United Kingdom
US, Britain, EU to sign first international AI treaty
- The first legally binding international AI treaty, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, was opened for signature. The AI Convention addresses the risks AI may pose, and promotes responsible innovation.
- The Convention mainly focuses on the protection of the human rights of people affected by AI systems, and is separate from the EU AI Act.
- Signatories can choose to adopt or maintain legislative, administrative, or other measures to give effect to the provisions.
- The UK government has said it would work with regulators, devolved administrations, and local authorities to ensure it can implement its new requirements.
United States
Elon Musk’s X wins appeal to block part of California content moderation law
- X won an appeal to partially block a California law requiring social media companies to publish their policies for combating disinformation, harassment, hate speech and extremism.
- The law requires social media companies to issue public reports that describe their content moderation practices and providing data on the number of objectionable posts (and how these were addressed).
- A lower court judge’s decision declining to pause enforcement of the new California law was overturned by a three-judge panel. The panel held that the law’s requirements were “more extensive than necessary” to justify the state’s goal of forcing social media companies to be open about their moderation policies and practices.
Snap sued by New Mexico over failure to protect children from sexual exploitation
- New Mexico filed a lawsuit against Snapchat owner Snap alleging the messaging app’s policies and design featured facilitate the sharing of child sexual exploitation material.
- New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said a months-long investigation found Snapchat was a primary platform for sextortion (in which a predator coerces a minor into sending explicit photos or videos and threatens to distribute the content unless more sexual content or money is paid).
- Investigators found 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse content on dark websites.
- A Snap spokesperson said the company was reviewing the complaint and would respond in court.
US indicts Russian intelligence officials over cyberattacks targeting Ukraine
- The US charged 5 Russian intelligence officials and a Russian civilian with conspiring to launch cyberattacks against Ukraine and its allies. In addition to targeting Ukraine, they allegedly targeted at least 26 NATO countries by scanning them for vulnerabilities.
- The Justice Department said a cyber unit of Russia’s military intelligence agency conducted “large-scale cyber operations” starting as far back as 2020.
Europe
Irish data privacy watchdog case against X is ‘struck out’
- Court proceedings brought by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) against the social media platform X are over, after X agreed to permanently stop processing some personal data collected in the EU to train AI.
- The DPC has not clarified If X promised to stop using personal data from EU users to train Grok AI or if the permanent suspension is only for user data collected from May to August.
- Max Schrems, lawyer and founder of Noyb (a digital rights non-profit) has said that X “got away without a fine, despite a flagrant violation of the law” and “the data already ingested for Grok AI will also not be deleted, and Twitter continues to offer the product based on unlawfully obtained data.”
- The DPC has stated it will send a request for an opinion on AI data processing basis and legalities to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
International
Starlink backtracks, complies with order blocking X in Brazil, says regulator
- Starlink (Elon Musk’s satellite broadband firm) has said it is complying with Brazil’s top court order to block access to social media platform X, after it previously said it would not obey the order.
- Previously, the top court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered a freeze of Starlink accounts for possible use to pay fines owned by X. X was blocked in Brazil following an order to all telecom providers in the country to shut it down for lacking a legal representative in the country.
- Starlink has said that “regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil”.
