Policy & Regulation

Microsoft President Brad Smith is calling for binding AI safety rules and arguing that the UK is better placed than the US or EU to coordinate them. He favors independent evaluations, mandatory incident reporting, and mechanisms that can pause systems when human control is at risk.

Tesla has replaced Full Self-Driving (Supervised) with Tesla Assisted Driving on its websites in several European countries. The change highlights the regulatory limits and safety concerns surrounding its driver-assistance system.

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs in data center negotiations with local governments, following a similar move by Microsoft. The change may improve disclosure, but communities want more than access to information.

OpenAI will roll out invisible watermarks for ChatGPT and Codex text in the European Union to meet the EU AI Act’s transparency requirements. The marks can help detectors identify text, but editing, short passages, math answers, and translations can make detection less reliable.

Nolla Health is piloting a service in Utah that scans a user’s face, assesses mild-to-moderate acne, and can issue an initial prescription. The program tests how far AI can move from clinical assistance into direct treatment decisions.

President Donald Trump has announced a new Super Intelligence Force to coordinate the federal government’s AI efforts. The group is expected to produce a report on AI risks and opportunities within 120 days.

Amazon says it will invest more than $1 billion in communities near its data centers over five years and end the use of NDAs for new projects. Environmental advocates welcome the transparency measure but argue that the plan sidesteps pollution, water use, and backup-power concerns.

US prosecutors accuse Earthmade Computer CEO Greg Lui of using false paperwork and Asian transit routes to divert Nvidia GPU servers to China. The arrest highlights how difficult it is to enforce export controls once chips are embedded in complete systems.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to have dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House on September 27, 2026. It will be their first one-on-one meeting, coming after public disagreements over AI safety and the pace of development.

A divided US appeals court ruled that the Pentagon could designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk after the company refused to remove some restrictions on Claude’s military use. The decision turns on the government’s broader statutory authority, not on a finding that Anthropic acted maliciously.

Sony and Universal Music Group have filed another lawsuit against Suno, arguing that its v6 music model still carries forward copyright risks tied to earlier systems. The case raises a broader question: can a new model escape liability by learning from the outputs of an allegedly infringing predecessor?

A US pilot is using artificial intelligence to handle prior authorization for selected Medicare services in six states. Documents and provider feedback point to technical failures, long delays, confusing denials, and weak support channels.

New Jersey fined DataOne $1.1 million after investigators found that its Vineland data center had installed and operated dozens of gas generators without required air permits. Residents say the penalty does little to address pollution, noise, or the broader problem of data centers moving first and seeking approval later.

British Columbia is seeking damages and safety changes from OpenAI after a deadly shooting in Tumbler Ridge, while also asking for access to the suspect’s ChatGPT logs.

California has enacted seven bills requiring AI data centers to help pay for local grid and water-system upgrades. New projects will also face disclosure requirements covering water use, energy efficiency, and drought planning.

Donald Trump says he wants to appoint an AI czar to lead a new “AI Force,” but has offered no timeline, structure, or candidate. His proposal comes as debate grows over whether AI development should be slowed or more tightly controlled.

Anthropic’s proposal to slow frontier AI briefly appeared to attract support from several industry leaders, but the consensus is already breaking apart. OpenAI is calling for national standards, while Meta and the Trump administration favor greater company autonomy.

Newly unsealed filings in The New York Times’ case against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal warnings that chatbots could weaken publishers, reduce referral traffic, and damage the content supply chain behind AI models.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has signed an executive order aimed at making data center development more transparent and giving communities a larger role in the process. The order also creates a task force to examine the social and legal risks of artificial intelligence.

The Federal Register briefly offered an AI search feature powered by Alibaba’s Qwen3 0.6B open-weight model. The episode highlights the tension between Washington’s security concerns about Chinese AI and the practical appeal of locally deployed open models.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered experts to examine stronger AI safety rules, including a potentially mandated kill switch for frontier models. The state also wants independent audits and broader reporting of serious control failures.