ABA Journal; ABA Law Day events to focus on the ‘The Rule of Law and the American Dream’
"The American Bar Association will host various events to mark Law Day 2026 that address the theme, “The Rule of Law and the American Dream.”
May 1 is designated as the official Law Day."
Sam Sabin, Axios ; U.S. accuses China of "industrial-scale" campaigns to steal AI secrets
"The Trump administration on Thursday accused China-backed actors of running "deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns" to distill and copy American frontier AI models...
Driving the news: Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, sent a memo Thursday to federal agency heads accusing mostly China-based actors of using proxy accounts to evade detection and jailbreak models to "expose proprietary information" and "extract capabilities from American AI models."
Distillation attacks involve querying proprietary models, like Claude or Gemini, millions of times via APIs to build datasets that replicate how the systems behave.
Kratsios said these campaigns enable foreign actors to release models that appear to match U.S. AI capabilities at a fraction of the cost.
He added that such tactics can also strip away guardrails meant to keep outputs "ideologically neutral and truth-seeking.""
David Hood-Nuño and Bianca Flowers , Reuters; Exclusive: US EEOC Chair violated ethics rules halting LGBTQ cases, complaint alleges
"U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas allegedly violated professional conduct rules of the Virginia State Bar by refusing to enforce key provisions of federal civil rights laws, according to a complaint submitted to the bar Thursday, shared with Reuters.
The Legal Accountability Center, which focuses on filing complaints against individuals and institutions alleged to have violated professional conduct standards, asked the state agency to investigate whether Lucas breached her ethical obligations by directing EEOC investigators to stop processing certain categories of discrimination claims and by sending unauthorized information demands to 20 major law firms."
, CBC News; St. Louis Cardinals fighting Hamilton Cardinals attempt to trademark baseball team name and design in Canada
"The Hamilton Cardinals baseball team is facing off against the St. Louis Cardinals, but not in a ballpark.
The MLB team from St. Louis, Mo., is opposing a trademark application the Canadian Baseball League (CBL) team filed before the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in 2023.
Hamilton team owner Eric Spearin described the MLB team's opposition as “just a big shock.” The teams play in different leagues, he said, and "our logo looks nothing like theirs.""
Ari Daniel, NPR; AI's a suck up. Research shows how it flatters and suggests we're not to blame
"In a recent study published in the journal Science, Cheng and her colleagues report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior.
The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them.
It's not unlike social media in that both "drive engagement by creating addictive, personalized feedback loops that learn exactly what makes you tick," says Ishtiaque Ahmed, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who wasn't involved in the research."
Martin Kaste, NPR; Penalties stack up as AI spreads through the legal system
""Recently we had 10 cases from 10 different courts on a single day," says Damien Charlotin, a researcher at the business school HEC Paris who keeps a worldwide tally of instances of courts sanctioning people for using erroneous information generated by AI...
The numbers started taking off last year, and Charlotin says the rate is still increasing. He counts a total of more than 1,200 to date, of which about 800 are from U.S. courts.
Penalties are also on the rise, he says. A federal court may have set a record last month with an order for a lawyer in Oregon to pay $109,700 in sanctions and costs for filing AI-generated errors.
The professional embarrassments even take place at the level of state supreme courts...
"I am surprised that people are still doing this when it's been in the news," says Carla Wale, associate dean of information & technology and director of the law library at the University of Washington School of Law. She's designing special training in AI ethics for students who are interested. But she also says the ethical rules aren't completely settled...
When lawyers get in trouble for using AI, it's because they've violated the long-standing rule that holds them responsible for the accuracy of their filings, regardless of how they were generated."
Jonathan Vanian, CNBC; Meta will cut 10% of workforce as company pushes deeper into AI
"Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, as it continues ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.
The cuts will begin on May 20, and the company is scrapping plans to hire people for 6,000 open roles, according to a Thursday memo to employees. Bloomberg was first to report on the layoffs.
Meta’s latest round of cuts follows several smaller job reductions that the company said was necessary to to improve efficiency while focusing its efforts on generative AI, where it’s lagged OpenAI, Google and Anthropic."
Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic seeks pivotal court win in music publisher lawsuit over AI training
"Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has asked a California federal court to rule in its favor in a copyright lawsuit brought by music publishers Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO, arguing it made "fair use" of their song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.
Anthropic's Monday filing addresses the key question for a wave of high-stakes copyright cases brought by creators against tech companies: is it legally permissible to copy millions of copyrighted works without permission to train AI models?...
The lawsuit is one of dozens of disputes between copyright owners such as authors and news outlets, and tech giants including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over the training of their AI systems. Amazon- and Google-backed Anthropic was the first major AI company to settle one of the cases, agreeing last yearto pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action lawsuit."
Brenda Stolyar, The New York Times; Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore. Here’s What to Do.
"Earlier this week, Amazon notified its customers via email that, starting May 20, it will end support for Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 or earlier. That means you’ll no longer be able to download new content to your e-reader via Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Although you don’t have to stop using your old Kindle immediately, the restricted functionality may force you to consider whether you want to upgrade to a newer version or ditch the Amazon ecosystem altogether.
If you own a Kindle that’s no longer supported, Amazon wants you to buy a new one. The company is offering a 20% discount that you can apply toward one of its new Kindle models, along with a $20 e-book credit that will automatically be applied to your account with the purchase of a new device. The promotion will be valid through June 20, exactly a month after the company ends support for its older models.
Here’s what you need to know about Amazon’s decision to sunset its older e-readers and tablets, and what that means for you."
Eleanor Hawkins, Axios; AI use surges among policymakers
"AI is no longer just a research tool in Washington, D.C. — it's starting to shape how policymakers form opinions, according to Penta Group data shared exclusively with Axios.
Why it matters: Policymakers are the latest to lean on AI for guidance, signaling its growing role in shaping decisions across markets, consumer behavior and now public policy.
By the numbers: Penta Group surveyed 2,060 U.S. federal policymakers and senior staff across Congress, the administration and federal agencies, and found that 27% say AI informs their perspective on a topic — up from 17% in 2025 — putting AI on par with traditional sources like experts and web searches...
The intrigue: Republican policymakers are about 1.2 times more likely than Democratic policymakers to use AI daily — 69% compared to 57%.
Republicans are also more likely to find AI helpful in shaping their perspectives (30% vs. 23% for Democrats).
Meanwhile, Democrats are more than twice as likely to avoid AI entirely. 13% say they don't use it in their daily work, compared with 5% of Republicans."
Karen Tumulty, The Washington Post; Congress is supposed to police its own ethics. Here’s why it falls short.
"The U.S. Constitution could hardly be clearer about how unethical behavior on the part of members of Congress should be handled.
“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member,” Article 1, Section 5 stipulates.
In other words, it’s up to the House and the Senate to police themselves.
That system’s effectiveness and shortcomings have been on stark display the past few weeks, which have seen three members of the House resign, rather than face the possibility of being kicked out."
Creative Commons ; CC’s position on key copyright issues
"Creative Commons was founded in response to the radical expansion of copyright in the 20th century."
Sam Spratford , Publishers Weekly; Authors Guild Addresses Publishers’ AI Use
"The Authors Guild has released a statement criticizing publishing professionals’ use of AI tools following a report first published in the Bookseller that some editors have been uploading authors’ personal information, including manuscripts, into consumer-facing LLMs like ChatGPT.
“Uploading or inputting a copyrighted work or an author’s personal information into AI systems without permission may constitute a violation of the author’s copyright or right of privacy, and it puts the author’s intellectual property and personal information at risk,” the statement read. “Editors, agents, and others in the industry who have access to authors’ works should not upload any manuscript to or otherwise prompt consumer-facing chatbots with any author’s works without first getting the author’s written permission.”"
Patricia Kime, Military Times ; Flu vaccine requirement discarded ‘effective immediately,’ Hegseth says
"The U.S. military will no longer require service members to get an annual flu shot according to a post Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the social media platform X.
Hegseth said the mandatory flu vaccine requirement has been discarded “effective immediately.”
“The War Department is once again restoring freedom to our Joint Force,” the secretary wrote.
The flu vaccine has been required annually for U.S. military personnel since the 1950s to preserve the health of the force, and generally, the Defense Department has aimed to inoculate more than 90% of active-duty personnel.
The program has been a major factor in lower rates of hospitalizations among service members than national U.S. rates, according to an October 2025 Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division report."
Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times; F.B.I. Said to Have Investigated Times Reporter After Article on Patel’s Girlfriend
The bureau said it is not pursuing a case, but the scrutiny is an example of the Trump administration weighing whether to criminalize routine news gathering.
"The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.
Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter."
Santul Nerkar, The New York Times; A.I. ‘Hallucinations’ Created Errors in Court Filing, Top Law Firm Says
Sullivan & Cromwell apologized for submitting a court document that had fake citations created by artificial intelligence.
"An elite Wall Street law firm has apologized to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence, including “hallucinations” that fabricated case citations.
The A.I.-generated errors came in a recent motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan and were discovered by lawyers from an opposing firm, Andrew Dietderich, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, wrote in a letter to Judge Martin Glenn on April 18."
Meaghan Tobin, The New York Times; Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era
Artificial intelligence tools are making it faster than ever to reproduce creative work. Does copyright even matter anymore?
"Sigrid Jin was waiting to board a plane when he saw stunning news that artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic had accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code, its popular A.I. agent. Mr. Jin, 25, an undergraduate student, scrambled to post a copy online. His worried girlfriend quickly texted him: Was he violating copyright law?
Mr. Jin turned to a team of A.I. assistants for a solution. He directed them to rewrite the leaked code in another programming language, then shared that version online. Within hours, more than 100,000 people had liked or linked to it.
Anthropic, one of the leading A.I. companies alongside OpenAI, has said the leak had been caused by human error and, citing copyright violations, demanded that GitHub, an online library of computer code, remove posts sharing the code. Thousands of posts were taken down. But Mr. Jin’s version remains online. He said Anthropic had not asked him to take it down.
It is unclear whether Anthropic, which did not respond to questions from The New York Times, is drawing a distinction with the rewritten code. Mr. Jin said he believed rewriting the code transformed it into a new work, one that Anthropic could not claim ownership over.
He said he was driven less by money or fame than by a desire to make a broader philosophical point. What is the value of copyrighted intellectual property in an era when A.I. can easily replicate not just computer code but art, music and literature in minutes?
“I just wanted to raise some ethical questions in the A.I. agent era,” he said. “Any creative work can be reproduced in a second.”"
Aaron Man, Politico; When AI advice enters a murder case
"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI on Tuesday following a mass shooting at Florida State University that resulted in two deaths last year. The attorney general stated during a press conference that ChatGPT “offered significant advice” to the suspected gunman, Phoenix Ikner, based on a preliminary review by prosecutors.
“If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said.
The prospect of OpenAI facing criminal liability raises new questions about whether developers should be held responsible for a chatbot’s potential role in such a tragedy.
Legal scholars told DFD that, compared with prior civil cases, imposing criminal liability on the company would be a much steeper uphill battle. A key challenge, according to them, would be proving OpenAI acted with criminal intent."
Ann Skeet , Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations
"Notably, what Meta did not say after the verdict was that it was sorry for the harms children experienced."
David DeSteno, The New York Times; Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer?
"In a public statement of its intentions for its Claude chatbot, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic has said that it wants Claude to be “a genuinely good, wise and virtuous agent.” The company raised the moral stakes this month, when it announced that its latest A.I. model, Claude Mythos Preview, poses too great a cybersecurity threat to be widely released. Behind the scenes, Anthropic has been trying to shore up the ethical foundations of its products, working with a Catholic priest and consulting with other prominent Christians to help foster Claude’s moral and spiritual development.
Anthropic’s intentions are admirable, but the project of drawing on religion to cultivate the ethical behavior of Claude (or any other chatbot) is likely to fail. Not because there isn’t moral wisdom in Scripture, sermons and theological treatises — texts that Claude has undoubtedly already scraped from the web and integrated — but because Claude is missing a crucial mechanism by which religion fosters moral growth: a body."
Benjamin Mullin and Elizabeth Williamson, The New York Times; The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars
"When Infowars, the website founded by the right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.
That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Guerra Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter ; YouTube Opens Up AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood (Exclusive)
The tool, which requires a celebrity to upload their likeness, will flag potentially infringing content — like, say, a star playing a role in fan-generated movie — for a possible takedown.
"Executives at the Google-owned platform tell The Hollywood Reporter that their proprietary deepfake detection tool, years in the making, is now open to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused: Actors, athletes, creators and musicians, whether they have a YouTube channel or not, can sign up to identify and request removal of deepfakes on its platform...
The timing of the tool’s expansion comes as the industry grapples with the continued growth of deepfakes across platforms, and with video models quickly turning hypothetical worst-case scenarios into reality for many stars."
Tad Walch, DeseretNews; Church of Jesus Christ files trademark complaint against podcaster for alleged imitation of brands
"A trademark dispute is headed to the courts after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and podcaster John Dehlin failed to reach a solution after five months of negotiations.
The church and its intellectual property entity, Intellectual Reserve Inc., filed a trademark and copyright complaint in federal court Friday that names Dehlin and his Open Stories Foundation.
The lawsuit claims Dehlin willfully and knowingly created confusion by using logos and marks similar to the church’s and by using copyrighted church photographs.
Dehlin is the founder and host of the podcast “Mormon Stories.” He was excommunicated from the church in 2015."
KEVIN FREKING AND STEPHEN GROVES , AP; Democrat Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida resigns before the House can sanction her in ethics case
" Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida resigned Tuesday moments before a hearing was to begin to consider what punishment to recommend after a House ethics panel found she had committed numerous campaign finance and reporting violations.
The congresswoman was facing the possible threat of expulsion, something that has only occurred six times in the history of the House. Support from her own party was increasingly in doubt.
It’s the third resignation in a little more than a week from a House lawmaker. Reps. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, and Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, announced within hours of each other that they were leaving Congress. Both men were facing sexual misconduct allegations and possible expulsion."
Bryan Armen Graham , The Guardian; Churchill Downs strikes $85m deal for Preakness intellectual property rights
"Churchill Downs has reached a deal to acquire the intellectual property rights to the Preakness Stakes, the company announced Tuesday, in a move that brings one of US thoroughbred racing’s most celebrated events under the same corporate umbrella as the Kentucky Derby.
Churchill Downs Inc said it will pay $85m to buy the trademarks and associated rights to the Preakness and the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes from 1/ST Maryland LLC, an affiliate of 1/ST Racing.
The agreement covers the intellectual property tied to the races, not the events themselves. Under a separate licensing arrangement, Churchill Downs will grant the state of Maryland the rights needed to continue staging the races in exchange for an annual fee.
The transaction follows a 2024 agreement in which Maryland bought Pimlico Race Course from 1/ST Racing but allowed the company to retain the intellectual property rights to the Preakness and Black-Eyed Susan Stakes. Under that arrangement, 1/ST received annual payments and a share of wagering revenue tied to the races.
The Preakness Stakes, first run in 1873, is the second leg of US horse racing’s Triple Crown, held two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and followed by the Belmont Stakes. The Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, a major race for three-year-old fillies, is traditionally run the day before the Preakness at Pimlico Race Course in northwest Baltimore."
