Petitions demanding people get the chance to be released from ICE custody have overwhelmed courts throughout the US. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota is pushing the United States court system to its breaking point. Since Operation Metro Surge began in December, federal immigration agents have arrested some 4,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result is an avalanche of cases filed in the US district court in Minnesota on behalf of people challenging their imprisonment by federal immigration enforcement agents. According to WIRED's review of court records and official judicial statistics, attorneys filed nearly as many so-called habeas corpus petitions in Minnesota alone as were filed across the US during an entire year.

Some commentators are convinced these training data claims are sure winnersb; others are equally sure the use of works to train foundation models is fair use, especially if the datasets consist of digital copies of works found on the open Internet.c It may be years before courts decide these and other claims in these lawsuits. Virtually all complaints ask for awards of actual damages and disgorgement of profits attributable to infringement, prejudgment interest, attorney fees, and costs. Most ask for injunctive relief and any other remedy the court may deem just. In these respects, the complaints are quite ordinary. But three types of remedy claims merit special attention: claims for awards of statutory damages; court orders to destroy models trained on infringing works; and most bizarrely, court orders to establish a regulatory regime to oversee generative AI system operations.

The fallout from the OpenAI board's failed attempt to fire CEO Sam Altman last November took an unexpected turn on Thursday, in events that could have a significant bearing on the future of the company and the wider world of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a San Francisco court, alleging that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman have violated OpenAI's founding mission to develop AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. The billionaire owner of SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman and Brockman back in 2015, but stepped away from the company in 2018. Musk disagreed with Altman and Brockman's plan to turn OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit company, and before stepping down, reportedly mounted an unsuccessful bid to install himself as CEO. Musk is suing Altman, Brockman, and several of OpenAI's business entities for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices, seeking unspecified damages above 105,000.

A US district judge has granted the Federal Trade Commission's request to temporarily block Microsoft's $69bn buyout of video game maker Activision Blizzard and set a hearing next week. Microsoft's bid to acquire the Call of Duty video game maker has been approved by the EU but blocked by British competition authorities, while the FTC, a US authority, has argued the transaction would give Microsoft's video game console Xbox exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo consoles and Sony's PlayStation out in the cold. Microsoft has said the deal would benefit gamers and gaming companies alike, and has offered to sign a legally binding consent decree with the FTC to provide Call of Duty games to rivals including Sony for a decade. On Tuesday, Judge Edward Davila scheduled a two-day evidentiary hearing on the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction for 22 and 23 June in San Francisco. Without a court order, Microsoft could have closed on the deal as early as Friday.

Uber has fired the head of its self-driving car unit, Anthony Levandowski, amid the continuing fallout from the engineer's alleged theft of trade secrets from his former employer, Google. The termination, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes three months after Levandowksi was accused of stealing 14,000 internal documents from Google's self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, and taking them to Uber. Waymo sued Uber in February, alleging that the ride-hail company was using the stolen documents to advance its lidar technology, and the case between the two Silicon Valley firms is set to go to trial in October. Uber has denied any wrongdoing, but Levandowski has invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. He has refused to turn over any documents or answer questions during a deposition.

Twitter has quietly started blocking certain words on the platform's built-in search engine. Words such as'porn', 'nsfw', 'sex' and similar terms will no longer appear when searched under'Latest' tab – but, racial slurs and the word'jihad' have not been removed. Although Twitter has blocked these words from being found in the Latest tab, users can still find some of the'forbidden' terms by searching in the'Top' tab. Twitter has quietly started blocking certain words on the platform's built-in search engine. Words such as'porn', 'nsfw', 'sex' and similar terms will no longer appear when searched under'Latest' tab Twitter says it'prohibits the promotion of hate content, sensitive topics, and violence globally.' But this policy does not apply to news and information that calls attention to hate, sensitive topics, or violence, but does not advocate for it.

Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google-parent Alphabet, is seeking a court order to stop Uber from using trade secrets, including thousands of confidential files it alleges were stolen by a former Waymo employee. Waymo is seeking a preliminary injunction against Uber. Waymo says a preliminary injunction will "prevent defendants from misappropriating Waymo's own technology to cheat and distort competition in this nascent market." That technology, which Waymo says was developed over thousands of hours by researchers, engineers and designers, includes light detection and ranging technology known as LiDAR that helps self-driving cars sense their surroundings. Uber said it was reviewing the matter and referred USA TODAY to its previous statement on the lawsuit.

Alphabet's Waymo, previously known as Google's self-driving car unit, is stepping up its legal attack on rival Uber Technologies, asking a court to block Uber from using Waymo technology against it in the race to develop self-driving cars. The request for a temporary injunction, filed Friday in a federal court in San Francisco, is part of an amended complaint against Uber and its Otto autonomous driving unit, which is accused of stealing Waymo trade secrets related to a crucial technology that lets driverless cars "see" what's around them. The Mountain View, California-based company's claims center on actions by Anthony Levandowski, a long-time member of Google's driverless car team who left to found Otto, a self-driving truck company, in 2016. Otto was acquired by Uber just a few months later for as much as $680 million. Waymo alleges that weeks before his departure from Waymo, Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 proprietary files from a Waymo server.

Waymo, the company that was formerly Google's self-driving-car division, on Friday sought a court order to stop Uber from using trade secrets allegedly stolen by a former Waymo employee who took a job with the ride-hailing firm. The preliminary injunction, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks to temporarily prohibit Uber from "accessing, using, imitating, copying, disclosing, or making available to any person or entity Waymo's" trade secrets. The filing requests a hearing occur on April 27 before Judge William H. Alsup. When reached for comment, Uber referred The Times to a statement it had issued a month earlier, describing Waymo's legal actions as a "baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court." Waymo last month sued Uber, alleging that former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation from the company in January 2016.

The Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled virtual assistant, is seen at its product launch for Britain and Germany in London, in 2016. After several months of pushback, Amazon has agreed to release user data from an Amazon Echo device involved in a high-profile Arkansas murder trial. The device, a popular, hands-free artificial intelligence assistant named "Alexa" that responds to human directives, contains audio recordings that prosecutors say could could provide information in the murder of Victor Collins, 47, who was found dead in his hot tub on Nov. 22, 2015, in Bentonville, Arkansas. James Bates, 31, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the case. Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith wrote in an email that prosecutors were "pleased" with Amazon's decision.