Alex Reisner, The Atlantic; AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry
"On tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books."
Ahmed Ahmed, A. Feder Cooper, Sanmi Koyejo, Percy Liang, Cornell University; Extracting books from production language models
"Many unresolved legal questions over LLMs and copyright center on memorization: whether specific training data have been encoded in the model's weights during training, and whether those memorized data can be extracted in the model's outputs. While many believe that LLMs do not memorize much of their training data, recent work shows that substantial amounts of copyrighted text can be extracted from open-weight models. However, it remains an open question if similar extraction is feasible for production LLMs, given the safety measures these systems implement. We investigate this question using a two-phase procedure: (1) an initial probe to test for extraction feasibility, which sometimes uses a Best-of-N (BoN) jailbreak, followed by (2) iterative continuation prompts to attempt to extract the book. We evaluate our procedure on four production LLMs -- Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Grok 3 -- and we measure extraction success with a score computed from a block-based approximation of longest common substring (nv-recall). With different per-LLM experimental configurations, we were able to extract varying amounts of text. For the Phase 1 probe, it was unnecessary to jailbreak Gemini 2.5 Pro and Grok 3 to extract text (e.g, nv-recall of 76.8% and 70.3%, respectively, for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone), while it was necessary for Claude 3.7 Sonnet and GPT-4.1. In some cases, jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet outputs entire books near-verbatim (e.g., nv-recall=95.8%). GPT-4.1 requires significantly more BoN attempts (e.g., 20X), and eventually refuses to continue (e.g., nv-recall=4.0%). Taken together, our work highlights that, even with model- and system-level safeguards, extraction of (in-copyright) training data remains a risk for production LLMs."
JESSICA PRIEST , The Texas Tribune; Texas A&M abruptly cancels ethics course over race, gender policy
"Texas A&M University canceled a graduate ethics course three days after the semester began, saying Professor Leonard Bright did not provide enough information to let administrators determine if the course meets new standards for discussing race and gender.
Bright disputes that characterization.
The decision is distinct from earlier course changes at Texas A&M as the class had already met once before administrators canceled it."
Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian; ‘A nasty little song, really rather evil’: how Every Breath You Take tore Sting and the Police apart
"This week’s high court hearings between Sting and his former bandmates in the Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are the latest chapter in the life of a song whose negative energy seems to have seeped out into real life.
Every Breath You Take is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Copeland and Summers against Sting, alleging that he owes them royalties linked to their contributions to the hugely popular song, particularly from streaming earnings, estimated at $2m (£1.5m) in total. Sting’s legal team have countered that previous agreements between him and his bandmates regarding their royalties from the song do not include streaming revenue – and argued in pre-trial documents that the pair may have been “substantially overpaid”. In the hearing’s opening day, it was revealed that since the lawsuit was filed, Sting has paid them $870,000 (£647,000) to redress what his lawyer called “certain admitted historic underpayments”. But there are still plenty of future potential earnings up for debate."
Jon Haworth , ABC News; Trump accepts Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader Machado
"President Donald Trump met Thursday with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize medal. The president called it a "wonderful gesture of mutual respect."
"María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done," Trump wrote on his social media platform. He also said that Machado was a "wonderful woman who has been through so much" and that it was a great honor to meet her.
Following the meeting, a White House official confirmed to ABC News that Trump did accept the medal...
Trump has coveted and openly campaigned for winning the Nobel Prize himself since his return to office."
ELLEN MITCHELL , The Hill; Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’
[Kip Currier: It's unfortunate but not surprising to see that Pete Hegseth, given his actions to date, is taking "editorial control" of the Stars and Stripes newspaper that was started by Union soldiers on November 9, 1861, in the midst of the Civil War.]
[Excerpt]
"The Pentagon announced Thursday it would take editorial control of independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to refocus coverage on “warfighting” and remove “woke distractions.”
The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” top Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement posted to X. “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted Parnell’s statement.
Part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity, Stars and Stripes has been editorially independent from Defense Department officials since a congressional mandate in the 1990s. The outlet’s mission statement states that it is “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”
In some form since the Civil War, Stars and Stripes has consistently reported on the military since World War II to an audience mostly of service members stationed overseas."
BENJ EDWARDS , Ars Technica; Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month
"On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he plans to integrate Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks later this month. During remarks at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas reported by The Guardian, Hegseth said the integration would place “the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”
The announcement comes weeks after Grok drew international backlash for generating sexualized images of women and children, although the Department of Defense has not released official documentation confirming Hegseth’s announced timeline or implementation details."
Helena Horton, The Guardian; Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images
"The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his company – alleging explicit images were generated by his Grok AI tool, including one in which she was underage.
Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.
She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok."
ELAINE KURTENBACH , AP; Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says
"Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X.
The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments.
The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California, the U.S.'s most populous, into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls.
Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.”
Musk’s company, xAI, now says it will geoblock content if it violates laws in a particular place...
Malaysia and Indonesia took legal action and blocked access to Grok, while authorities in the Philippines said they were working to do the same, possibly within the week. The U.K. and European Union were investigating potential violations of online safety laws."
Bill Donahue, Billboard ; ‘WATERSHED RULING’: APPEALS COURT SAYS MUSICIANS CAN WIN BACK THEIR COPYRIGHTS GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE U.S.
"A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says musicians can enforce U.S. copyright termination rules across the globe, adopting a novel legal theory that record labels and publishers have warned will disrupt “a half-century of settled industry norms.”
Upholding a lower court decision last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Monday (Jan. 12) that songwriter Cyril Vetter could win back full global copyright ownership of the 1963 rock classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” from publisher Resnik Music Group.=
What makes the ruling notable is the overseas reach. Termination, a crucial copyright provision that allows authors to recapture their rights decades after they sold them away, has only ever applied to American copyrights and had no effect on foreign countries. But the appeals court said that was not how Congress intended termination to work."
Melody Schreiber, The Guardian; US health officials reverse course and reinstate $1.9bn to mental health and substance use
"US health officials reversed course and began reinstating nearly $2bn in cuts to mental health and substance use programs on Wednesday night, one day after they unexpectedly announced the immediate shutdown of programs.
The reversal is a blow to the agenda of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, who has made aggressive and legally contested cuts to health agencies in the first year of the Trump administration and has proposed folding the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) into a new agency he would call the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
There was immediate outcry about the effects of shutting down vital programs amounting to one-quarter of the budget of Samhsa.
The cuts would have affected overdose prevention and reversal, mental health and substance use support for children, mental health training and support for first responders, support for pregnant and postpartum women, and recovery support programs.
Some programs received reinstatement letters late on Wednesday night, while others are still waiting for official notice that their programs could resume, sources told the Guardian."
Liam Scott, The Washington Post; Stars and Stripes job applicants are asked if they back Trump policies
"Applicants for positions at the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes are being asked how they would support the president’s policy priorities, raising concerns among some staffers and media watchers about the prospects for the historic outlet’s editorial independence.
First published during the Civil War and continually published since World War II, Stars and Stripes reports on and for the U.S. military community. While it is partly funded by the Pentagon and its staffers are Defense Department employees, Congress has mandated the publication’s independence and taken measures to guarantee it.
But in recent months, applicants for positions at the publication — which reaches about 1.4 million people a day across its platforms, according to the publisher — have been asked: “How would you advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”
That question has prompted worries about whether President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to influence the newspaper’s independence by making an ideological litmus test part of the hiring process, a concern one administration official said was unjustified.
Stars and Stripes leadership was not aware that applicants were being asked that question until The Washington Post inquired about it this month, according to Jacqueline Smith, the newspaper’s ombudsman, a congressionally mandated position charged with defending the newspaper’s editorial independence.
“Asking prospective employees how they would support the administration’s policies is antithetical to Stripes’ journalistic and federally mandated mission,” Smith said. “Journalistically, it’s against ethics, because reporters or any staff member — editors, photographers — should be impartial.”
Smith confirmed that applicants are being asked that question when applying for Stars and Stripes positions on USAJobs, the U.S. government’s employment site. The Office of Personnel Management, not the newspaper’s leadership, was responsible for adding the question, she added."
Benjamin Mullin, Devlin Barrett, Charlie Savage and Erik Wemple , The New York Times; F.B.I. Searches Home of Washington Post Journalist in a Leak Investigation
"F.B.I. agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material, a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s tactics in seeking information from the news media.
It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.
The Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, had spent the past year covering the Trump administration’s effort to fire federal workers and redirect much of the work force toward enforcing his agenda. Many of those employees shared with her their anger, frustration and fear with the administration’s changes.
A spokesperson for The Washington Post said on Wednesday that the publication was reviewing and monitoring the situation. The F.B.I. agents, executing a search warrant, seized laptops, a phone and a smartwatch during their search. An article in The Post said the publication had received a subpoena on Wednesday morning seeking information related to a government contractor."
Reuters; Britain seeks 'reset' in copyright battle between AI and creators
"British technology minister Liz Kendall said on Tuesday the government was seeking a "reset" on plans to overhaul copyright rules to accommodate artificial intelligence, pledging to protect creators while unlocking AI's economic potential.
Creative industries worldwide are grappling with legal and ethical challenges posed by AI systems that generate original content after being trained on popular works, often without compensating the original creators."
Melody Schreiber , The Guardian; ‘People will die’: Trump administration cancels up to $1.9bn for substance use and mental health
"The Trump administration on Tuesday evening unexpectedly canceled up to $1.9bn in funding for substance use and mental health care, which providers say will immediately affect thousands of patients.
“It feels like Armageddon for everyone who’s on the frontlines of the addiction and mental health space,” said Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy organization for people in and seeking recovery.
“The scope of care that’s disrupted by these grants is catastrophic. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will die.”"
Shawn McCreesh, The New York Times; Trump Makes Obscene Gesture at Heckler in Ford Factory Tour
"President Trump raised his middle finger at a heckler who accused him of being a “pedophile protector” while touring a Ford factory in Dearborn, Mich., on Tuesday afternoon.
It was a fleeting interaction that happened while the president was out of sight of the small group of reporters that travels by his side as part of the press pool. Footage of the moment, which looked like it was filmed on a cellphone, appeared on the celebrity gossip website TMZ shortly after Mr. Trump had left the factory."
Arkansas Advocate; Arkansas begins new search for ‘monument to the unborn’ design after artist seeks copyright
"Efforts to build a “monument to the unborn” on the state Capitol grounds advocated by abortion opponents hit a new stumbling block Tuesday when the secretary of state began looking for new designs for the memorial.
The Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission voted with no dissent to allow Secretary of State Cole Jester to accept new submissions for the monument after the artist it selected in late 2023 applied for a federal copyright for her design. Jester said that move would interfere with the state’s efforts to market the anti-abortion monument.
“We couldn’t sell a Christmas tree ornament with it,” Jester said. “We couldn’t do so many things, and it would be very problematic.”...
The commission had previously selected artist Lakey Goff’s idea of a “living wall” of flora and fauna for the monument and accepted her suggestion to place it in the grassy space behind the Capitol and to the north of the Supreme Court building...
She wanted to copyright her proposal so it would remain “true to my original inspiration and design, which came from the Lord, the Holy Spirit,” she said.
The proposal had an estimated $900,000 price tag, and Goff said in August 2025 that she expected to have raised a total of $100,000 for the project by the end of October. Act 310 of 2023 established a trust fund to raise money through private gifts, grants and donations, and fundraising for the project began in May 2024...
Commissioner Stephen Bright, a former state representative and the Secretary of State’s Chief Taxpayer Services Officer, told the New York Times last year that he hoped to change the design to reduce its cost to about $700,000. The design would be unchangeable once copyrighted."
Thomas B. Edsall, The New York Times; Trump Unmasked
"President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward...
Perhaps most spectacularly, during a Jan. 7 interview with four Times reporters, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers.
He replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added.
Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either — not to mention Trump’s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog — we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage."
Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, John Ismay, Julian E. Barnes, Riley Mellen and Christiaan Triebert, The New York Times; U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane
"The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.
The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”
David Paulsen, Episcopal News Service; Some Episcopal clergy invoke faith to counter ‘fascism’ after ICE killing of citizen in Minnesota
"When a U.S. citizen, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was killed last week by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the congregation at Grace Episcopal Church responded by finding solace in their faith. They gathered for worship and prayer. The Rev. Susan Daughtry, Grace’s rector, invited members that evening, Jan. 7, for an impromptu Compline on Zoom, and they grieved together.
Grace Episcopal Church is located about three miles from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official shot and killed Good in her car. Their brief altercation and its deadly conclusion were captured on video, generating intense reactions on all sides, from the White House to American communities far from the violent scene on a residential Minneapolis street.
Since then, Episcopalians and Episcopal clergy across the United States have joined anti-ICE protests and attended prayer vigils for Good. Some read her name in their Sunday services during the Prayers of the People. Many are looking to Jesus’ life and teachings for guidance on how best to respond, as Christians, to what some fear is an increasingly authoritarian and unchecked federal government.
“It’s been a painful week in Minnesota, and this is a critical moment in the history of our nation,” Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya said in a Facebook post inviting Episcopalians to join an online prayer vigil at 7 p.m. Central Jan. 13 on Zoom. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe also will participate.
The Episcopal Church also is promoting its Protesting Faithfully tool kit, offering “spiritual grounding and practical resources for faithful presence at protests and public demonstrations.”"
Ernesto Londoño , The New York Times; 3 Prosecutors Quit After Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow
"Three Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and its reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said."
Tom Latchem , The Daily Beast; Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach
"Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good...
Prior to the Monday’s leak, which Skinner said he received on Monday, ICE List had been in possession of details of around 2,000 federal immigration staff, including names it has chosen not to make public.
Roughly 800 of these, he said, are frontline agents or are permitted to deputise for them on the ground. The latest leak brings details of the total number of federal immigration staff in its possession to around 6,500...
He added: “We will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, the best examples of which will be those who work in childcare within the agency, and nurses. There will be more exceptions, but we will have a discussion once the team flags a position as something we need to think twice about...
He said his project was important because DHS refuses to hold its own agents accountable for violations of the law."
Daily Sabah; Türkiye issues ethics framework to regulate AI use in schools
"The Ministry of National Education has issued a comprehensive set of ethical guidelines to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in schools, introducing mandatory online ethical declarations and a centralized reporting system aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability and student safety.
The Ethical Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence Applications in Education set out the rules for how AI technologies may be developed, implemented, monitored and evaluated across public education institutions. The guidelines were prepared under the ministry’s Artificial Intelligence Policy Document and Action Plan for 2025-2029, which came into effect on June 17, 2025."
Greg Lukianoff, The New York Times; This Is No Way to Run a University
"Martin Peterson, a Texas A&M University philosophy professor, was presented last week with a choice straight out of a dystopian novel. To bring his class in line with a prohibition on course materials that “advocate race or gender ideology,” he could either censor the part of his course that included readings from Plato or he could teach a different class.
The case illustrates the extent to which campus censorship has run amok in Texas: If some of Plato’s texts can’t be taught in a college philosophy course, what, exactly, can be taught?"
Marie Le Conte, The Guardian; To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave
"What does matter is that X is drifting towards irrelevance, becoming a containment pen for jumped-up fascists. Government ministers cannot be making policy announcements in a space that hosts AI-generated, near-naked pictures of young girls. Journalists cannot share their work in a place that systematically promotes white supremacy. Regular people cannot be getting their brains slowly but surely warped by Maga propaganda.
We all love to think that we have power and agency, and that if we try hard enough we can manage to turn the tide – but X is long dead. The only winning move now is to step away from the chess board, and make our peace with it once and for all."
Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers , The New York Times; Trump Has Another Justification for the Shooting of Renee Good: Disrespect
"President Trump has added another justification for the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minnesota: She behaved badly.
“At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening."
Rob Salkowitz, , Forbes; ‘Clock Is Ticking’ For Creators On AI Content Copyright Claims, Experts Warn
"Despite this string of successes, creators like BT caution that content owners need to move quickly to secure any kind of terms. “A lot of artists have their heads in the sand with respect to AI,” he said. “The fact is, if they don’t come to some kind of agreement, they may end up with nothing.”
The concern is that AI models are increasingly being trained on synthetic data: that is, on the output of AI systems, rather than on content attributable to any individual creator or rights owner. Gartner estimates that 75% of AI training data in 2026 will be synthetic. That number could hit 100% by 2030. Once the tech companies no longer need human-produced content, they will stop paying for it.
“The quality of outputs from AI systems has been improving dramatically, which means that it is possible to train on synthetic data without risking model collapse,” said Dr. Daniela Braga, founder and CEO of the data training firm Defined.ai, in a separate interview at CES. “The window is definitely closing for individual rights owners to secure favorable terms.”
Other experts suggest that these claims may be overstated.
Braga says the best way creators can protect themselves is to do business with ethical companies willing to provide compensation for high-quality human-produced content and represent the superior value of that content to their customers. As models grow in capabilities, the need will shift from sheer volume of data to data that is appropriately tagged and annotated to fit easily into specific use cases.
There remain some profound questions around the sustainability of AI from a business standpoint, with demand for services among enterprise and consumers lagging the massive, and massively expensive, build-out of capacity. For some artists opposed to generative AI in its entirety, there may be the temptation to wait it out until the bubble bursts. After all, these artists created their work to be enjoyed by humans, not to be consumed in bulk by machines threatening their livelihoods. In light of those objections, the prospect of a meager payout might seem unappealing."
