Authors Guild Addresses Publishers’ AI Use; Publishers Weekly, April 21, 2026

Sam Spratford , Publishers Weekly; Authors Guild Addresses Publishers’ AI Use

"The Authors Guild has released a statement criticizing publishing professionals’ use of AI tools following a report first published in the Bookseller that some editors have been uploading authors’ personal information, including manuscripts, into consumer-facing LLMs like ChatGPT.

“Uploading or inputting a copyrighted work or an author’s personal information into AI systems without permission may constitute a violation of the author’s copyright or right of privacy, and it puts the author’s intellectual property and personal information at risk,” the statement read. “Editors, agents, and others in the industry who have access to authors’ works should not upload any manuscript to or otherwise prompt consumer-facing chatbots with any author’s works without first getting the author’s written permission.”"

Flu vaccine requirement discarded ‘effective immediately,’ Hegseth says; Military Times, April 21, 2026

Patricia Kime, Military Times ; Flu vaccine requirement discarded ‘effective immediately,’ Hegseth says

"The U.S. military will no longer require service members to get an annual flu shot according to a post Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the social media platform X. 

Hegseth said the mandatory flu vaccine requirement has been discarded “effective immediately.”

“The War Department is once again restoring freedom to our Joint Force,” the secretary wrote. 

The flu vaccine has been required annually for U.S. military personnel since the 1950s to preserve the health of the force, and generally, the Defense Department has aimed to inoculate more than 90% of active-duty personnel. 

The program has been a major factor in lower rates of hospitalizations among service members than national U.S. rates, according to an October 2025 Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division report."

F.B.I. Said to Have Investigated Times Reporter After Article on Patel’s Girlfriend; The New York Times, April 22, 2026

Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times; F.B.I. Said to Have Investigated Times Reporter After Article on Patel’s Girlfriend

The bureau said it is not pursuing a case, but the scrutiny is an example of the Trump administration weighing whether to criminalize routine news gathering.

"The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.

Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter."

The Pentagon released its UFO videos – so I went to the US to chase aliens. This is what I found; The Guardian, April 22, 2026

Daniel Lavelle , The Guardian; The Pentagon released its UFO videos – so I went to the US to chase aliens. This is what I found

"Unique things exist. Maybe human beings are among them. Maybe we are truly alone, but even if we’re not, we should start acting as though we are. Perhaps divine wisdom isn’t going to descend from the heavens and shepherd us towards nirvana. Maybe this is it. If so, we are all we have – and we should look after each other."

A.I. ‘Hallucinations’ Created Errors in Court Filing, Top Law Firm Says; The New York Times, April 21, 2026

 Santul Nerkar, The New York Times; A.I. ‘Hallucinations’ Created Errors in Court Filing, Top Law Firm Says

Sullivan & Cromwell apologized for submitting a court document that had fake citations created by artificial intelligence.

"An elite Wall Street law firm has apologized to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence, including “hallucinations” that fabricated case citations.

The A.I.-generated errors came in a recent motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan and were discovered by lawyers from an opposing firm, Andrew Dietderich, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, wrote in a letter to Judge Martin Glenn on April 18."

Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era; The New York Times, April 22, 2026

  Meaghan Tobin, The New York Times; Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era

Artificial intelligence tools are making it faster than ever to reproduce creative work. Does copyright even matter anymore?

"Sigrid Jin was waiting to board a plane when he saw stunning news that artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic had accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code, its popular A.I. agent. Mr. Jin, 25, an undergraduate student, scrambled to post a copy online. His worried girlfriend quickly texted him: Was he violating copyright law?

Mr. Jin turned to a team of A.I. assistants for a solution. He directed them to rewrite the leaked code in another programming language, then shared that version online. Within hours, more than 100,000 people had liked or linked to it.

Anthropic, one of the leading A.I. companies alongside OpenAI, has said the leak had been caused by human error and, citing copyright violations, demanded that GitHub, an online library of computer code, remove posts sharing the code. Thousands of posts were taken down. But Mr. Jin’s version remains online. He said Anthropic had not asked him to take it down.

It is unclear whether Anthropic, which did not respond to questions from The New York Times, is drawing a distinction with the rewritten code. Mr. Jin said he believed rewriting the code transformed it into a new work, one that Anthropic could not claim ownership over.

He said he was driven less by money or fame than by a desire to make a broader philosophical point. What is the value of copyrighted intellectual property in an era when A.I. can easily replicate not just computer code but art, music and literature in minutes?

“I just wanted to raise some ethical questions in the A.I. agent era,” he said. “Any creative work can be reproduced in a second.”"

When AI advice enters a murder case; Politico, April 22, 2026

 Aaron Man, Politico; When AI advice enters a murder case

"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI on Tuesday following a mass shooting at Florida State University that resulted in two deaths last year. The attorney general stated during a press conference that ChatGPT “offered significant advice” to the suspected gunman, Phoenix Ikner, based on a preliminary review by prosecutors.

“If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said.

The prospect of OpenAI facing criminal liability raises new questions about whether developers should be held responsible for a chatbot’s potential role in such a tragedy.

Legal scholars told DFD that, compared with prior civil cases, imposing criminal liability on the company would be a much steeper uphill battle. A key challenge, according to them, would be proving OpenAI acted with criminal intent."

Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations; Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, April 20, 2026

Ann Skeet , Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations

"Notably, what Meta did not say after the verdict was that it was sorry for the harms children experienced."

Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer?; The New York Times, April 20, 2026

David DeSteno, The New York Times; Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer?

"In a public statement of its intentions for its Claude chatbot, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic has said that it wants Claude to be “a genuinely good, wise and virtuous agent.” The company raised the moral stakes this month, when it announced that its latest A.I. model, Claude Mythos Preview, poses too great a cybersecurity threat to be widely released. Behind the scenes, Anthropic has been trying to shore up the ethical foundations of its products, working with a Catholic priest and consulting with other prominent Christians to help foster Claude’s moral and spiritual development.

Anthropic’s intentions are admirable, but the project of drawing on religion to cultivate the ethical behavior of Claude (or any other chatbot) is likely to fail. Not because there isn’t moral wisdom in Scripture, sermons and theological treatises — texts that Claude has undoubtedly already scraped from the web and integrated — but because Claude is missing a crucial mechanism by which religion fosters moral growth: a body."

The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars; The New York Times, April 21, 2026

 Benjamin Mullin and Elizabeth Williamson, The New York Times; The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars 

"When Infowars, the website founded by the right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.

That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.

On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Guerra Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”

YouTube Opens Up AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood (Exclusive); The Hollywood Reporter, April 21, 2026

 Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter ; YouTube Opens Up AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood (Exclusive)

The tool, which requires a celebrity to upload their likeness, will flag potentially infringing content — like, say, a star playing a role in fan-generated movie — for a possible takedown.

"Executives at the Google-owned platform tell The Hollywood Reporter that their proprietary deepfake detection tool, years in the making, is now open to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused: Actors, athletes, creators and musicians, whether they have a YouTube channel or not, can sign up to identify and request removal of deepfakes on its platform...

The timing of the tool’s expansion comes as the industry grapples with the continued growth of deepfakes across platforms, and with video models quickly turning hypothetical worst-case scenarios into reality for many stars."

Church of Jesus Christ files trademark complaint against podcaster for alleged imitation of brands; DeseretNews, April 19, 2026

 Tad Walch, DeseretNews; Church of Jesus Christ files trademark complaint against podcaster for alleged imitation of brands

"A trademark dispute is headed to the courts after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and podcaster John Dehlin failed to reach a solution after five months of negotiations.

The church and its intellectual property entity, Intellectual Reserve Inc., filed a trademark and copyright complaint in federal court Friday that names Dehlin and his Open Stories Foundation.

The lawsuit claims Dehlin willfully and knowingly created confusion by using logos and marks similar to the church’s and by using copyrighted church photographs. 

Dehlin is the founder and host of the podcast “Mormon Stories.” He was excommunicated from the church in 2015."

Democrat Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida resigns before the House can sanction her in ethics case; AP, April 21, 2026

KEVIN FREKING AND STEPHEN GROVES, AP; Democrat Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida resigns before the House can sanction her in ethics case

" Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida resigned Tuesday moments before a hearing was to begin to consider what punishment to recommend after a House ethics panel found she had committed numerous campaign finance and reporting violations.

The congresswoman was facing the possible threat of expulsion, something that has only occurred six times in the history of the House. Support from her own party was increasingly in doubt. 

It’s the third resignation in a little more than a week from a House lawmaker. Reps. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, and Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, announced within hours of each other that they were leaving Congress. Both men were facing sexual misconduct allegations and possible expulsion."

Churchill Downs strikes $85m deal for Preakness intellectual property rights; The Guardian, April 21, 2026

 Bryan Armen Graham , The Guardian; Churchill Downs strikes $85m deal for Preakness intellectual property rights

"Churchill Downs has reached a deal to acquire the intellectual property rights to the Preakness Stakes, the company announced Tuesday, in a move that brings one of US thoroughbred racing’s most celebrated events under the same corporate umbrella as the Kentucky Derby.

Churchill Downs Inc said it will pay $85m to buy the trademarks and associated rights to the Preakness and the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes from 1/ST Maryland LLC, an affiliate of 1/ST Racing.

The agreement covers the intellectual property tied to the races, not the events themselves. Under a separate licensing arrangement, Churchill Downs will grant the state of Maryland the rights needed to continue staging the races in exchange for an annual fee.

The transaction follows a 2024 agreement in which Maryland bought Pimlico Race Course from 1/ST Racing but allowed the company to retain the intellectual property rights to the Preakness and Black-Eyed Susan Stakes. Under that arrangement, 1/ST received annual payments and a share of wagering revenue tied to the races.

The Preakness Stakes, first run in 1873, is the second leg of US horse racing’s Triple Crown, held two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and followed by the Belmont Stakes. The Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, a major race for three-year-old fillies, is traditionally run the day before the Preakness at Pimlico Race Course in northwest Baltimore."

A Conversation You’ve Been Putting Off?; The Fulcrum, April 14, 2026

 Joan Blades, Ken Futernick, The Fulcrum; A Conversation You’ve Been Putting Off?

What a divided congregation did together is something anyone can try.

"The Episcopal church in Placerville, California, is not an obvious candidate for political harmony. Its congregation is roughly half conservative and half progressive — a split that, over the past decade, has torn apart faith communities across the country. But this one held together through the pandemic. Through two bruising election cycles and everything else, the congregation’s priest, Debra Sabino, managed to keep their core values front and center. And recently, its members decided they wanted to do more.

Start With What Everyone Already Agrees On

Ken Futernick, co-lead of Bridging Divides El Dorado, was asked to facilitate an event after a recent Sunday service. He began with a simple exercise. He asked people to think about the most important things in their lives — and then to tell the person next to them where their relationships with friends and family ranked on that list.

Almost universally, relationships came out on top. Then Ken drew the obvious conclusion out loud: “If that’s true for all of us, then it would seem to follow that we would want to avoid doing anything that would harm those relationships – like painfully unpleasant conversations about politics that sometimes lead to estrangement.”

He acknowledged the most common solution: just avoid the hard topics entirely. “That’s a rational choice,” he said. “I’ve done it myself.” But he was there to offer something else: a way to have the conversation that actually strengthens the relationship, by approaching it through curiosity rather than argument.

Come to these conversations to understand, not to persuade. That’s the idea behind Living Room Conversations, a format that brings small groups of people together — four to six, typically — across lines of difference, and gives them a structure for actually hearing each other. It has been used in thousands of settings. Ken’s workshop went on to explore how the same approach could extend beyond a formal Living Room Conversation into the everyday conversations people have been putting off."

Japanese Man Sentenced For Posting ‘Godzilla’ Spoilers Online; Gizmodo, April 21, 2026

 JAMES WHITBROOK , Gizmodo; Japanese Man Sentenced For Posting ‘Godzilla’ Spoilers Online

39-year-old Wataru Takeuchi was charged for posting plot descriptions of movies and anime series so detailed that a Tokyo court declared them copyright infringement.

"Last week, Asahi (via The Verge) reported that the Tokyo District Court sentenced Wataru Takeuchi to a year and a half in prison, as well as a 1 million yen (roughly $6,300) fine, for running foul of Japan’s copyright laws. Takeuchi was the administrator of an entertainment site littered with articles (and, perhaps most crucially, monetized ad displays, from which Takeuchi made almost a quarter of a million dollars in 2023) that went into great length and spoiler-filled detail to summarize the plots of popular shows and movies."

A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality; The New York Times, April 17, 2026

M. GESSEN, The New York Times; A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality 

"At the conference I met Rebecca Hamilton, a cheerful war-crimes lawyer who is now a law professor at American University in Washington. Corporate complicity is her area of study. In a 2022 law review article titled “Platform-Enabled Crimes,” she wrote that Facebook (now Meta) could have acted to help prevent the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar in 2017 but that it had chosen not to. The decision not to act, Hamilton wrote, had been driven by both the profit motive and a lack of interest in local context. Now Hamilton is working on a book on corporate enablers of atrocity crime. “Securing profit isn’t some abstraction achieved in pristine boardrooms in capital cities,” she wrote in an email to me on Monday after the Lafarge verdict, which had made her, too, very happy. “It is a process that plays out in real locations, with real people, including those living through conflict.”"

Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears; The Guardian, April 21, 2026

Aisha Down and Robert Booth, The Guardian ; Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears

Alarm caused by posts of Alex Karp, tech firm’s CEO, championing US military dominance and of AI weapons

"The US spy tech company Palantir published a manifesto extolling the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others – in what MPs have called “a parody of a RoboCop film” and “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

“Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” wrote Palantir in a 22-point post on X over the weekend, which also called for an end to the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan...

The pronouncement is the most recent of a number of high-profile statements from Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, which appear to indicate that Karp views himself as not simply the head of a software company, but a pundit with important insights into the future of civilisation."...

In an interview with CNBC in early March, Karp suggested that AI would “disrupt” the power of “highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat”,and instead empower “vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters”."

Repression of Uyghurs persists as the world moves on; Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), April 19, 2026

 Yalkun Uluyol, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC); Repression of Uyghurs persists as the world moves on

"Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, is participating in a panel discussion of the ethical and legal dilemmas at the heart of international human rights, The Attention Economy of Suffering, presented by The Ethics Centre in partnership with Human Rights Watch, on Tuesday, 21 April 2026.

Dozens of my family members, including my father, Memet Yaqup, have disappeared into China’s system of mass incarceration over the past decade simply for being Uyghurs. When international attention to our plight surged — through joint statements at the United Nations, extensive media coverage, national parliaments recognising atrocity crimes — I believed there would be enough pressure to secure the release of my loved ones. 

Yet, eight years into my father’s enforced disappearance, I still have no information about his whereabouts, health or the allegations that led to his imprisonment. Meanwhile, the world’s attention has moved on.

My father is one of the hundreds of thousands who since 2016 have suffered the Chinese government’s grave human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims to mass arbitrary detention, unjust imprisonments, intrusive surveillance and forced labour.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded in a landmark 2022 report that the Chinese government may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. That acknowledgement marked a rare moment when the Uyghur people appeared to have the world’s attention. Yet even then, China’s global influence was on full display. 

Efforts by a group of countries who tried to place Xinjiang on the formal agenda of the UN Human Rights Council were narrowly defeated after heavy pressure from Beijing. What happened read like a page taken from the Beijing playbook: intimidation of critics, the cultivation and mobilisation of allies, and a steady erosion of momentum for such criticism.

In Xinjiang, the Chinese government weaponises information about people’s everyday lives — lawful and peaceful behaviours — and uses it against them. The authorities have put mass surveillance tools in place, including one called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, to track everyone, their movements, contacts, phone use and contents, vehicle location and interaction with people abroad."

Anthropic Settlement Hearing Comes into Focus; Publishers Weekly, April 20, 2026

 Jim Milliot , Publishers Weekly ; Anthropic Settlement Hearing Comes into Focus

"With the May 14 Bartz v. Anthropic settlement fairness hearing drawing closer, both the Authors Guild and Authors Alliance have issued updates on where the $1.5 billion copyright infringement agreement stands....

The Guild noted that with the higher claim rate, the payout per work will be closer to the $3,000 per work estimated in the lawsuit rather than the $4,876 payout that was based on the number of works claimed in March...

The Authors Alliance update focused on the various objections that have been made about the settlement and which are likely to be raised in the settlement hearing. The objections were unsealed following a motion filed by professor Lea Victoria Bishop.

Among the objections are the claims that the distribution plan systematically favors publishers over authors; that the class notice was “misleading/coercive,” since statutory damages per infringement can technically be up to $150,000/work which would make the settlement amount per work is inadequate; and that the settlement sets a “dangerous precedent” by permitting “a multi-billion dollar AI company to ‘buy’ its way out of massive piracy for a ‘discounted’ rate.”

Judge Martínez-Olguín, who took over the case following the retirement of Judge William Alsup, will oversee the May 14 hearing set for 2 p.m. in the San Francisco Federal Courthouse. A Zoom link will be available for those who cannot make the trip to San Francisco."

Even Without Internet Access, Prisoners Are Trying to Benefit From A.I.; The New York Times, April 21, 2026

Evan Gorelick

Photographs by Alex Kent

, The New York Times; Even Without Internet Access, Prisoners Are Trying to Benefit From A.I.

"Prisons have long restricted inmates’ access to technology, concerned they could use it to break the rules or commit crimes. The internet is mostly off limits, along with A.I.-powered chatbots.

But as hype about the technology has infiltrated prison yards and cellblocks, many inmates are eager to try it out. They’re attending workshops and classes to learn about A.I. They ask friends to send printouts of chatbot answers by snail mail. Some inmates even use contraband cellphones to gain access to the technology.

The result? A.I.-generated legal documents, essays, business plans and even a bespoke board game or two."

Is a chatbot your doctor? Proceed with caution; The Washington Post, April 21, 2026

 Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post; Is a chatbot your doctor? Proceed with caution

"Millions of Americans regularly use AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini as a first stop for health questions related to colds, cancer and beyond. Two studies published this month suggest that may not be such a good idea — at least without a lot of skepticism.

Tiller, a research associate at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, published his study in BMJ Open. A separate team from Mass General Brigham approached the question in an entirely different way, and the study appeared in JAMA Network Open."

AI chatbots could be making you stupider; BBC, April 20, 2026

Melissa Hogenboom, BBC; AI chatbots could be making you stupider

"The concern that researchers like Kosmyna have is that if we become too reliant on AI, it could affect the language we use and even our ability to do basic cognitive tasks. There is now a growing body of research suggesting that this "cognitive offloading" to AI can have a corrosive effect on our mental abilities. The consequences could be alarming and may even contribute to cognitive decline.

It's well known that the tools we use can change how we think. With the advent of the internet for instance, tasks that once required deep research could be found by plugging a simple query into a search box. As the use of search engines increased, research found we became less likely to remember details, something dubbed "the Google effect". (Some argue, however, the internet also serves as an external memory system that frees up our brain to do other tasks.)

But there is now growing alarm that as we offload even more of our thinking to LLMs and other forms of AI, the effects on our memories and ability to solve problems could get worse. Artificial intelligence tools can write convincing poetry, give financial advice and provide companionship. Students are increasingly outsourcing their own work to AI tools as well.

Studies have already shown that young people might be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects that using AI can have on key cognitive skills like critical thinking."

Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers; TechCrunch, April 15, 2026

Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch ; Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers

"After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media firm Gawker, Aron D’Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system: People who felt harmed by coverage had little recourse to fight back.

His solution is software. D’Souza says his latest startup, Objection, aims to use AI to adjudicate the truth of journalism. And for the price of $2,000, anyone can pay to challenge a story, triggering a public investigation into its claims. (D’Souza is also the founder of the Enhanced Games, an Olympics-style competition that allows performance-enhancing drugs and is set to debut in Las Vegas next month.)

Objection launched on Wednesday with “multiple millions” in seed funding from Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as VC firms Social Impact Capital and Off Piste Capital. 

Thiel, who funded the Gawker lawsuit partly in defense of the individual right to privacy, has long been critical of the media. D’Souza says his goal is to restore trust in the Fourth Estate, which he argues has collapsed over decades. Critics, including media lawyers, warn Objection could make it harder to publish the kind of reporting that holds powerful institutions to account, particularly if that reporting relies on confidential sources."

Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live; Forbes, April 20, 2026

Zak Doffman, Forbes; Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live

"Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation. That means Gemini seeing who you know and what you do. You likely have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos. They’re all exposed if you update.

We’re talking Personal Intelligence, Google’s latest AI upgrade path which lets users opt-in to connecting Google apps to Gemini...

This is the latest iteration in the ongoing battle between convenience and privacy playing out on our phones and computers."

Maryland passes legislation banning retailers from using personal data to set prices. Does it do enough?; WAMU, April 17, 2026

Esther Ciammichilli, Jackson Sinnenberg, WAMU; Maryland passes legislation banning retailers from using personal data to set prices. Does it do enough?

"The Maryland General Assembly passed a bill this week will prohibit food retailers from changing the price of their products – in real time – depending on who is buying them. The practice is called dynamic pricing. 

The new legislation is expected to be signed into law by Governor Wes Moore, who introduced it with leaders in the General Assembly. It will specifically prohibit retailers from using personal protected data to set prices for individual customers. This kind of data includes biometric information like ethnicity, sex, and gender identity...

What made Governor Wes Moore and the assembly leadership want to tackle dynamic pricing during this session?

Well, I think we’ve seen over the last several years this sort of catch up that we’re doing. Technology is moving so fast and the tech companies are finding more and more ways to exploit, really, the data, the algorithms, what they know about us in ways that are really harmful to consumers.

Over the last few years we’ve had several bills that are about protecting biodynamics, protecting consumer privacy, protecting the use of data without people’s permission. I think over the last year we saw a new way that these tech companies and these large corporations are finding ways to combine data brokers, private personal data, in a way that’s really harmful to consumers, in a way that really exploits consumers. And so this year, this is what we tackled.

During the final debate over the bill last week, you said, “One of the largest corporations in the world is announcing to their shareholders technology which they will patent to be able to adjust prices based on personal data.” Can you elaborate on the details of that announcement?

Yeah, so, you know, Walmart is …  they’re not going to have paper tags on their grocery stores anymore on there for for their prices. They’re gonna have these little screens that can change immediately. Digital screens to price your milk and your eggs and flour and and whatever else.

But what this technology allows them to do ultimately is to figure out who’s standing in front of that screen and change the price based on who you are. And that’s really the thing that we’re trying to get ahead of with this legislation."