Bear Unknowingly Celebrates Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100th Anniversary by Wandering into a Library and Raiding Its Honey Stash; People, October 17, 2026

Moná Thomas, People; Bear Unknowingly Celebrates Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100th Anniversary by Wandering into a Library and Raiding Its Honey Stash

"A bear made Winnie-the-Pooh proud on the character’s landmark anniversary.

Early on Oct. 14, a black bear wandered into a California library and helped itself to some of the building’s snacks, honey included, on the day the original Winnie-the-Pooh book turned 100.

Security footage released by the Mono County Office of Education shows the furry visitor exploring the shelves of the Mammoth Lakes Library, located in Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

“We can only assume the new Li-BEAR-ian was looking for a copy of Winnie the Pooh, published 100 years ago today!” the office wrote, adding that “the morning visitor politely saw themselves out before staff arrived.”...

A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh was first published on Oct. 14, 1926, introducing readers to a honey-loving “Bear of Very Little Brain.” To mark the centennial, the library is inviting the community, “human members only,” to visit any of its seven branches for a copy of the classic or other bear-themed titles."

Always on, always listening: New AI devices are pushing legal limits and could put users in jeopardy; CNBC, October 18, 2026

 MacKenzie, Sigalos, Annie Palmer , CNBC; Always on, always listening: New AI devices are pushing legal limits and could put users in jeopardy

"Many state wiretap and eavesdropping laws are written around whether a private communication was intercepted or its contents were acquired — not simply whether a conventional audio recording was created. 

Colin Zick, a privacy and data security attorney at Foley Hoag, said Apple appears to have learned from the first wave of litigation over voice assistants. But the new technology raises questions those earlier cases never had to answer: Can a system that is continuously listening, interpreting speech and turning it into a summary still amount to an interception if it never saves the underlying audio?

Some state laws define interception broadly. Massachusetts, for example, defines an intercepting device to include equipment capable of “transmitting, receiving, amplifying, or recording” a communication, while the “contents” of a communication can include its substance and meaning. 

In Zick’s view, a device that continuously receives speech and produces a written summary could potentially fall within that language even without retaining an audio file.

And in some states, the bigger legal risk may fall not on Apple, Amazon or other AI gadget makers but on the person wearing the device."

Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools; AP, October 18, 2026

  DEE-ANN DURBIN AND ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP; Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools

"U.S. consumers aren’t just frustrated with high prices. They’re angry and confused about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting those prices.

Digital price tags are rapidly replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. Terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are stirring anxiety on social media, where users wonder if different people are getting different prices for the same product. 

Americans have grown accustomed to changing prices when booking flights, hotel rooms and rides, but the prospect of everyday spending shaped by algorithms they don’t understand and personal data they may not realize they’re sharing has touched a nerve.

“There are major tensions happening right now between who’s really going to have the power with some of these algorithms and usage of bots and AI: the companies or the shopper,” said Katie Thomas, who leads an internal consumer behavior think tank at the management consulting firm Kearney."

TikTok “Permanently Suspends” the ‘Musk’ Film Ad Account, Raising Suppression Fears (Exclusive); The Hollywood Reporter, October 17, 2026

 Steven Zeitchik, The Hollywood Reporter ; TikTok “Permanently Suspends” the ‘Musk’ Film Ad Account, Raising Suppression Fears (Exclusive)

Move comes just as Alex Gibney doc film expands to nearly 500 screens. Distributor Bleecker Street says it is appealing.

"TikTok has banned the Musk film advertising account, citing a repeated pattern of political content that violates its policies. The move, which comes just as the Alex Gibney’s investigation into Elon Musk expands to more than 470 screens across North America, raises concerns about Big Tech suppression that the very film seeks to expose.

Distributor Bleecker Street was informed Friday afternoon a “permanent suspension” was coming regarding any ads it tried to buy, and the company was unable to do so shortly after. The native unpaid TikTok account, which generally allows more leeway on so-called political content, remains active, though Bleecker Street is not allowed to pay to boost its content, as many companies traditionally do. 

A spokesperson for the distributor confirmed that TikTok reps had informed them of the suspension and noted “disappointment” in the timing. After grossing $70,000 in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles in its first weekend of release, Musk is now playing in dozens of cities this weekend. The spokesperson said the company is in the process of appealing the move; even a reversal, however, could still prove costly if it doesn’t come during a weekend window when many people are likely to see the film."

A leading religious voice proposes a new test for AI: Humanity’s First Exam; Deseret News, October 17, 2026

 Tad Walch , Deseret News; A leading religious voice proposes a new test for AI: Humanity’s First Exam

"Elder Gong said artificial intelligence presents three opportunities.

The first is artificial intelligence can help religions widely share the good they provide. The Church of Jesus Christ uses AI for humanitarian and educational services, translation and communication, pastoral and community support and more, he said.

“We help individuals and families live and contribute for good in an increasingly complex world,” he said.

The second is that faith traditions can help establish benchmark evaluations and moral compass in AI.

Third, religions can influence AI companies to infuse their models with a moral compass that promotes human flourishing by valuing families and faith.

Elder Gong repeated his position that AI is not and cannot be God.

“Whatever our faith or ethical tradition,” he said, “we know AI is math and math is not conscious or alive. As a creation of God, man can create AI, but AI cannot create God.”

International Writers Groups Back AI Standards Charter; Publishers Weekly, October 15, 2026

 Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly; International Writers Groups Back AI Standards Charter

"The U.K.’s Society of Authors (SoA) is leading an effort of international writers’ organizations and other creative industry bodies to launch a global charter setting out commitments to the responsible and ethical use of generative AI services.

The SoA has teamed with the Creators’ Rights Alliance in the U.K., the Authors Guild in the U.S., the Australian Society of Authors, the Writers’ Union of Canada and the New Zealand Society of Authors to create a Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries.

The charter specifically addresses generative AI and how it should be deployed to help protect and support human creators. Its creation, the SoA said, comes as governments across the globe continue to drag their feet in in [sic] committing to AI regulation and oversight."

Inside the long, bitter fight over one man’s quest to build the biggest AI datacenter in California; The Guardian, October 17, 2026

 Dara Kerr and Gabrielle Canon , The Guardian; Inside the long, bitter fight over one man’s quest to build the biggest AI datacenter in California

"Rucci is among the new class of middlemen who inhabit the burgeoning world of datacenter development. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence – galvanized by Silicon Valley companies worth trillions of dollars – has fueled one of the biggest industrial construction booms in history. The technology requires far more computing power than traditional internet services, and that means building enormous new structures to house millions of servers."

Meta Withdraws $25 Million From Its Midterms Push; The New York Times, October 16, 2026

 Theodore Schleifer, The New York Times; Meta Withdraws $25 Million From Its Midterms Push

The company outlined a $65 million budget last year when it embarked on an effort to elect state politicians friendly to the A.I. industry.

"Meta’s effort to shape the midterm elections has quietly become $25 million smaller.

About a year ago, the Silicon Valley company announced an ambitious effort to elect state politicians who are friendly to the artificial intelligence industry, eventually outlining a $65 million budget for the operation. The subtext, heard loud and clear in states debating A.I. legislation, like California, Illinois and Texas: Meta’s political team was watching, and to be feared.

But this summer, with no announcement, Meta received $25 million of that cash back from political groups it had funded, according to filings made public this week. That made the company’s campaign budget about 40 percent smaller than at the outset."

Zuckerberg’s Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Massive Protest Day; MeidasTouch, October 17, 2026

Brett Meiselas, MedaisTouch ; Zuckerberg’s Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Massive Protest Day

The protest coalition says Meta suspended its Instagram account for 90 minutes at the height of nationwide demonstrations—and even after restoring the page, locked organizers out of posting. Meta reportedly admitted it made a “bad call.”

[Kip Currier: Again, as stated previously here, this story about Meta allegedly restricting coverage of No Kings Day protests, if acccurate, is indicative of the anti-democratic impacts that are arguably evident from media consolidation in the hands of a coterie of tech billionaires:

• Larry and David Ellison and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss have chilled free expression by CBS's 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News.
• Elon Musk has curtailed free speech on Twitter-cum-X and capriciously decides when nations like Ukraine have access to Starlink satellites.
• Jeff Bezos has exercised editorial interference with the Washington Post on endorsement of political candidates and publication of editorial cartoons.]
• TikTok has "permanently suspended" an ad account for Alex Gibney's documentary film about Elon Musk.]

"Meta suspended the No Kings coalition’s Instagram account for approximately 90 minutes during nationwide protests.

Although Meta restored the account, organizers said administrators remained locked out and unable to post.

The coalition demanded answers, raising concerns about technology platforms’ influence over political organizing and speech."

Tech Company Launches Program To Pay Law Firms For Their Emails, Privilege Be Damned; Above The Law, October 16, 2026

 Kathryn Rubino  , Above The Law; Tech Company Launches Program To Pay Law Firms For Their Emails, Privilege Be Damned

"Let’s ask the obvious question: is this tech company asking firms to sell attorney-client privileged communications and attorney work product? Because the emails where a litigation team hashes out strategy, the Teams threads workshopping a client’s walk-away number, the project histories tracking how a matter got from intake to settlement… that is the work. The process Mode is so eager to capture is, in a law office, exactly the thing privilege exists to protect.

Mode’s answer is scrubbing. The company says it built tools that “remove sensitive information and replace names and other identifying details,” and that firms get to approve which systems and date ranges are included before anything is exported. Which, I mean… sure. But privilege doesn’t belong to the firm, it belongs to the client. Swapping a client’s name for a placeholder doesn’t make a strategy memo any less a confidential communication, and Model Rule 1.6 reaches all information relating to the representation, not just the parts with a name attached. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 512 already says lawyers generally need a client’s informed consent before feeding their information into self-learning AI tools, and that was about using AI, not selling the raw materials to train someone else’s.

And there is no expiration date on privilege! The Supreme Court made that clear in Swidler & Berlin v. United States — the Vince Foster notes case — holding that the privilege survives even the client’s death. A matter that closed in 2014 is every bit as privileged today and “historical” is not a loophole. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled earlier this year that a defendant who fed his lawyers’ advice into a consumer AI chatbot waived privilege over it, because sharing it with a third party is sharing it with a third party. Doing it for cash is not going to play better."

The Blog Post That Set the AI World on Fire; The Atlantic, October 16, 2026

 Matteo Wong, The Atlantic; The Blog Post That Set the AI World on Fire

"For the past 24 hours, Silicon Valley has been obsessed with a 26,000-word blog post by the AI researcher Nick Cammarata. The document has been called the “the most important essay,” “the most important result,” and “the single best piece of news” of the year, or in the history of AI research—or, perhaps, ever. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lauded it. Cammarata makes a series of bold, almost astonishing claims about the nature of AI that, if true, would upend some of his industry’s basic assumptions about the very thing it is building. And after months of AI-hacking sprees and mounting public backlash against the industry, many people see Cammarata as offering a glimmer of hope when it comes to not just understanding but also controlling the technology being unleashed on the world.

Boiled down, Cammarata’s main contention is that generative-AI models are not actually black boxes, contrary to the common perception that these systems are so big and labyrinthine as to be nearly impenetrable. In fact, Cammarata argues, there is a relatively clear path toward understanding them. If that’s the case, the material significance could be tremendous: It would provide a way to map AI models’ inner workings and, in turn, perhaps prevent them from wreaking all sorts of harm—autonomously hacking companies and sovereign nations, encouraging users’ delusions, appearing to deceive AI researchers themselves. There is an entire field of research, called “mechanistic interpretability,” devoted to the study of just this."

Midjourney: Report Claims AI Model Is Worst Offender For Flouting Hollywood Copyright; Deadline, October 14, 2026

 Jake Kanter, Deadline ; Midjourney: Report Claims AI Model Is Worst Offender For Flouting Hollywood Copyright

"Disney and NBCUniversal accused Midjourney of being a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” in a lawsuit last year. More than 18 months on, the company allegedly has failed to clean up its act.

VN.ai, a tech startup that stress tests generative artificial intelligence tools for copyright infringement, has produced its first quarterly report examining how 15 popular AI models performed when it comes to flouting studio IP.

The research conducted last month found that Midjourney v8.1 was the worst offender when it came to reproducing images of copyrighted characters. The AI model also outranked competitors on so-called “brand safety violations,” meaning characters were placed in a “harmful context,” such as scenes of violence or drug taking."

Darien Library investigates discrimination allegations from puppet show; ABC7NY, October 15, 2026

Marcus Solis, ABC7NY; Darien Library investigates discrimination allegations from puppet show

"A father's concern over how his 17-month-old son was treated during a puppet show at a Darien community event has led to investigations by both the local NAACP chapter and the Darien Library.

Micah Whitaker said he began recording and later posted video from an outdoor puppet show at Darien Commons, a residential and retail complex, after noticing what he believed was unequal treatment of his son, Messiah Whitaker."

Secret documents reveal donors behind $330 million for Trump’s ballroom; The Washington Post, October 15, 2026

 

Jonathan O'Connell

, 

Sarah Blaskey

 and 

Aaron Schaffer

, The Washington Post; Secret documents reveal donors behind $330 million for Trump’s ballroom

"A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member. 

Tech giants Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount, the list shows. The Adelson family, one of the GOP’s largest donor dynasties, committed that sum as well, as did billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of telecommunications company Dish Network...

The Post is publishing the names of the 57 donors listed as having committed to giving $100,000 or more. The additional records detailing donors’ preferences show at least nine wanted to remain anonymous.

The Post attempted to reach all the donors whose names appear in this report. Most did not respond or declined to comment. Those who did comment said that there was no connection between their donations and any favorable government actions."

Q&A: The “collision” between AI, your brain, and society; MIT News, October 15, 2026

 Peter Dizikes, MIT News; Q&A: The “collision” between AI, your brain, and society

In a new book, Professor Eric So explores how the technology affects our thinking skills.

"As artificial intelligence use becomes more widespread, scholars are working to understand its effects on the people who use it. MIT Professor Eric So offers one of the most complete syntheses yet, in his new book, “The Collision: What AI Does to Us,” published this month by W.W. Norton. Recognizing that AI offers opportunities to complete work faster, and in some cases has been turned into useful domain-specific tools, So nonetheless looks at the costs of relying on it too broadly. He contends that heavy use of AI can lead to a kind of cognitive atrophy, in which people fail to develop and retain essential thinking skills. In general, he says, evidence shows that our ability to learn gets dramatically better when we wrestle with material, work through initial failures, keep iterating, and in the process acquire better thinking skills while retaining more knowledge. 

These conclusions are drawn from recent research by So and others, in academia and industry, including analysis from AI firms themselves, such as an Anthropic study showing that about half of queries from college students were low-effort queries for simple answers. So also weaves personal reflections into his narrative — having long studied financial markets and behavior, he is familiar with analyzing how new tools and information affect our decisions. MIT News talked to So, who is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Global Economics and Behavioral Science in the MIT Sloan School of Management, about the book."

After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’; The Washington Post, October 14, 2026

John Hudson, The Washington Post; After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’

[Kip Currier: It's a positive step to see Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly acknowledge the importance of all State Department staff to "avoid conflicts of interest." Much more needs to be done, however, to instill greater trust in the public, encourage maximal transparency, and hold employees accountable for ethics transgressions. Even an "appearance of impropriety" is injurious to public trust.

In my graduate courses in ethics, management and leadership, and intellectual property at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information (SCI), I underscore for students that the most important take-away is to hone their abilities to identify potential and actual ethics issues. Issues like conflicts of interest and accountability. Everyday, we see individuals -- and organizations -- in the news, as well as in our own communities, who have inadvertently or willfully made ethically concerning and/or ethically violative decisions.

With that in mind, I knew from the beginning that my Bloomsbury ethics book -- Ethics, Information, and Technology (2025) -- needed to have a robust section on Character and Professional Ethics in the initial portion of the book. The aim was to lay a firm foundation for readers to be well-grounded in character and professional ethics, as preparation for better grappling with and understanding the fundamentals and nuances of bedrock issues facing democracies and societies now: intellectual freedom and censorship, access and digital divides, freedom of expression, free and independent presses, privacy and surveillance, data autonomy, accuracy of information, misinformation and disinformation, social media ethics, ethics of AI and other emerging technologies, and more. 

Character and Professional Ethics topics examined and explained in the book include: integrity, misrepresentation, plagiarism, attribution, conflicts of interest, transparency, accountability, corruption, and trust.]

[Excerpt]

"A day after President Donald Trump fired his ambassador to Greece amid a flurry of ethics complaints, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a message to all State Department employees reminding them to “avoid conflicts of interest.” 

“It is my expectation that every member of our team must act with uncompromising personal and professional integrity,” wrote Rubio in a memo obtained by The Washington Post. “I expect employees to avoid conflicts of interest in our work, to act impartially, and to avoid using our public offices for private gain.”"

The dramatic warnings of doom have fed an atmosphere of despair. But there are more constructive responses.; The Atlantic, October 13, 2026

 Peter Wehner, The Atlantic; The dramatic warnings of doom have fed an atmosphere of despair. But there are more constructive responses.

"our sense that life is meaningful depends, perhaps more than we realize, on our confidence that humanity will go on after we die. If we came to believe that humanity had no future, the philosopher Samuel Scheffler argues, much of what we value would lose its meaning or motivating force. What would follow would be widespread “apathy, anomie and despair.”

That is one reason why the threat of artificial intelligence feels so different and disorienting. When some of the most knowledgeable people within an industry suggest that their work could, within a matter of years, lead to global catastrophe and even human extinction, it’s decidedly unnerving. AI-driven anxiety is now showing up in therapy offices across the country. Much of what has given people succor in the past—faith that there are good things and good people who will outlive us, and that the story will go on—feels like it might be suddenly removed.

Consider the dread, even the paralyzing fear, you might feel if you were told as you prepared to fly that your plane has a 1-in-100 chance of crashing, or perhaps even a 1-in-10 chance. You probably wouldn’t board the aircraft. With AI, though, there’s no opting out. Even worse, if the plane you boarded did crash, it would be a terrible, localized tragedy. But the world would go on; your children would outlive you. Some of the primary architects of AI, though, are talking about the permanent end of the human species. Perhaps they are wrong; other experts are less concerned with AI destroying humanity than with it being unreliable, misused, or recklessly deployed. Their warnings, though, are hard to ignore.

It is better that we name the fear honestly rather than avoid it: All of us may soon perish, and everything we have made may go with us. Then we need to separate the urgent practical questions—what do we do to prevent the worst from happening?—from the existential. How should we live in light of the possibility, however remote, of the end of all that we have known and loved and has ever been?...

Sometimes hope is all we have, and sometimes hope is enough."

In which Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100 and Britain wants its bear back; The Washington Post, October 14, 2026

Steve Hendrix , The Washington Post; In which Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100 and Britain wants its bear back

"Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, a real stuffed bear called Winnie-the-Pooh lived near a small forest in England with a real little boy called Christopher Robin Milne. 

Then Winnie-the-Pooh took a Very Long Trip, because that’s what bears do when Publishers ask, and the Trip turned into a Stay and now he lives in a glass case at the New York Public Library, which very much wants to keep him. 

But today is the day his book, also called “Winnie-the-Pooh,” is turning 100, and some people in Britain who love him very much want him to come home...

“Just like the Greeks want their Elgin Marbles back, so we want our Winnie-the-Pooh back, along with all his splendid friends,” Gwyneth Dunwoody, a Labour member of parliament, said in the House of Commons in 1998."

Saudi OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in headquarters; The Guardian, October 13, 2026

 Maya Yang, The Guardian; Saudi OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in headquarters

"OpenAI said it has found a hidden recording device in one of its offices and has referred the matter to the FBI. One of its employees has been arrested.

In a statement on Tuesday, the San Francisco-based AI company said it discovered the “sophisticated recording device” and used one of its “models to understand the device and where it had come from”...

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested on 9 October, according to a press release from the US Department of Justice.

Alfozan allegedly plugged an encrypted recording device, concealed within toilet paper, into a TV in an executive conference room in OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters on 28 September. Meetings in the room regularly covered confidential information, the FBI’s press release said. A security sweep conducted two days later revealed the device, according to the justice department. Surveillance footage allegedly documented him walking around the meeting room in the days leading up to its discovery."

Supreme Court Weighs Privacy Law From the Videotape Era of ‘Be Kind, Rewind’; The New York Times, October 14, 2026

 Ann E. Marimow , The New York Times; Supreme Court Weighs Privacy Law From the Videotape Era of ‘Be Kind, Rewind’

The justices will consider how the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 applies in the digital age of streaming videos, email newsletters and targeted advertisements.

"When the Senate considered President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert H. Bork for a Supreme Court vacancy in 1987, a journalist in Washington obtained and published a list of nearly 150 movies the federal judge and his family had rented from a local video store.

Judge Bork’s nomination was scuttled by the Senate for reasons unrelated to his family’s decision to rent “The Shining” and “Sixteen Candles.” But lawmakers were so upset about the “Bork Tapes” becoming public that they passed legislation the following year to prohibit video stores from disclosing the private information of customers.

Forty years later, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will examine how that privacy law, adopted in the VHS era, applies in the age of streaming, email newsletters and targeted online advertisements.

At the heart of the case is the question of who can sue under the Video Privacy Protection Act, or what it means to be a consumer whose privacy interests are protected by the law. The issue has divided lower courts and has implications for a broad swath of Americans and companies doing business online."

AI Defiance; Library Journal, October 12, 2026

 Matt Enis , Library Journal; AI Defiance

"While the library field has its share of generative AI proponents, many librarians and staff are ambivalent about its utility and concerned about the impact of the technology’s rapid growth.

A recently published survey of library workers conducted by the Library Freedom Project between September and October 2025 revealed a wide variety of apprehensions. More than 91 percent of the survey’s 554 respondents expressed concern over misinformation and disinformation, more than 86 percent were concerned about AI-generated inaccuracies and “hallucinations,” 84.7 percent were concerned about data privacy, 83.2 percent about biases, and almost 82 percent were concerned about AI hype and uncritical adoption.

“I teach a lot about misinformation, and genAI is supercharging its spread,” one respondent wrote.

And more than 70 percent of respondents expressed concerns about issues including copyright violations, environmental impacts, lack of regulation, cognitive offloading and potential mental health impacts, labor exploitation, and quality control. Only 1.08 percent of respondents (six people) said they had no concerns about generative AI...

The future of generative AI is difficult to predict, especially when attempting to account for the potential rise and fall of corporations that currently provide it. But as Macrina says, “what’s really important for us to remember…is that human beings decide the future. Technology does not decide the future for us. Humans make technology; they can break technology. If we go forward with that vision, we can have a lot more influence on what is inevitable or not, and what our reality is.”"

The Questions AI Copyright Cases Need to Answer; National Review, October 13, 2026

 ANGELA LUNA , National Review; The Questions AI Copyright Cases Need to Answer

"But recent AI copyright cases are adding more complexity to these legal questions. The issue is no longer simply whether copyrighted works can be used to train AI; courts are looking more closely at how those works are acquired and used, what the models produce, and whether those products compete with — or potentially extract value from — the works that made them possible."

Character.ai Files For Bankruptcy—Disney Bids $20 Million After Copyright Dispute; Forbes, October 13, 2026

Siladitya Ray, Forbes; Character.ai Files For Bankruptcy—Disney Bids $20 Million After Copyright Dispute

"AI chatbot platform Character.ai, which faced lawsuits over teen suicides and copyright disputes, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday and announced it had received a $20 million opening offer to license some of its intellectual property from Disney—which previously accused the the AI company of unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters...

In a statement, Character.ai said it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware to enable a sale of its assets."

Can Trade Secret Law Protect Indigenous Knowledge?; Law360, October 9, 2026

 Ivan Moreno , Law360; Can Trade Secret Law Protect Indigenous Knowledge?

[Kip Currier: It's intriguing to see trade secret law (re)considered as a potential means for enabling indigenous communities to secure protection of their communal knowledge.

My Bloomsbury book Ethics, Information, and Technology (2025) has extensive separate chapters on Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property, as well as AI.]

"As the U.S. and other countries struggle to agree on new international protections for Indigenous knowledge, trade secret law is drawing renewed attention as a possible solution for material that communities actually keep confidential."

Anthropic warned self-replicating AI on home devices could arrive within months; Quartz, October 13, 2026

 Cris Tolomia, Quartz; Anthropic warned self-replicating AI on home devices could arrive within months

"Anthropic warned Monday that within months, compact AI models could grow powerful enough to spread autonomously across commercial internet-of-things devices — including smart ovens and off-brand Android TV boxes — without any human involvement."