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DHS surveilled peaceful protesters and then yanked their Global Entry, federal lawsuit alleges

Los Angeles Times

Plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in California allege that the Department of Homeland Security revoked their Global Entry privileges in retaliation for exercising their constitutional rights.


An Ebike Company Was Sued for Misleading Info on Safety. It Points to a Big Problem

WIRED

An Ebike Company Was Sued Over Alleged Safety Misinformation. Several Chinese businesses associated with the ebike brand Aipas settled a lawsuit with Amazon and the safety certification company UL in July. Amazon and UL, a company that tests and certifies that products meet safety standards, settled a lawsuit in July with several Chinese companies that manufacture ebikes under the Aipas brand name. The US companies accused the Chinese firms in January of claiming in Amazon listings and on Aipas' website that the ebikes had been certified by UL, giving recognizable, brand-name assurance to online shoppers worried about risks like ebike lithium-ion battery fires . On July 15, a federal judge signed off on a permanent injunction in which the companies agreed that they would no longer use the UL mark.


Apple and Google ordered by San Francisco attorney to take action against 'nudify' apps

Engadget

Apple and Google ordered by San Francisco attorney to take action against'nudify' apps Apple and Google ordered by San Francisco attorney to take action against'nudify' apps Both companies were sent cease-and-desist letters regarding 13 apps on their respective stores. Apple and Google have been sent cease-and-desist letters that demand they remove AI-powered nudify apps from their respective app stores. As reported by Wired, San Francisco city attorney David Chiu ordered the two tech giants to take down a total of 13 apps that can be used to create AI-generated deepfake nude images. The letters appeal to Apple and Google to stop aiding and abetting the spread of nonconsensual intimate images, and ask them to stop working with the app developers in question. This isn't the first time Chiu has taken on deepfake platforms, having previously filed a lawsuit against 16 websites that allow users to turn images of real women and girls into pornography using AI.


xAI sues Grok user for generating nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes

Engadget

The defendant used Grok to create sexualized images of adults and children, xAI says. SpaceXAI (as xAI) has filed a lawsuit against Terry Wayne Harwood, a 67-year-old man from South Carolina whom the company has accused of using Grok to generate sexual images of real people without their consent. In the complaint that xAI filed in Texas, it said that the defendant uploaded non-sexual images of numerous adults and minors to his two xAI accounts from December 8, 2025 until February 18, 2026. He then asked Grok to alter the photos or to create new images and videos depicting the adults and children in them in a pornographic manner or otherwise sexualizing them. The company said that Grok refused to follow his prompts on numerous occasions but that he repeatedly submitted edited prompts to circumvent the AI's safeguards. In one example mentioned in the filing, xAI said Harwood uploaded the photo of a fully dressed girl around 10 to 11 years old and then asked Grok to remove all of her clothing and make her do a Playboy model impression as she laid in bed.


xAI sues user for exploiting AI tool to sexualise minors

Al Jazeera

Elon Musk's xAI has filed a lawsuit against a South Carolina man who was arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting minors, alleging that he misused the company's AI tool to create sexually explicit content involving a child. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court on Tuesday, alleges that Terry Harwood knowingly violated the company's terms of service to create the material. Despite expressly agreeing to abide by the xAI Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, Defendant designed misleading prompts to circumvent Grok's built-in safeguards and then abused the tool to convert non-sexual photographs into sexually explicit images without the photograph subjects' knowledge or consent," the 12-page complaint said. The suit alleges that Harwood uploaded images of both adults and minors that were not sexual in nature and then tried to create so-called "deepfakes" that sexualised them. "A review of Defendant's xAI accounts further shows that on numerous occasions during the Relevant Period, Defendant submitted prompts to Grok to alter such images to sexualize the subjects of the images, which Grok responded to by refusing to follow the prompts on the basis that such material violated Grok's content moderation guardrails," the complaint added. "In response, Defendant repeatedly submitted further prompts, with alterations, in an effort to circumvent Grok's moderation efforts." The suit is the first brought by an AI company against one of its users and comes amid intense scrutiny of xAI around the world for allowing users to create this kind of content on the platform in the first place. Grok has been under the spotlight in Washington, been in the crosshairs of European regulators, and faced bans in both Malaysia and Indonesia regarding sexually explicit content that can be created on the platform. Earlier this year, Musk pushed back on allegations that Grok produced AI-generated sexualised images of children, especially nude images. "I [am] not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.


Authors, publishers sue Google over alleged AI copyright infringement

Al Jazeera

It also alleges that Google "downloaded web scrapes of virtually the entire internet, including from known pirate sources and from behind legitimate paywalls". It further alleges that Google copied those works without permission to train its AI models and continues to do so, despite those uses allegedly falling outside the scope of existing agreements. The suit claims the company was fully aware of the legal risks, alleging that internal documents warned using books to train AI models was "highly problematic for Google," and could lead to as much as $100bn in fines. "At no point did Google inform authors and publishers that Google was copying their works as source material to develop and train AI models," the suit alleges. "It's an interesting issue that has a lot of complex dimensions, in no small part because it can be hard to prove what was or wasn't in a training corpus."


Meta used AI to target workers with medical conditions for layoffs, lawsuit claims

The Japan Times

Twenty-six employees of Meta Platforms have filed a novel lawsuit accusing the tech giant of using AI-powered software that disproportionately targeted people with disabilities or who took medical leave in selecting workers for mass layoffs. The lawsuit, filed in Oakland, California, federal court late Monday, says that the company relied on factors such as productivity and AI token usage when it slashed thousands of jobs earlier this year, disadvantaging people who missed work because of medical conditions or to care for family members. The plaintiffs, who were notified in May that their jobs would be eliminated starting on July 22, are seeking a preliminary ruling from the court blocking Meta from completing the layoffs while they pursue their claims in private arbitration. The workers say Meta's agreements require employees to arbitrate workplace disputes individually, but do not apply to requests for temporary relief. A Meta spokesperson on Tuesday said the claims lack merit. "Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI," the spokesperson said.


Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs

Engadget

Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs Meta cut its workforce by 10 percent in May. Twenty-six former Meta employees are suing the company for allegedly using biased AI tools that disproportionately selected people who took medical leave as candidates to be laid off, reports . All the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were impacted by Meta's most recent round of layoffs, which cut around 8,000 employees in the hopes of offsetting the company's investments in AI and data center infrastructure. Meta is accused of using a constellation of artificial intelligence systems to select which employees should be cut. It's claimed those included an internal AI assistant called Metamate, employee-trained second brain agents, AI-token usage dashboards and keystroke-and activity-monitoring data.


Three publishers challenge Google over AI copyright infringement

Engadget

It's the latest in a barrage of efforts to win compensation from AI companies over training materials. Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning and Elsevier are the plaintiff companies and writer Scott Turow is the individual behind this effort . Yet Google has failed to implement effective guardrails. The literary world has made several attempts to make deals with the AI companies that have scraped and trained large language models off of their protected works. In fact, a group including several of the same parties already have a similar class action suit underway against Meta .


Lawsuit: Meta Used AI For Discriminatory Layoffs

Mother Jones

The tech giant allegedly targeted workers with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave. The layoffs were part of Meta's plan to cut 10 percent of staff in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit Monday evening accusing the tech company of using AI software to target employees with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave in its mass layoffs in May. Those layoffs were part of Meta's plans to cut 10 percent of its staff, or roughly 8,000 workers, and close about 6,000 open positions, in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives.