What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots; The New York Times, April 4, 2026

Kashmir Hill

Photographs by Frances F. Denny

, The New York Times ; What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots

"There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs.

Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI.

“If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.

Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.

At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly."

Napa Valley Schools Emphasize Honesty, Ethics in AI Policy; GovTech, April 2, 2026

 Atmika Iyer, The Modesto Bee, Calif. via GovTech; Napa Valley Schools Emphasize Honesty, Ethics in AI Policy

"10 principles for AI use in Napa schools

1. Teaching and learning: AI should be used to personalize and enhance the learning experience for each student and to support digital citizenship and literacy.

2. Staff usage: AI should be used as a tool to augment and support, rather than replace, staff in the performance of their duties and responsibilities.

3. Ethical use and transparency: AI should be used ethically and transparently by all staff and students, with careful consideration of potential biases, and in compliance with all applicable intellectual property and copyright laws.

4. Accountability and responsibility: AI should be used in a manner that ensures accountability by those who use it and that those who use it are responsible for such use, including when and how it is used.

5. Academic honesty: The district should allow artificial intelligence tools to be used only in ways that support learning — such as research, skill development, or teacher-approved assistance — and prohibit any use that replaces a student’s original thinking or results in cheating, plagiarism or other acts of academic dishonesty.

6. Equity and access: AI should be implemented in a manner that ensures equitable access and opportunity for all students, regardless of background or ability, and for all schools across the district.

7. Secure and private: The district should prioritize security and privacy when changing existing practices or adopting new practices regarding AI.

8. Professional development: The district should provide ongoing professional development for staff, with a particular focus on the ethical and responsible use of AI.

9. Community engagement: The district should engage with the community to share these principles, to educate the community on AI, and to discuss the permitted and prohibited uses of AI in the district.

10. Continuous improvement: The district should regularly evaluate the use of AI by students and staff, and adapt its policies, procedures and professional development to align with best practices and evolving technologies. The district reserves the right to remove access to previously approved AI platforms.

(Source: Napa Valley Unified School District’s Board Policy Manual)

In a bid to develop a set of guidelines for responsible use of technology, the district convened an AI council of 30 stakeholders including parents, teachers, students and staff in May 2025. The council met five times to review CSBA’s policy and make a recommendation to the board.

In addition, the council developed guidelines for AI use for all stakeholders. These will be shared in the 2026-2027 school year. Amid rapid technological developments, the district plans to update them regularly."

NHS staff boycott Palantir’s data platform over ethical concerns; Financial Times, April 1, 2026

Laura Hughes , Financial Times; NHS staff boycott Palantir’s data platform over ethical concerns

Controversial US tech group was awarded a £330mn contract in 2023 to collate hospital and patient information

"A growing number of NHS staff are refusing to work on Palantir’s health data platform over ethical concerns about the controversial US tech company.

The technology company was awarded a £330mn contract in 2023 to create the Federated Data Platform (FDP), which collates NHS operational data such as waiting lists, staffing, patient information and operating theatre schedules.

Palantir’s NHS role has become increasingly contentious owing to its work in the US defence sector and co-founder and chief executive Alex Karp’s outspoken backing for Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown." 

I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.; The Washington Post, March 31, 2026

Michael J. Coren, The Washington Post; I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.

After Amazon’s Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books, I went in search of an alternative.

"As corporate walled gardens have replaced the freewheeling, open internet of the 1990s and 2000s, we’ve ceded control over almost everything about our online experience. Nearly every keystroke, swipe and tap is now monitored, recorded and analyzed for potential profit.

The Kindle ecosystem is perhaps the apotheosis of this shift. One Guardian reporter found Amazon had recorded every title, highlight and page turn on her Kindle app (40,000 entries over two years). The company’s dominance sets the terms for everyone in the marketplace.

Including me. Like tens of millions of others, I have owned a Kindle (a Paperwhite). Last year, it started to feel as if it owned me. The final straw was when Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books. So I went in search of an alternative.

I bought a Kobo.

Was it the bibliophile Eden some Kobo fans described? Not quite. The reality was messier than I expected. It turns out we can’t escape Big Brother on our e-readers just yet. But a more open society is coming into view for book lovers — and perhaps all of us.

Here’s how to turn the page."

OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about Pentagon AI deal; NPR, March 8, 2026

Willem Marx , NPR; OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about Pentagon AI deal

"A senior member of OpenAI's robotics team has resigned, citing concerns about how the company moved forward with a recently announced partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Caitlin Kalinowski, who served as a member of technical staff focused on robotics and hardware, posted on social media that she had stepped down on "principle" after the company revealed plans to make its AI systems available inside secure Defense Department computing systems...

In public posts explaining her decision, Kalinowski wrote: "I resigned from OpenAI. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call."

She said policy guardrails around certain AI uses were not sufficiently defined before OpenAI announced an agreement with the Pentagon. "AI has an important role in national security," Kalinowski wrote. "But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.""

Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off; The Atlantic, March 7, 2026

 Ken Harbaugh, The Atlantic; Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off

"The events of the past week reminded me of my early days as a Navy pilot nearly three decades ago. One of my first tasks was to sign a document pledging never to surveil American citizens. By the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was an aircraft commander, leading combat-reconnaissance aircrews that gathered large-scale intelligence and informed battlefield targeting decisions. I took for granted that somewhere along those decision chains, a human being was in the loop.

I could not have defined artificial intelligence then, but I understood instinctively that a person, not a machine, would bear the weight of life-and-death choices. This was not a bureaucratic consideration. It was a hard line that those of us in uniform were expected to hold.

In the standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon, a private company was forced to hold the line against its own government. In doing so, Anthropic may have earned something more valuable than the contract it lost. In an industry where trust is the scarcest resource, Anthropic just banked a substantial deposit."

Elite Doctors Served Jeffrey Epstein While Treating His ‘Girls’; The New York Times, February 28, 2026

David A. Fahrenthold, Azeen Ghorayshi and Maggie Astor , The New York Times; Elite Doctors Served Jeffrey Epstein While Treating His ‘Girls’

A small stable of doctors gave V.I.P. medical services to the sex offender and the women around him. Some doctors bent or broke the ethical rules of their profession.

"It’s unsurprising that someone with Mr. Epstein’s wealth and elite connections would receive white-glove service from concierge doctors and V.I.P. treatment at major hospitals. But the new documents reveal how some of his doctors bent or broke the ethical rules of their profession."

Dinner Is Being Recorded, Whether You Know It or Not; The New York Times, February 16, 2026

 Luke Fortney , The New York Times; Dinner Is Being Recorded, Whether You Know It or Not

"To be in public is to risk being filmed. And these days, there’s a good chance it’s happening surreptitiously with smart glasses. Their wearers are filming in restaurants, cafes and bars, capturing warped, eye-level video of drive-through pranks, Michelin-starred meals and work shifts at Texas Roadhouse. Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...

Filming in public spaces is broadly protected by the First Amendment. Some states, including California and Pennsylvania, have two-party consent laws that prohibit recording without express permission, but enforcing them hinges on whether someone has a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in a given setting, said Aaron Krowne, a New York City lawyer specializing in privacy and civil liberties. Restaurants fall in a legal gray area: They are privately owned, but open to anyone who walks in...

The responsibility of using these devices ethically falls largely on the wearer."

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts; The New York Times, February 13, 2026

 Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac , The New York Times; Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that track or comment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.

"The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.

The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court."

House members seek inquiry into DoJ’s tracking of their Epstein files research; The Guardian, February 12, 2026

Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian; House members seek inquiry into DoJ’s tracking of their Epstein files research

"Members of Congress are calling for investigations after discovering the Department of Justice created records of their research activities while they dug into files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

Photographs taken by Reuters during a congressional hearing on Wednesday showed the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, holding a document titled “Jayapal Pramila Search History”, listing files that the Democratic US representative Pramila Jayapal had accessed during her review of the Epstein materials...

The department of justice confirmed to the Guardian that it does, in fact, monitor all Epstein file searches from lawmakers on its systems."

Moltbook was peak AI theater; MIT Technology Review, February 6, 2026

 Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review; Moltbook was peak AI theater

"Perhaps the best way to think of Moltbook is as a new kind of entertainment: a place where people wind up their bots and set them loose. “It’s basically a spectator sport, like fantasy football, but for language models,” says Jason Schloetzer at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy. “You configure your agent and watch it compete for viral moments, and brag when your agent posts something clever or funny.”

“People aren’t really believing their agents are conscious,” he adds. “It’s just a new form of competitive or creative play, like how Pokémon trainers don’t think their Pokémon are real but still get invested in battles.”

Even if Moltbook is just the internet’s newest playground, there’s still a serious takeaway here. This week showed how many risks people are happy to take for their AI lulz. Many security experts have warned that Moltbook is dangerous: Agents that may have access to their users’ private data, including bank details or passwords, are running amok on a website filled with unvetted content, including potentially malicious instructions for what to do with that data."

Failure to Alert Judge to Press Law for Reporter Search Draws Ethical Scrutiny; The New York Times, February 5, 2026

Charlie Savage , The New York Times; Failure to Alert Judge to Press Law for Reporter Search Draws Ethical Scrutiny

"The disclosure that the Justice Department failed to alert a judge about a 1980 law protecting journalists when applying for a warrant to search a Washington Post reporter’s home last month is casting new scrutiny on the legal issues raised by the raid.

Specialists in legal ethics said that if the prosecutor who submitted the application, Gordon D. Kromberg, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, knew about the 1980 law, the failure to bring it up violated a longstanding legal ethics rule.

The Justice Department and Mr. Kromberg did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did lawyers for The Post and its reporter.

Here is a closer look."

ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants; The New York Times, January 30, 2026

Hamed Aleaziz and Charlie Savage, The New York Times ; ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants

"Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.

The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.

The shift comes as the administration has deployed thousands of masked immigration agents into cities nationwide. A week before the memo, it came to light that Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of the agency, had issued guidance in May saying agents could enter homes with only an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. And the day before the memo, Mr. Trump said he would “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, after agents fatally shot two people in the crackdown there."

ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare; The Guardian, January 30, 2026

Moustafa Bayoumi, The Guardian; ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare

"Now is the time we must start paying attention to another highly damaging part of ICE’s arsenal: the agency’s deployment of mass surveillance.

I’m referring specifically to Mobile Fortify, a specialized app ICE has been using at least since May 2025. (Usage of the app was first reported last June by 404Media.) What is Mobile Fortify? It’s an app for facial recognition that can additionally take “contactless fingerprints” of someone simply by snapping a picture of a person’s fingers. The app has been used more than 100,000 times, including on children, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. And it’s dangerous."

How ICE is using facial recognition in Minnesota; The Guardian, January 27, 2026

Sanya Mansoor, The Guardian; How ICE is using facial recognition in Minnesota

"Immigration enforcement agents across the US are increasingly relying on a new smartphone app with facial recognition technology.

The app is named Mobile Fortify. Simply pointing a phone’s camera at their intended target and scanning the person’s face allows Mobile Fortify to pull data on an individual from multiple federal and state databases, some of which federal courts have deemed too inaccurate for arrest warrants.

The US Department of Homeland Security has used Mobile Fortify to scan faces and fingerprints in the field more than 100,000 times, according to a lawsuit brought by Illinois and Chicago against the federal agency, earlier this month. That’s a drastic shift from immigration enforcement’s earlier use of facial recognition technology, which was otherwise limited largely to investigations and ports of entry and exit, legal experts say."

Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again; The Guardian, January 10, 2026

Cory Doctorow, The Guardian ; Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again

"Until we repeal the anti-circumvention law, we can’t reverse-engineer the US’s cloud software, whether it’s a database, a word processor or a tractor, in order to swap out proprietary, American code for robust, open, auditable alternatives that will safeguard our digital sovereignty. The same goes for any technology tethered to servers operated by any government that might have interests adverse to ours – say, the solar inverters and batteries we buy from China.

This is the state of play at the dawn of 2026. The digital rights movement has two powerful potential coalition partners in the fight to reclaim the right of people to change how their devices work, to claw back privacy and a fair deal from tech: investors and national security hawks.

Admittedly, the door is only open a crack, but it’s been locked tight since the turn of the century. When it comes to a better technology future, “open a crack” is the most exciting proposition I’ve heard in decades."

Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort; The New York Times, December 12, 2025

Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times; Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort

"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.

Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.

It’s unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration."

OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case; Reuters, December 3, 2025

 Blake Brittain, Reuters ; OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case

"OpenAI must produce millions of anonymized chat logs from ChatGPT users in its high-stakes copyright dispute with the New York Times and other news outlets, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang in a decision made public on Wednesday said that the 20 million logs were relevant to the outlets' claims and that handing them over would not risk violating users' privacy."

Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers; The Daily Beast, November 20, 2025

Tom Latchem  , The Daily Beast; Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers

"Border Patrol agents armed with hidden cameras and AI-driven algorithms are flagging millions of American drivers as “suspicious” and triggering covert traffic stops across the country, according to a new investigation.

The Trump administration has quietly expanded a vast domestic surveillance web that tracks and analyzes the travel patterns of millions of drivers—feeding local police tips that lead to secretive traffic stops, searches, and arrests, the Associated Press reports.

The intelligence project, built and run by Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gathers vehicle movements through a national network of covert license plate readers disguised inside roadside barrels, cones, and job-site equipment, AP reports...

Legal scholars warn that the scale of the data collection—tracking “patterns of life” for millions of ordinary drivers—could violate the Fourth Amendment. “Large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” may be unconstitutional, Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, told AP.

The program is powered by an enormous expansion of CBP’s intelligence capabilities since President Donald Trump returned to office. Congress has authorized more than $2.7 billion to layer artificial intelligence onto existing surveillance networks. 

Meanwhile, Operation Stonegarden—a two-decade-old federal grant scheme—now channels hundreds of millions of dollars to local sheriff’s offices to buy license-plate readers and drones, and to fund overtime that effectively deputizes local cops into Border Patrol’s mission. Under Trump, congressional Republicans increased Stonegarden to $450 million over four fiscal years."

OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert; Bloomberg Law, November 18, 2025

Cassandre Coyer

, Aruni Soni, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert

"OpenAI Inc. is banking on a privacy argument to block a court’s probe into millions of ChatGPT user conversations. 

That hasn’t worked so far as a winning legal strategy that can be used by other chatbot makers anticipating similar discovery demands in exploding chatbot-related litigation.

Instead, it threatens to turn attention to just how much information chatbots like ChatGPT are collecting and retaining about their users."