A 13-Year-Old Asked AI About Suicide on Her School Laptop. It Didn't Get Flagged for Weeks The young girl's parents allege that she used Gemini via her school Chromebook to plan her suicide, but the school's monitoring systems didn't know until it was almost too late. A 13-year-old girl spent three months using her school-issued laptop to discuss depression, research suicide, and plan her funeral before self-harm-monitoring software finally prompted school officials to alert her parents, who intervened and stopped her, according to a lawsuit filed this month by her parents. The lawsuit alleges that Google and parent company Alphabet were negligent in their rollout of a Gemini model, claiming that the AI chatbot "coached" the North Carolina teenager to consider taking her own life. The case, which was previously reported by The New York Times, is one of several that allege harm from AI chatbot use, including claims of delusions and suicide .

Judge allows Trump's $10bn defamation case against BBC to proceed A federal judge in Florida has allowed US President Donald Trump's defamation case against the BBC to go ahead after the broadcaster sought to dismiss it. But Judge Jeffrey Kuntz dismissed a second claim in the $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit under the state's unfair trade practices law. The US president is suing the BBC over an episode of Panorama that edited together two different sections of a speech he gave before the riot at the US Capitol in 2021. Trump called the judge's ruling a huge victory in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. A BBC spokesperson said: We are surprised by this decision but respect the Court's authority and note the case will now proceed to the next stage.

Groups that own the music rights to Elvis Presley and Eminem's tracks filed the latest lawsuits. As first reported by Variety, a group that owns the rights to Presley's music and Eight Mile Style, a music publishing company that owns hundreds of Eminem recordings, filed separate lawsuits against Suno. Both lawsuits offered examples of songs created through the AI music generator that allegedly sound like Presley or mimic Eminem's lyrics. A group of attorneys representing the plaintiffs in each case said that Suno's actions make human creativity obsolete, coldly replicating without a license in seconds what takes years to learn, struggle with, maintain, and endlessly attempt to make better and perfect. Suno countered with a statement to that said it doesn't allow any unauthorized use of an artist's work, specifying that it prohibits using specific artists' names and songs, while also working with third-party companies to screen for potential misuse.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Trending Now Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Safety Net Mashable @Home In My Bag Versus Creator Playbook Getting Technical with Mashable All Series Google's classroom AI features face intense scrutiny. Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Google's educational dominance may be at risk as concerns about AI mount. A family is suing Google for alleged negligence in offering Gemini to student learners via school-issued Chromebooks, after the AI chatbot aided their teen daughter in planning her suicide. The Chromebooks offered dangerous chatbot access, the lawsuit alleges.

So far, Department of Justice-led efforts to sow chaos, even as Americans are already voting, have fallen flat. Polls are looking pretty bleak for Republicans --and the Trump administration's various attempts to interfere with the elections haven't been too successful either. In recent weeks, the Department of Justice, helmed by Attorney General Todd Blanche, a proponent of conspiracy theories about widespread noncitizen voting in the 2020 election, has pulled out all the stops to sow doubt in voters' minds about the security and validity of the electoral process. To do this, the DOJ has spent the last year demanding unredacted voter rolls, issuing executive orders to wrest control of elections from states, raiding election offices, proposing new laws to disenfranchise millions of citizens, and claiming that noncitizens were voting en masse across the country. There have also been escalating threats by the DOJ against election officials. On Thursday, the DOJ sent letters to election officials in all 50 states warning them that they would pursue criminal action if they failed to preserve election records for 22 days.

The legal battle revolves around the AI company's operations in southern Memphis. A federal judge's latest ruling has denied xAI's request to dismiss a lawsuit that alleges its data center campus in Memphis, Tennessee is running turbines without proper permits and violating the Clean Air Act. The decision, from US District Judge Debra M. Brown, allows the lawsuit, which was filed by the NAACP, to move forward. The organization filed its legal action against xAI in April, accusing the company that's now known as SpaceXSI of using unpermitted methane gas turbines to power data centers in the Memphis area. Despite the ongoing lawsuit that also claimed it's violating the Clear Air Act, Elon Musk's company continued to add more gas turbines to another AI data center site in the nearby Southhaven, Mississippi community.

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable @Home In My Bag Safety Net Versus Trending Now Say More Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable All Series Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. The 2026 midterm elections are on Tuesday, and ballots across the country are already streaming in. Prospective candidates have been in a race against time, money, and the tech industry itself, as major players pledge millions to campaigns and AI threatens to stoke mass confusion. Control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is at play, as well as important gubernatorial races and statewide propositions. Here's how to stay in the loop on Tuesday and beyond.

Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Mashable @Home In My Bag Safety Net Versus Trending Now Say More Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable All Series The lawsuit says the chatbot helped her hide the plan from her doctors in the weeks before she died. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . The parents of a 31-year-old Seattle woman are suing OpenAI, alleging the company's AI chatbot led to her death, according to a new report from .

Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home In My Bag Safety Net Look Up Versus Trending Now Say More Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable All Series AT&T's $177 million class-action settlement payout is coming, but probably won't change your life Several million dollars divided by several million people actually won't leave you with much. Amanda Yeo is an Assistant Editor at Mashable, covering entertainment, culture, tech, science, and social good. Based in Australia, she writes about everything from video games and K-pop to movies and gadgets. AT&T settled a $177 million class-action lawsuit last year, agreeing to pay customers whose personal information was stolen in two data breaches. A Texas district court has since approved the settlement agreement on Oct. 2. However, even if you were impacted, this doesn't mean a windfall is coming your way.

The owners of Elvis Presley's music just sued Anthropic for 41 million, claiming the AI company trained its models on 274 Elvis songs without permission, The New York Times reported. That amount for a single artist who died nearly 50 years ago shows how expensive alleged musical plagiarism can be for AI companies. Stakeholders in Elvis Presley's back catalog include Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing, multiple trusts and at least one individual. Those include hits like Don't Be Cruel, Can't Help Falling in Love and A Little Less Conversation, according to the lawsuit filed on October 23rd. "The Elvis Plaintiffs' iconic collective catalog contains some of the most influential and enduring musical compositions in human history."