 48 different metrics to assess democratic health, such as the freedom of expression and the media, the quality of elections and the observance of the rule of law. The resulting “liberal democracy index” shows that the speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is unprecedented in modern history. The main factor is a “rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency”, Lindberg says. Congress has been marginalised, jeopardising the “checks and balances” (judicial and legislative constraints on the executive) so crucial to US democracy. At the same time, civil rights have been rapidly declining and freedom of expression is now at its lowest level since the 1940s."

Senators tell ByteDance to ‘immediately shut down’ Seedance AI video app; CNBC, March 17, 2026

 Emily Wilkins, CNBC ;  Senators tell ByteDance to ‘immediately shut down’ Seedance AI video app

"Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Peter Welch are calling for a halt to the new version of ByteDance’s artificial intelligence app, Seedance, which generates videos of real people and licensed characters, raising copyright and intellectual property concerns. 

Seedance 2.0 “is the most glaring example of copyright infringement from a ByteDance product to date, and you must immediately shut down Seedance and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent further infringing outputs,” Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Welch, D-Vt., wrote in a letter to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo that was first obtained by CNBC.

Their letter is a sign of growing concerns on Capitol Hill about how AI companies are developing and using their models and whether proper protections are in place for those who generate the materials the models train from."

Disney's new Cars ride uses patent technology that lets you steer freely across a mountain race course; Boing Boing, March 16, 2026

RUBEN BOLLING, Boing Boing; Disney's new Cars ride uses patent technology that lets you steer freely across a mountain race course

"WDWMagic has reported on a patent application made by Disney in 2024, published on March 12, 2026, that seems to indicate that the new marquee Cars ride may have a totally innovative ride system that promises to be a lot of fun. Riders would drive free ranging vehicles through multiple paths over a mountainous race course.

The patent describes a ride system where vehicles can move freely across uneven terrain along multiple path options. Guests choose their route. A fleet controller manages all the vehicles on the track, overriding guest input when needed to maintain spacing, prevent collisions, and direct vehicles toward specific attraction elements.

The track itself is designed to handle rough terrain. The patent specifically mentions hills, valleys, bumps, rocks, stumps, puddles, potholes, and shrubbery – exactly the kind of terrain you would expect on an off-road rally race through a national park.

Vehicles navigate the terrain using a guide wire embedded in or below the track surface. Line detectors on each vehicle follow the guide wire, allowing the vehicle to steer along the designated path. Guests control their speed and direction within limits set by the system.

From Patent Application US 2026/0072453 A1, public document"

How Trump Drove a Wedge Between Florida Republicans Over A.I.; The New York Times, March 16, 2026

David McCabe and Patricia Mazzei , The New York Times; How Trump Drove a Wedge Between Florida Republicans Over A.I.

A Florida bill that would have regulated artificial intelligence, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, failed to gain traction after President Trump made it clear he did not want states to rein in the technology.

"Florida lawmakers failed to pass a sweeping bill aimed at reining in the power of artificial intelligence by the time their annual legislative session wrapped up Friday.

The legislation, known as an A.I. Bill of Rights, flopped even though Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, had spent months championing it. The bill would have forced companies to disclose when they use A.I. chatbots to interact with consumers and forbidden the technology’s use in licensed mental health counseling, among other measures.

But Republicans in the Florida House of Representatives refused to take up the bill because of President Trump. Mr. Trump has visibly positioned himself as pro-A.I., signing executive orders to protect the tech industry and threatening states that try to regulate the technology. In recent weeks, the White House has communicated to state legislators around the country that it is wary of states regulating A.I., while Mr. Trump has reiterated his support for the technology in public."

The dictionary sues OpenAI; TechCrunch, March 16, 2026

 Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch; The dictionary sues OpenAI

"Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging in its complaint that the AI giant has committed “massive copyright infringement.”

Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster, retains the copyright to nearly 100,000 online articles, which have been scraped and used to train OpenAI’s LLMs without permission, the publisher alleges in the lawsuit.

Britannica also accuses OpenAI of violating copyright laws when it generates outputs that contain “full or partial verbatim reproductions” of its content and when the AI lab uses its articles in ChatGPT’s RAG (retrieval augmented generation) workflow. OpenAI’s RAG tool is how the LLM scans the web or other databases for newly updated information when responding to a query. Britannica also alleges that OpenAI violates the Lanham Act, a trademark statute, when it generates made-up hallucinations and attributes them falsely to the publisher."

This Bill Would Force AI Companies to Disclose Copyrighted Works; PetaPixel, March 16, 2026

Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; This Bill Would Force AI Companies to Disclose Copyrighted Works

"U.S. Senators Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, have introduced the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting Act, known as the CLEAR Act. The proposed legislation would require companies developing AI models to report when copyrighted material is used to train those systems.

If passed, the legislation could increase transparency around the material used to train generative AI systems, including copyrighted photographs."

Trump fundraising email uses photo of March 7 dignified transfer of deceased soldier; Army Times, March 14, 2026

J.D. Simkins, Army Times ; Trump fundraising email uses photo of March 7 dignified transfer of deceased soldier

"A fundraising email distributed Thursday by a political action committee linked to President Donald Trump included a photo of a March 7 dignified transfer of a U.S. soldier killed by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait. 

The email, which was signed “President Donald J. Trump“ and paid for by Never Surrender Inc., promises to make donors part of a ”National Security Briefing Membership.” It was first pointed out on X by Patriot Takes.

The embedded photo of the dignified transfer, taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, is included in the email and bracketed by icons featuring the text, “CLAIM YOUR SPOT,” which can be clicked on to donate. 

In the photo, Trump, wearing a white USA baseball hat, salutes as a flag-draped casket of a fallen soldier is transferred by an Army carry team. The casket included the remains of one of six soldiers returned to U.S. soil that day, the first American casualties of Operation Epic Fury."

Teen, 14, Diagnosed with Rare Cancer, Used His Single Make-A-Wish Gift Not for Himself, but Others in His Community; People, March 14, 2026

Toria Sheffield, People; Teen, 14, Diagnosed with Rare Cancer, Used His Single Make-A-Wish Gift Not for Himself, but Others in His Community

"A Georgia teen used his single Make-A-Wish gift to help others in his community.

Jude Baker was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that affects bone or surrounding tissue, when he was 12 years old, according to local outlet 11 Alive.

Baker, now 14, soon began chemotherapy after his diagnosis. He said it was even more painful than the reality that he could succumb to the illness...

Because of his diagnosis, Baker qualified for a wish with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a nonprofit that grants "wishes" to children ages 3 to 17 who are diagnosed with critical illnesses.

And while most kids will ask for things like a fun trip or meeting a celebrity, Baker instead asked for something different: to help the homeless in his area...

Make-A-Wish collected sleeping bags, packed backpacks full of supplies and prepared hot meals for homeless individuals in the area for one day.

Over 300 people ultimately received assistance because of Baker's Make-A-Wish, per 11 Alive.

The teenager, who is now in remission, said he hopes his wish helped remind others that there are always opportunities to assist those in need."

UK to rule out sweeping AI copyright overhaul; Politico, March 11, 2026

 JOSEPH BAMBRIDGE, Politico; UK to rule out sweeping AI copyright overhaul 

The U.K. will rule out making creatives actively opt out of having their copyrighted material scraped by AI companies.

"The U.K. government will rule out sweeping reform of its copyright laws in a highly-anticipated policy update next week, according to three people briefed on government thinking and granted anonymity to speak freely. 

The people said the update, due by March 18, will state the government does not plan to take forward work on an “opt out” model, whereby rights holders would have to explicitly say they do not want their work used to train AI models. 

It comes amid intense pressure from rights holders and lawmakers not to pursue the “opt out” policy. The government previously said this was its “preferred option” to facilitate AI innovation in the U.K., before ministers were forced to row back."

F.C.C. Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters’ Licenses Over War Coverage; The New York Times, March 14, 2026

Ashley Ahn , The New York Times; F.C.C. Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters’ Licenses Over War Coverage

The comment from Brendan Carr came on the heels of a social media message from President Trump criticizing the news media’s coverage of the war with Iran.

"Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts."

Who holds Congress accountable? A look at the invisible ethics system for lawmakers; PBS News, March 12, 2026

Lisa Desjardins, Kyle Midura , PBS News; Who holds Congress accountable? A look at the invisible ethics system for lawmakers

"Congress is charged with writing the laws that govern the rest of us, but who holds lawmakers accountable when they break the rules? We take a closer look at the number of sitting members of Congress facing active ethics investigations, and the largely invisible system designed to police them. Congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins reports."

The Trump Administration Floats a New Way to Humiliate the Legal Profession; The New York Times, March 13, 2026

Deborah Pearlstein , The New York Times; The Trump Administration Floats a New Way to Humiliate the Legal Profession

"To fill those empty seats, the department has begun an increasingly desperate effort to recruit hires. (“Don’t be scared off by the transcript requirement,” a conservative law school reportedly told its students. “G.P.A. is not a strong factor.”) Even so, it seems too few lawyers are willing to take the chance. So the Trump administration last week offered up a different solution: a proposed rule that aims to shield Department of Justice lawyers from independent ethics investigations.

Such an arrangement would run afoul of a federal law known as the McDade Amendment, which says that government lawyers are subject to the ethics rules of the states in which they practice, “to the same extent and in the same manner” as every other lawyer licensed in the state. The proposed rule would be challenged in court immediately if it ever took effect. It shouldn’t get that far, however. It would do much more than potentially give department lawyers a free pass to lie on the president’s behalf. It would severely limit the courts’ ability to offer any kind of independent check on the executive branch.

Rules requiring lawyers to serve as honest officers of the court have been adopted by every state and the District of Columbia. They serve a host of purposes, starting with the basic right to fairness. These rules are also critical to the independence of the courts, which depend on access to reliable evidence and accurate representations by counsel.

Such rules serve an especially critical function in constitutional democracies, which distinguish themselves from authoritarian regimes in part by insisting that truth and falsehood exist separately from whatever the government may assert...

The move against state bars is of a piece with the administration’s broader strategy against universities, the media and law firms — any set of organizations capable of challenging the president’s power. And few things threaten it more than holding it to the truth."

SHELLEY’S ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ GETS AN AI REBOOT AT PASADENA’S HASTINGS BRANCH LIBRARY; Pasadena Now, March 15, 2026

Pasadena Now; SHELLEY’S ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ GETS AN AI REBOOT AT PASADENA’S HASTINGS BRANCH LIBRARY

A discussion today ties the 1818 novel's warnings about creator responsibility to contemporary debates over artificial intelligence, part of the city's One City, One Story program 

"Two centuries before algorithms began analyzing people’s dreams and predicting their crimes, Mary Shelley wrote a novel about a scientist who built something he could not control. That novel, “Frankenstein,” is the subject of a free discussion today at Hastings Branch Library, where presenter Rosemary Choate will connect its 207-year-old themes to the same questions about artificial intelligence that Pasadena’s citywide reading program is exploring all month.

The event, titled “Frankenstein: Myths and the Real Story?” is part of the Pasadena Public Library’s 24th annual One City, One Story program, which this year selected Laila Lalami’s “The Dream Hotel” — a dystopian novel about a woman detained because an algorithm, fed by data from her dreams, deemed her a future criminal. The library has organized a month of lectures, films and book discussions around the novel’s themes of surveillance, technology and freedom, and the Frankenstein session draws a direct line between Shelley’s 1818 tale and the anxieties at the center of Lalami’s story.

Choate, a comparative literature and humanities instructor and founder of the Pomona College Alumni Book Club, will lead the discussion at 3 p.m. She will examine themes including creator responsibility, the consequences of unchecked technological ambition and society’s rejection of the “creation” — questions the library’s event description calls “highly relevant to contemporary debates surrounding the development and governance of AI,” according to the Pasadena Public Library’s event listing.

Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” anonymously in 1818, when she was 20 years old. The novel tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who assembles a creature from dead body parts and recoils from what he has made. The creature, abandoned by its creator, becomes violent as it fails to find acceptance. The novel is widely considered one of the first works of science fiction.

The One City, One Story program, now in its 24th year, selects a single book each year for citywide reading and discussion. A 19-member committee of community volunteers, led by Senior Librarian Christine Reeder, chose “The Dream Hotel” for its exploration of surveillance, freedom and the reach of technology into private life. The program is sponsored by The Friends of the Pasadena Public Library and the Pasadena Literary Alliance.

The month of events culminates in a conversation with Lalami and Pasadena Public Library Director Tim McDonald on Saturday, March 21, at 2 p.m. at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd. That event is also free and open to the public."

Music Copyright in the Gen AI Age: Where Are We Now?; Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Law Blog, February 11, 2026

 Sam Woods , Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Law Blog; Music Copyright in the Gen AI Age: Where Are We Now?

"Imagine you are a musician who has dedicated years of your life creating an album or EP — tinkering with the production, revising lyrics, finding the perfect samples— and now, you have finally shared your art with the world and are thrilled with the project’s success. However, while scrolling on TikTok a few months later, you hear some familiar audio. Wait a minute, is that one of your songs? No… not quite, but why does it sound so similar? Turns out, the song was created using artificial intelligence (“AI”)."

AI is dressing up greed as progress on creative rights; Financial Times, March 14, 2026

 CAMILLA CAVENDISH, Financial Times; AI is dressing up greed as progress on creative rights

"At this week’s London Book Fair, a lot of people were walking around with one particular title wedged under their arms. Called Don’t Steal This Book, its pages are empty apart from the names of thousands of authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro and Richard Osman. It’s a chilling protest against the rampant theft of creative work by tech firms, which could leave future artists unable to earn a living."

ByteDance’s Controversial AI Video Model Reportedly on Hold Globally Due to Copyright Disputes; Gizmodo, March 14, 2026

 MIKE PEARL  , Gizmodo; ByteDance’s Controversial AI Video Model Reportedly on Hold Globally Due to Copyright Disputes

"According to two anonymous leakers who spoke to the Information, the global release of Seedance 2.0 is on hold amid legal action from movie studios and streaming services.

When it was initially released, Seedance 2.0 appeared to have few if any protections in place to prevent users from generating videos appearing to star celebrities, copyrighted characters, and celebrities as copyrighted characters."

Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online; The New York Times, March 13, 2026

 Stuart A. Thompson and Alexander Cardia, The New York Times; Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online

"A torrent of fake videos and images generated by artificial intelligence have overrun social networks during the first weeks of the war in Iran.

The videos — showing huge explosions that never happened, decimated city streets that were never attacked or troops protesting the war who do not exist — have added a chaotic and confusing layer to the conflict online.

The New York Times identified over 110 unique A.I.-generated images and videos from the past two weeks about the war in the Middle East. The fakes covered every aspect of the fighting: They falsely depicted screaming Israelis cowering as explosions ripped through Tel Aviv, Iranians mourning their dead and American military vessels bombarded with missiles and torpedoes.

Collectively, they were seen millions of times online through networks like X, TikTok and Facebook, and countless more times within private messaging apps popular in the region and around the world."

Social Media Isn’t Just Speech. It’s Also a Defective, Hazardous Product.; The New York Times, March 14, 2026

Tim Wu, The New York Times ; Social Media Isn’t Just Speech. It’s Also a Defective, Hazardous Product.

"For two decades now, social media companies have been virtually untouchable, profitably floating above accusations that they normalize propaganda, addict children and degrade our character. Legally and politically, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have been protected by an idea that they and others have promoted: that they are not just innovative technologies but also speech platforms, so that imposing any limits on them would amount to both censorship and a drag on technological progress.

That protection is finally starting to weaken, thanks to a growing realization that social media is also a matter of public health. Seen this way, social media appears as something less newfangled and more familiar: a defective, hazardous product. The current trial of Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube in Los Angeles Superior Court, in which a 20-year-old woman has accused the platforms of designing their products in ways that harmed her mental and physical health, is the clearest sign of this shift.

The case, in which closing arguments were made on Thursday, is the first of many lawsuits brought by thousands of young people, school districts and state attorneys general against companies like Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok. The plaintiffs in these cases do not accuse the companies merely of serving up bad content to young people; they argue that the very design of social media is intentionally engineered to create compulsions and habits of overuse, regardless of the content provided."

Perspective: No copyright for AI-generated content; Northern Public Radio, March 13, 2026

 David Gunkel, Northern Public Radio; Perspective: No copyright for AI-generated content

"What the courts actually decided is that neither the AI system nor the human who uses it counts as the author of the resulting work. Simply prompting ChatGPT or Claude to produce something isn’t considered the kind of creative activity that copyright law recognizes as authorship. And that creates an unexpected result. If neither the AI nor the human user is the author, then the work has no author at all. In effect, AI-generated images, music, and text become “orphan works”—creations that belong to no one. And that means that anyone can use them."

The Guardian view on changes to copyright laws: authors should be protected over big tech; The Guardian, March 13, 2026

 Editorial , The Guardian; The Guardian view on changes to copyright laws: authors should be protected over big tech

"In a scene that might have come from a dystopian novel, books were being stamped with “Human Authored” logos at this week’s London Book Fair. The Society of Authors described its labelling scheme as “an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace”.

Visitors to the fair were also being given copies of Don’t Steal This Book, an anthology of about 10,000 writers including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Malorie Blackman, Jeanette Winterson and Richard Osman, in which the pages are completely blank. The back cover states: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.” The message is clear: writers have had enough.

The fair comes the week before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an “opt-out” policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by...

A House of Lords report published last week lays out two possible futures: one in which the UK “becomes a world-leading home for responsible, legalised artificial intelligence (AI) development” and another in which it continues “to drift towards tacit acceptance of large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content”. One scenario protects UK artists, the other benefits global tech companies. To avoid a world of empty content, the choice is clear."

Anthropic-Pentagon battle shows how big tech has reversed course on AI and war; The Guardian, March 13, 2026

Nick Robins-Early , The Guardian; Anthropic-Pentagon battle shows how big tech has reversed course on AI and war

"The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war – and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley’s rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech’s answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago."

Why I’m Suing Grammarly; The New York Times, March 13, 2026

Julia Angwin, The New York Times ; Why I’m Suing Grammarly

"Like all writers, I live by my wits. My ability to earn a living rests on my ability to craft a phrase, to synthesize an idea, to make readers care about people and places they can only access through words on a page. Grammarly hadn’t checked with me before using my name. I only learned that an A.I. company was selling a deepfake of my mind from an article online.

And it wasn’t just me. Superhuman — the parent company of Grammarly — made fake editor versions of a range of people, including the novelist Stephen King, the late feminist author bell hooks, the former Microsoft chief privacy officer Julie Brill, the University of Virginia data science professor Mar Hicks and the journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher.

At this point in a story about A.I. exploitation, I would normally bemoan the need for new laws to tackle the novel harms of a new technology. But in this case, there is an old law that’s able to do the job.

In my home state of New York, the century-old right of publicity law prohibits a person’s name or image from being used for commercial purposes without her consent. At least 25 states have similar publicity statutes. And now, I’m using this law to fight back. I am the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Superhuman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that it violated New York and California publicity laws by not seeking consent before using our names in a paid service...

In this global crisis of consent, we must grab hold of the few anchors we have for enforcement. The right of publicity is one of them, but it needs to be strengthened into a federal law — not just a patchwork of state laws. In some states, it applies only to advertising; in others, to all types of commercial uses. In some, it only covers celebrities; in others, it applies to everyone...

Denmark has taken a novel approach: proposing an amendment to copyright laws that would allow people to copyright their bodies, facial features and voices to protect against A.I. deepfakes. I’d be happy to copyright myself — as copyright seems to be the only law that is regularly enforced on the internet these days...

What Grammarly made wasn’t a doppelgänger. As the writer Ingrid Burrington wrote on Bluesky, it was a sloppelgänger — A.I. slop masquerading as a person.

And it must be stopped."

What Was Grammarly Thinking?; The Atlantic, March 12, 2026

Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic ; What Was Grammarly Thinking?

A short-lived AI tool promised to help users write like the greats—and a bunch of other random people, including me.

"But in the age of generative AI, there are many new kinds of copying. For instance, Wired reported last week on a tool offered by Grammarly, which briefly offered users the opportunity to put their writing through something called “Expert Review.” This produced AI-generated advice purportedly from the perspective of a bunch of famous authors, a bunch of less-famous working journalists (including myself, per The Verge’s reporting), and a bunch of academics (including some who had recently died).

I say “briefly” because the company deactivated the feature today. A lot of people got really mad about it because none of the experts had agreed for their work to be used in such a way, or to serve as uncompensated marketing for an app that people use to help them write more legible emails. “We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this,” the company’s CEO, Shishir Mehrotra, wrote on his LinkedIn page yesterday. Not long after, Wired reported that one of the journalists whose name had been used in the feature, Julia Angwin, was filing a class-action lawsuit against Grammarly’s owner, Superhuman Platform. In a statement forwarded by a spokesperson, Mehrotra repeated apologies made in his LinkedIn post and added, "We have reviewed the lawsuit, and we believe the legal claims are without merit and will strongly defend against them.”...

Now that I’ve looked more closely at this not-very-useful feature, and now that it’s shut down, the whole situation seems a little absurd. This was just a weird and inappropriate thing that a company tried to do to make money without putting in very much effort. The primary reason it became a news story at all was that it touched on widespread anxiety about whose work is worth what, whose skills will continue to be marketable in the age of AI, and whether any of us are really as complex, singular, and impossible-to-imitate as we might hope we are."

Former NFL players decry White House video mixing big hits, airstrikes; The Washington Post, March 12, 2026

 Robert Klemko, The Washington Post; Former NFL players decry White House video mixing big hits, airstrikes

"The football montage, which was still online as of Thursday morning and by that time had collected over 10 million views on X, was met with criticism from members of the college and pro football community, not simply for the comparison of war and sport, but for the NFL’s and other rightsholders’ failure to object to the use of the images."

Leveling Up or Losing Rights? Copyright Challenges of AI-Generated Content in Gaming; The National Law Review, March 12, 2026

Nichole Hayden, Zahra Asadi, Nelson Mullins  - Idea Exchange - Insights, The National Law Review; Leveling Up or Losing Rights? Copyright Challenges of AI-Generated Content in Gaming

"Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the regulated gaming ecosystem. From electronic slot machines and casino games to online sportsbooks and betting platforms, AI is now used to assist with everything from game themes and visual design to user interfaces and marketing content. While these tools promise efficiency and faster development cycles, they also raise an important legal question for gaming companies: when AI is involved in creating game content, who actually owns the result?"

OpenAI sued for practicing law without a license; ABA Journal, March 6, 2026

AMANDA ROBERT , ABA Journal; OpenAI sued for practicing law without a license

"OpenAI has been accused of practicing law without a license in a lawsuit brought by Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America. 

According to the insurer’s complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in the Northern District of Illinois, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT pushed a woman seeking disability benefits to breach a settlement agreement and file dozens of motions that “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose.”"

Autonomous AI Agents Have an Ethics Problem; Undark, March 5, 2026

ADAM SCHIAVI, Undark; Autonomous AI Agents Have an Ethics Problem

AI-powered digital assistants can do many complex tasks on their own. But who takes responsibility when they cause harm?

"As a bioethicist and specialist in neurointensive care, I deal directly with human moral agency and the essence of personhood when treating patients. As a researcher, I study the use of synthetic personas animating AI agents and their use as stand-ins of human counterparts. Here is the problem that I see: Granting AI personhood, even in limited capacity, risks formalizing the most dangerous escape hatch of the agentic era — what I will call responsibility laundering. This allows us to say, “It wasn’t me. The agent/bot/system did it.”

Personhood should not be about metaphysics or claims about an inner nature. It is a legal and ethical instrument that allocates rights and accountability. It is a social technology for assigning standing, duties, and limits on what can be done to an entity. If we grant personhood to systems that can act persuasively in public while remaining functionally unaccountable, we create a new class of actors whose harms are everyone’s problem but nobody’s fault.

There is a key concept here that we can use from my field, medicine. In clinical ethics, some decisions are justified yet still leave a “moral residue,” a kind of emotional echo or sense of responsibility that persists after the action because no options fully satisfy competing obligations. This residue accumulates over time, causing a “crescendo effect” that occurs even when conscientious clinicians are doing their best inside imperfect systems. That remainder matters because it reveals something basic about moral life, namely that ethics is not only about choosing; it is about owning what remains afterwards."