A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits from publisher Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and ed tech company Chegg that alleged Google's AI Overviews illegally pulled readers away by repackaging their online content, Reuters reports. In a memorandum opinion on both lawsuits, Judge Amit Mehta, coincidentally the same judge who ruled that Google maintained a monopoly in online search services in 2024, said the companies failed to argue the search provider violated antitrust laws. PMC and Chegg's original lawsuits claimed that Google was using AI Overviews and its vast index of the web to siphon traffic away from their online ad businesses, hurting their revenue. Chegg additionally said that Google was effectively forcing websites to offer their content up for AI scraping or face being excluded from search results. Judge Mehta dismissed both claims for a variety of reasons, but broadly found that neither company convincingly argued that Google was leveraging its monopoly to get them to provide free material for its AI, or that the search provider was trying to gain an unfair advantage in digital publishing.

Trump's AI Safety'Accord' Is a Fancy Pinky-Swear Six major AI companies signed a voluntary agreement with the White House this week vowing to implement safeguards. On Tuesday, executives for Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia all signed "The White House Accord on Super Intelligence," which was announced following a luncheon held by President Donald Trump. The effort was an act of "tremendous self-regulation," as Trump put it, but the agreement is not the sweeping AI regulation that people inside the companies themselves have been asking for. And while failing to honor these public commitments could count as illegally lying to consumers, even that wouldn't be enough to trigger massive reforms. The statement says that companies "should implement" several things: First, they should ensure they have "robust internal controls" to monitor their models' capabilities and ability to not go rogue or hack things in unintended ways.

Who gets to decide how quickly AI moves? Share Who gets to decide how quickly AI moves? on social media Artificial intelligence (AI) has stirred up more controversy than most things in the past five years. Ever since the introduction of accessible generative AI in 2022, institutions, universities, students, scholars, activists, cognitive specialists, public policymakers and members of the public have all been divided over the ethics of its use. As of the beginning of this month, even the founders of AI companies have taken the same stance. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, released an essay calling on AI companies to slow the development of their most advanced models, as the safeguards currently in place are unable to keep up.

The AI'Slowdown' Is an Antitrust Mess By framing their efforts as a "slowdown" rather than an industry-wide push for better security standards, AI labs may have set themselves up for years of regulatory headaches. Following multiple reports of AI agent swarms hacking websites and coordinating via secret message boards, along with a dire message for humanity from an outgoing Anthropic engineer, leading AI companies have called for a coordinated AI development "slowdown ." Alongside various versions of this specific phrase--slowdown--they've also expressed concerns that doing so would run afoul of antitrust laws. Antitrust experts say that while the companies' charged language isn't necessarily doing them any favors, the unrestrained development of a rogue killer AI probably isn't in line with the spirit of the Sherman Act, a key US antitrust law that exists to promote a competitive marketplace. At the same time, getting an official all-clear from the government to move forward could ward off costly investigations down the line.

Allowing AI firms to collude to'pace the frontier' is a dangerous proposition Anthropic's Dario Amodei is not the first corporate CEO to suggest that excessive competition is driving the world to some socially undesirable outcome. The safety breach disclosed by OpenAI after a swarm of its agents coordinated to breach their supposedly secure sandbox, get on the Internet and hack AI platform Hugging Face, warrants urgent action. It demonstrated the ease with which the technology can evade human control and gave concrete form to the existential fears about what it could do to humanity if not securely leashed. The end of the world may well be nigh, as some in the AI industry have warned. These are truly scary times.

AI leaders worry antitrust law could stand in the way of what they view as an increasingly urgent push to coordinate a slowdown in AI development. OpenAI has asked members of Congress in recent weeks for clear guidance about whether orchestrating an industry-wide slowdown on frontier AI development would be legal, people close to the company tell WIRED. Substantive coordination on safety between AI labs may risk running afoul of antitrust law, the people say, which poses a significant obstacle to bringing major tech giants on board with the effort. Last weekend, OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, published a blog post arguing that the best path forward for the AI research world includes "coordinating to slow down future development," which he thinks will be key to ensuring that self-improving AI systems are safe. In the short term, he expects " voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established."

US judge rejects bid to break up Google's ad business Share US judge rejects bid to break up Google's ad business on social media Alphabet's Google has escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business, marking the third time in recent years that United States antitrust enforcers have tried to force a Big Tech breakup and lost. US Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20 percent fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. The judge accepted behavioural remedies. The reasoning behind today's decision was not immediately made public. Brinkema filed her opinion under seal for 14 days, leaving the details of how Google must change its ad business unknown for now.

Taiwanese authorities have indicted nine people, including employees of Nvidia and Super Micro Computer, over their alleged involvement in the illegal export of artificial intelligence servers to China. Eight of those indicted, including one employee of Nvidia's Taiwan unit and two employees of Supermicro's Taiwan unit, were charged with breach of trust and document forgery in connection with the illegal export of high-end AI servers, prosecutors in the port city of Keelung said in a statement on Monday. An additional 56 servers were seized at Taiwan's border, the statement said. Three of the defendants have been charged with embezzlement. Semiconductor powerhouse Taiwan is the world's largest producer of advanced chips used in AI applications.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Say More Mashable Selects Mashable Voices Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag All Series Deliberately destroying rare books might be the final straw in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission. Earlier this month, we reported on the disturbing trend of AI companies using physical copies of books to train their agentic AI, in a practice so eerily reminiscent of book burning that it's spooking even devotees of artificial intelligence . Well, according to Axios, the FTC is now being urged to investigate the practice, not, as we might like, for crimes against humanity, but for violations of antitrust law, since every book destroyed is one less book available for competing AI agents to use. SEE ALSO: AI companies keep destroying old books. Axios reports that [m]ore than a dozen civil society groups, including Demand Progress Education Fund, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, are urging the FTC to investigate these practices, particularly those involving rare books.

The European Commission claims that Google boosted its own apps and products to the top of search rankings to the detriment of its competitors. The European Commission has levied a $1 billion penalty against Google over alleged competition law violations. An EC investigation found that Google had abused its dominance in the European Union's search and app store markets to funnel people toward its own apps and services, in violation of the EU's Digital Markets Act . The body has ordered Google to refrain from giving preferential treatment to its own services--such as shopping, accommodations, transport, and flights--in search rankings. Google must also allow app developers to communicate and transact with users outside the Play Store, where it takes a commission on sales .