I’m a Doctor. Here’s What A.I. Cannot Do.; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

Danielle Ofri, The New York Times; I’m a Doctor. Here’s What A.I. Cannot Do.

"There’s an ocean of distance between the “patient” that A.I. is analyzing and the patient that the human doctor or nurse is assessing."

Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright; The Guardian, May 11, 2026

 Kim Willsher, The Guardian; Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright

"Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.

Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.

L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.

The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.

While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat).

A group of researchers at the Sorbonne worked on the project, called Molière Ex Machina, for two and a half years. The team included a three-person group of artists and researchers called Obvious."

Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw; The New York Times, May 11, 2026

Dustin Volz, The New York Times ; Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw

"A criminal hacking group recently attempted to launch a widespread cyberattack that appeared to rely on artificial intelligence to detect a previously unknown bug, Google said in research published Monday, highlighting the potential threat that A.I. poses to digital security.

Security experts have feared for years that malicious hackers could eventually rely on A.I. models to identify undisclosed flaws in computer code to launch crippling attacks that are difficult to guard against. That fear was largely theoretical until now.

“We have high confidence that the actor likely leveraged an A.I. model to support the discovery and weaponization of this vulnerability,” the report said.

The tech giant did not say precisely when the thwarted attack happened, whom it was targeting or which A.I. platform the hackers used, but the company added that it did not believe it was its own Gemini chatbot."

This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage; The New York Times, May 9, 2026

 Visuals and Text by Ruth Fremson, The New York Times; This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage

"Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore Textual Apothecary (its name painted on the sides and back of the van) is a vehicle for the cross-pollination of people and conversation. That’s what has evolved since Collins, now 74, began imagining her retirement dream more than a decade ago — not just selling high quality, inexpensive books, but setting her love of people, places and the wonders of a good read all in motion together."

They Were Promised New Septic Tanks. Trump Called It ‘Illegal DEI.’, May 11, 2026

 Bernard Mokam, The New York Times ; They Were Promised New Septic Tanks. Trump Called It ‘Illegal DEI.’

The Justice Department ended a deal that had helped fund a solution to the sewage crisis in rural Alabama. “Almost like we are starting all over again,” one activist said.

"It is a plight that has long plagued residents across Alabama’s Black Belt, a stretch of largely rural counties so named for its dark soil and history of slavery. Cotton flourished in the region for the same reasons that conventional septic tanks fail there: The soil is dense and holds onto water. Today there are more than 50,000 people in the region who pipe raw sewage into open trenches and pits.

Now, a seeming solution to the public health problem has been stymied by an unlikely force: the Trump administration’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Three years ago, the Biden administration concluded in its first-ever environmental justice investigation that Alabama officials had failed to adequately address the sanitation crisis disproportionately affecting the Black residents of Lowndes County. The state agreed to an interim agreement that unlocked millions of dollars in federal funding to provide homeowners with septic tanks that could handle the difficult soil.

But soon after President Trump returned to office last year, the Justice Department ended the settlement, calling it “illegal DEI.”

The administration also scuttled a separate $14 million E.P.A. grant that had been earmarked to install new systems and provide work force training across Lowndes, Hale and Wilcox Counties.

Community activists fear the region may be doomed to enduring wastewater challenges forever."

Shein accuses Temu of copyright infringement on 'industrial scale'; Quartz, May 11, 2026

 Colleen Cabili , Quarz; Shein accuses Temu of copyright infringement on 'industrial scale'

"Shein accused rival Temu of copyright infringement "on an industrial scale" as a two-week trial opened Monday at London's High Court, with Temu firing back that the lawsuit was designed to stifle competition rather than protect intellectual property."

Sean Duffy Slammed Over Road Trip Reality Show Filmed Over Seven Months; Forbes, May 10, 2026

Zachary Folk , Forbes; Sean Duffy Slammed Over Road Trip Reality Show Filmed Over Seven Months

"Speaking to “Fox and Friends” on Friday, Duffy, a former reality television star of MTV’s “The Real World” and “Road Rules: All Stars,” said he spent the last seven months intermittently filming a road trip reality television show with his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy.

The trip with some of their nine children is “a civic experience” to highlight destinations across the U.S. as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration, according to Duffy, who encouraged Americans to “gas up the car, pack up the kids, get behind the wheel and get out and see America.”

Duffy’s announcement was quickly met with criticism from Democrats and other online commentators—with Duffy’s predecessor Pete Buttigieg calling the show“ brutally out of touch” due to rising gas prices caused by disruptions in the oil market from the Trump administration’s war in Iran.

In response, Duffy insisted the program was funded by the Great American Road Trip nonprofit organization and that “zero taxpayer dollars were spent on my family.”

Duffy and Campos-Duffy, also a former “Real World” and “Road Rules” cast member, said the program was filmed in “short” production windows like weekends and their childrens’ breaks from school, and that their family would not receive a salary or royalties from the show."

Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million for allegedly using her image to sell TVs; Reuters, May 11, 2026

 Rhea Rose Abraham , Reuters; Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million for allegedly using her image to sell TVs

"British pop star ‌Dua Lipa has filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics seeking at least $15 million in damages, accusing the South Korean tech giant of using her image without permission to market its television sets.

The lawsuit ​alleges that Samsung featured a copyrighted image of the pop star on ​the front of cardboard boxes containing televisions for retail sale, enabling the company ⁠to benefit from what seemed like her endorsement of the product."

Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance; The Guardian, May 11, 2026

Nazrul Islam , The Guardian; Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance

"The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control.

The debate about artificial intelligence and how it will affect workers is stuck in the wrong place. On one side are warnings that machines are coming for millions of jobs. On the other are claims that AI will turbocharge productivity. Both stories miss what is already happening in workplaces across the world, from Britain to Kenya to the United States.

For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. These are often people in better-paid, higher-autonomy roles: analysts, consultants, lawyers, academics, managers. In these jobs, provided AI is being rolled out to augment workers rather than replace them, it can feel like a copilot. It can support human judgment, speed up routine tasks and create space for more creative thinking.

For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. It is a boss.

It appears in scheduling and monitoring tools, route optimisation software and automated performance dashboards – all systems that decide who gets what shift, how long a task should take and whether someone is performing at their maximum capacity. In these workplaces, AI is not something you use. It is something that watches and rules you.

That is the new divide we should all be paying attention to."

Sony’s failed war against Internet piracy may doom other copyright lawsuits; Ars Technica, May 11, 2026

 JON BRODKIN, Ars Technica ; Sony’s failed war against Internet piracy may doom other copyright lawsuits

"Sony and other major record labels recently suffered a thorough defeat at the Supreme Court in their attempt to make Internet service providers pay huge financial penalties for their customers’ copyright infringement. Sony’s loss is certain to have wide-ranging effects on copyright lawsuits, offering protection for ISPs, their customers, and potentially other technology companies whose services can be used for both legal and illegal purposes.

In Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court ruled that cable Internet firm Cox is not liable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when its customers use their broadband connections to download or upload pirated materials."

A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready.; The New York Times, May 8, 2026

 David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times ; A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready. Silicon Valley oligarchs worried about the risks their technology posed to the world. They forgot about people.

"In one sense, the vision peddled by A.I. companies is remarkably depersonalized: We hand more and more responsibility and judgment off to superintelligent black boxes, which rapidly begin shaping the course of the human future with decisions that remain illegible to the rest of us, including their designers. “People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own A.I. creations work,” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei wrote last year. “They are right to be concerned: This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”

In another sense, and in the meantime, A.I. represents perhaps the most personalized sales pitch ever foisted on the passive American consumer — a vision of a near-total takeover of the country’s economic, social and cognitive lives by tools engineered by just five companies, run by five particular people, several of whom are widely described as sociopaths. The list is so short that you may know most of them by first name: Sam, Dario, Elon and Mark. (Demis Hassabis, who runs Google’s DeepMind, is perhaps less famous.)

These men are all already billionaires, or close to it, and on their current trajectories their wealth and influence look set to expand exponentially as, around them, anti-elitism multiplies, too. Perhaps this is one reason 50 percent of Americans told the Pew Research Center last year they were more concerned than excited about what’s to come from A.I. Only 10 percent said they were more excited. That is a yawning gap into which an entire society is being asked to tumble."

Top law schools for intellectual property law; the National Jurist, May 6, 2026

 PreLaw Editors, the National Jurist; Top law schools for intellectual property law

"The following law schools earned a place on our Intellectual Property Law Honor Roll, recognized for the strength of their programs."

Is Your Bot Becoming Your Balm?; Psychology Today, May 10, 2026

 Cornelia C. Walther Ph.D. , Psychology Today; Is Your Bot Becoming Your Balm?

• "Bots become companions through listening, which can secretly worsen loneliness. 
• Over-reliance on AI may reduce genuine human connection and social skill development. 
• AI comfort can damage autonomy; we must choose genuine human engagement."

Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI; AP, May 7, 2026

KRYSTA FAURIA, AP; Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI

"As concerns mount over artificial intelligence and its rapid integration into society, tech companies are increasingly turning to faith leaders for guidance on how to shape the technology — a surprising about-face on Silicon Valley’s longstanding skepticism of organized religion.

Leaders from various religious groups met last week with representatives from companies including Anthropic and OpenAI for the inaugural “Faith-AI Covenant” roundtable in New York to discuss how best to infuse morality and ethics into the fast-developing technology. It was organized by the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities, which seeks to take on issues such as extremism, radicalization and human trafficking. The roundtable is expected to be the first of several around the globe, including in Beijing, Nairobi and Abu Dhabi.

Tech executives need to recognize their power — and their responsibility — to make the right decisions, said Baroness Joanna Shields, a key partner in the initiative. She worked as a tech executive with stints at Google and Facebook before pivoting to British politics.

“Regulation can’t keep up with this,” she said. But the leaders of the world’s religions, with billions of followers globally, have the “expertise of shepherding people’s moral safety,” she reasoned. Faith leaders ought to have a voice, Shields said.

“This dialogue, this direct connection is so important because the people who are building this understand the power and capabilities of what they’re building and they want to do it right — most of them,” she said of AI tech executives.

The goal of this initiative, according to Shields, is an eventual “set of norms or principles” informed by different groups and faiths, from Christians to Sikhs to Buddhists, that companies will abide by...

Present at the meeting were a variety of faith groups, including representatives from the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Baha’i International Community, The Sikh Coalition, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church...

The partnership highlights a growing coalition between faith and tech, born out of an effort to create moral AI — a contested concept which begs questions about whether that is possible and what it means...

“There’s some aspect of PR to it. The slogan was ‘Move fast and break things.’ And they broke too many things and too many people,” said Brian Boyd, the U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute...

But other advocates for AI regulation and safety aren’t so sure these efforts are genuine.

“At best it’s a distraction. At worst it’s diverting attention from things that really matter,” said Rumman Chowdhury, the CEO of the nonprofit Humane Intelligence and the U.S. science envoy for AI under the Biden administration.

Chowdhury says she’s not inclined to believe religion is the best place to help answer questions surrounding AI and ethics, but thinks she understands why companies are increasingly turning to it.

“I think a very naive take that Silicon Valley has had for a couple of years related to generative AI was that we could arrive at some sort of universal principles of ethics,” she said. “They have very quickly realized that that’s just not true. That’s not real. So now they’re looking at maybe religion as a way of dealing with the ambiguity of ethically gray situations.”"

Banned Nonfiction Books Double in Public Schools, Erasing Authentic Stories & Histories; PEN America, May 7, 2026

PEN America; Banned Nonfiction Books Double in Public Schools, Erasing Authentic Stories & Histories

"In its latest report on book bans in public schools, PEN America today documents a doubling of censorship of nonfiction on subjects from history and health to general knowledge, including biographies and memoirs. The targeting of titles about real events or people underscores “an embrace of anti-intellectualism” within the book banning movement, according to the new report Facts & Fiction: Stories Stripped Away By Book Bans.

The report offers detailed analysis of the content of the 3,743 unique titles that were removed from school libraries and classrooms from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. Over this same period, PEN America tracked 6,780 total instances of bans across 23 states.

Twenty-nine percent of the unique titles banned last school year were nonfiction. In addition, approximately 13% of all unique titles fell into the educational/informational genre – texts primarily written for students for reference or learning purposes and covering a range of subjects. Overall, the rise of banned nonfiction and educational titles exposed a new casualty in the campaign to suppress and restrict learning, which goes hand in hand with efforts to undermine public education and librarianship itself, the report states.

“This latest trend shows an embrace of anti-intellectualism, undermining public knowledge by  devaluing education and expertise,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “It is another example of how censorship sweeps broadly, leading to removals of all kinds of books, in its efforts to sow fear and distrust in our public education system.”

As book bans in public schools have exploded since 2021, PEN America, the writers and free expression organization, has documented the crisis nationwide, counting more than 23,000 bans over the period.

The increase in nonfiction bans over 2024-2025 is especially troubling as reading scores and literacy rates decline while the report notes that nonfiction “is the gateway to literacy” and essential for young people to make sense of the world and form their own opinions. Books in this category often deal with personal, artistic, historical, and educational topics – just this month, Utah added the memoir of Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted from the street at age 11 and held for 18 years, to its list of books banned statewide."

Hantavirus misinformation runs rampant as the US is unequipped to respond to infectious disease health scare; The Guardian, May 8, 2026

Melody Schreiber, The Guardian ; Hantavirus misinformation runs rampant as the US is unequipped to respond to infectious disease health scare

The US’s withdrawal from the WHO – and cuts to the country’s health system – stymie officials’ response

"The outbreak of hantavirus on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius illuminates major gaps in the US public health system – a worrying sign for stopping this outbreak quickly and preparing for a potential pandemic of a more widespread pathogen in coming years, experts say.

Passengers and their close contacts are at risk of hantavirus and need to follow public health guidance, but the danger for most people is near zero, officials and scientists say. Experts expect more cases in this outbreak to be identified, but they are emphatic that a hantavirus pandemic is highly unlikely."

Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Star Wars’ Photos; PetaPixel, May 8, 2026

 Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Star Wars’ Photos

"An appeals court has revived Annie Leibovitz’s agency’s copyright lawsuit against an online magazine over its use of her photographs from the Star Wars movie set.

On Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court wrongly dismissed the lawsuit brought by licensing company Great Bowery Inc. against online outlet Consequence Sound LLC based on a lower court’s misunderstanding of copyright law.

The dispute centers on a group of Star Wars cast photographs taken by Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. In 2014, Leibovitz signed an “Artist Agreement” with Trunk Archive, a business operated by Great Bowery, granting the company the “exclusive worldwide right to license, market, and promote” certain images from the shoot."

A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back; Fortune, May 6, 2026

Sharon Goldman, Fortune; A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back

ABC Accuses Government of Violating First Amendment; The New York Times, May 8, 2026

Jim Rutenberg and John Koblin , The New York Times; ABC Accuses Government of Violating First Amendment

The network’s argument, made to the F.C.C., is the most aggressive posture taken yet by a television network toward the Trump administration.

"ABC has accused the Federal Communications Commission of violating its free speech rights, potentially setting the stage for a protracted, high-stakes legal battle between the network and the Trump administration.

The company said in a filing with the agency that regulators had a “chilling effect” on free speech by trying to punish political content they disagreed with. The filing, made public on Friday, is the most aggressive defense from any television network since President Trump kicked off an extended campaign last year to bring media organizations to heel.

It represented a striking departure for ABC. The network, under the corporate stewardship of the Walt Disney Company, set an early tone of compliance toward Mr. Trump when it settled a defamation lawsuit with him for $15 million in December 2024. Many legal experts considered Mr. Trump’s case unlikely to succeed in court.

The filing was registered on behalf of a single ABC station in Houston and involved a minor regulatory dispute over the talk show “The View.” But in a signal of its importance, the company’s paperwork was signed by one of the most experienced Supreme Court litigators in the country, Paul D. Clement, a solicitor general under President George W. Bush."

Prosecutor suspended by state supreme court for artificial intelligence use in court docs; ABA Journal, May 7, 2026

ABA Journal; Prosecutor suspended by state supreme court for artificial intelligence use in court docs

"A Georgia prosecutor who repeatedly filed documents with artificial intelligence-generated citations that referenced cases that were wrong or fictitious during a murder trial has been suspended for six months from practicing before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Law & Crime has the story."

Meta’s AI Copyright Fight Just Escalated and Hollywood Is Watching Closely; Los Angeles Magazine, May 7, 2026

 DEVON JAMES , Los Angeles Magazine; Meta’s AI Copyright Fight Just Escalated and Hollywood Is Watching Closely

A new lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Meta could reshape how studios, publishers and tech companies train the next generation of artificial intelligence

"The AI Gold Rush Is Running Into Copyright Law

According to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Meta allegedly pulled material from massive libraries of pirated books and scraped internet content to train Llama, the company’s flagship large language model. Publishers argue the practice amounts to one of the largest copyright violations in modern history."

Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege; AP, May 5, 2026

 HILLEL ITALIE , AP; Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege

"The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg and Meta “followed their well-known motto ‘move fast and break things’” by illegally drawing upon a massive trove of books and journal articles for Llama."

‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself; The Guardian, May 7, 2026

 Aisha Down, The Guardian; ‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research

"It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.

In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels.

“We’re rapidly approaching the point where no one would be able to shut down a rogue AI, because it would be able to self-exfiltrate its weights and copy itself to thousands of computers around the world,” said Jeffrey Ladish, the director of Palisade research, a Berkeley-based organisation which did the study."

KASH PATEL’S PERSONALIZED BOURBON STASH; The Atlantic, May 6, 2026

Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic; KASH PATEL’S PERSONALIZED BOURBON STASH

"George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, told me that Patel’s conduct represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the bureau’s history and of the culture of quiet professionalism that he had observed working under previous FBI directors. “Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law-enforcement agency—it makes me frightened for the country,” he said. “Standards apply to everything and everyone—especially the boss.”

Hill and others described an organization struggling to uphold its mission amid purges of experienced staff and under a distracted leadership. “When you degrade the office like that, you degrade the impact,” Hill said, adding that he was particularly concerned about what would happen in a time of crisis. “It’s a failure to lead.”

Google’s AI Summary Invents State Ethics Rules… And It’s Not A Hallucination Problem; Above The Law, May 6, 2026

 Joe Patrice , Above The Law; Google’s AI Summary Invents State Ethics Rules… And It’s Not A Hallucination Problem

"If you’re a Pennsylvania lawyer wondering whether you need to disclose AI use in your court filings, Google’s AI summary has an authoritative answer for you. It’s a wrong answer, mind you. But authoritative!...

If one opens an incognito window and searches Google for “Pennsylvania AI disclosure lawyers,” the AI-generated summary will explain that “Key developments include mandatory disclosure of Generative AI (GAI) in court filings.” Throw in “August 2024” because you vaguely remember seeing something about AI on that date and the result reads “As of August 2024, Pennsylvania mandates explicit disclosure of AI use in all court submissions, making transparency a mandatory filing requirement.”

None of that is true.

The Legal AI Governance tracker, an invaluable tool maintained by Brian Alenduff of Desired Path Consulting, provides a comprehensive rundown of Pennsylvania’s AI rules. There are standing orders in some courtrooms, and the state supreme court issued a rule governing court personnel only, but as for the state of Pennsylvania writ large, there is no statewide rule as of now. The tracker notes that what Pennsylvania does have is Joint Formal Opinion 2024-200, a 2024 advisory ethics opinion from the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Philadelphia Bar Association flagging AI as a competence issue under existing rules. But that opinion explicitly states that it is “advisory only and is not binding.” The ABA’s own 50-state survey classifies Pennsylvania as “court dependent.”...

Hallucinations are all the rage right now, but over the long haul the greater AI risk will be an unfailingly credulous bot elevating and validating mistakes until the error gets picked up as reality."

Author of Alabama police officer training claims copyright infringement by U.S. Army; 1819 News, May 4, 2026

 Erica Thomas  , 1819 News; Author of Alabama police officer training claims copyright infringement by U.S. Army

"An Alabama man filed a copyright infringement claim after he said his life’s work was stolen by the U.S. Army.

SSGT Vanguard’s Johnny Lee Smith wrote the training for police certifications in Alabama. The training is mandated by the Alabama Peace Officers’ Standards & Training Commission (APOSTC). The 40-hour flagship training defense tactics program has been used in Alabama since 2014.

Smith alleges the U.S. Army Civilian Police Academy in Leonard Wood, Mo., “unlawfully appropriated, reproduced, distributed and used derivative content” from the Defense Tactics Instructor Guide that he wrote. He said the Army’s new manual was developed after Army personnel attended his training."

US Copyright Office Wants to Increase Cost to Register Photos by 55%; PetaPixel, May 5, 2026

 JARON SCHNEIDER, PetaPixel; US Copyright Office Wants to Increase Cost to Register Photos by 55%

"The US Copyright Office has proposed a substantial increase to the cost to register photos, citing rising costs and inflation. It argues the cost is still negligible, but critics say the Office is out of touch with reality.

In March, the Office issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) where it suggested substantial increases to its fees, including increases of more than 50% for group registration of photographs and approximately 268% for updates to news websites. 

“The Office has determined that fees should be raised an average of 43% to account for increases in the cost of providing services. This reflects both historic inflation since the last fee study and anticipated inflation over the next three years,” the NPRM states. “The Office estimates that revenues generated by these proposed fees would be roughly $51 million per year over the next five years (compared to the current schedule’s projected $41 million per year), and would achieve approximately 53% projected cost recovery during the first year of implementation.”"

Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess; Vox, May 6, 2026

 Constance Grady, Vox ; Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess

Scott Turow's latest real-life legal thriller: Suing Meta for copyright infringement; NPR, May 5, 2026

 Chloe Veltman, NPR ; Scott Turow's latest real-life legal thriller: Suing Meta for copyright infringement

""All Americans should understand that the bold future promised by A.I., has been, to paraphrase the investigative writer Alex Reisner, created with stolen words," said Turow in a statement to NPR. "It is all the more shameful that these violations of the law were undertaken by one of the richest corporations in the world."

According to the complaint, Meta "briefly considered licensing deals with major publishers" but changed its strategy in April 2023. The question of whether to license or pirate moving forward was "escalated" to Zuckerberg, after which, the complaint alleges, Meta's business development team received verbal instructions to stop licensing efforts. "If we license once [sic] single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy," a Meta employee is quoted as saying in the complaint.

"It's the most flagrant copyright breach in history," said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger in a statement to NPR. "And these voracious tech companies need to be held accountable.""

Why some schools are cutting back on the technology they spent billions on; The Washington Post, May 7, 2026

Lauren Lumpkin, The Washington Post ; Why some schools are cutting back on the technology they spent billions on

"The scrutiny comes amid a reckoning with the ubiquitous — and potentially dangerous — role of technology in children’s lives."