This is the week of Black Hat and Defcon, which means a flood of news coming out of the Las Vegas security conferences. As you might expect, artificial intelligence was one popular topic--specifically, using AI chatbots to cause mischief. One team of researchers, from Tel Aviv University, created a clever attack that allowed them to take over a target's smart home devices using a "poisoned" Google Calendar invite. It's the first known attack method that used AI to impact physical devices. Another researcher used a poisoned document that included a malicious prompt to trick ChatGPT into leaking a user's private information when it's connected to a Google Drive.

Politico became one of the first newsrooms last year to win a union contract that included rules on how the media outlet can deploy artificial intelligence. The PEN Guild, which represents Politico and its sister publication, environment and energy site E&E News, is now gearing up for another first. The union's members allege that the AI provisions in their contract have been violated, and they're preparing for a groundbreaking legal dispute with management. The outcome could set a precedent for how much input journalists ultimately have over how AI is used in their newsrooms. Last year, Politico began publishing AI-generated live news summaries during big political events like the Democratic National Convention and the US vice presidential debates.

Back in 2022, the European Commission released a proposal for a directive on how to combat domestic violence and violence against women in other forms. Now, the European Council and Parliament have agreed with the proposal to criminalize, among other things, different types of cyber-violence. The proposed rules will criminalize the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, including deepfakes made by AI tools, which could help deter revenge porn. Cyber-stalking, online harassment, misogynous hate speech and "cyber-flashing," or the sending of unsolicited nudes, will also be recognized as criminal offenses. The commission says that having a directive for the whole European Union that specifically addresses those particular acts will help victims in Member States that haven't criminalized them yet.

WATCH LIVE: VP Harris meets with UK PM Rishi Sunak in Munich. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is reportedly hoping to pitch the United Kingdom as a world leader in artificial intelligence governance during his meeting with President Joe Biden. But a post-Brexit U.K. has been locked out of key discussions between the United States and the European Union, such as the fourth Tech and Trade Council (TTC) meeting in Sweden. The White House said both the U.S. and EU recommitted to deepening cooperation on setting AI standards in line with democratic values and universal human rights and work together on emerging technologies "with like-minded partners." Politico reported in March that the Biden administration, meanwhile, has quietly rebuffed British officials' repeated requests for greater dialogue between Washington, D.C., and the U.K. regarding setting AI standards.

Then-Google AI Research Scientist Timnit Gebru speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 conference. Last Thursday POLITICO's Mark Scott, author of the Digital Bridge newsletter, interviewed the computer scientist and activist Timnit Gebru about a recent open letter from her Distributed AI Research Institute that argued -- contra the Future of Life Institute's high-profile letter calling for an "AI pause" -- that the major harms caused by AI are already here, and therefore "Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices." Mark asked her what she thinks regulators' role should be in this fast-moving landscape, and how society might take a more proactive approach to shaping AI before it simply shapes us. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why is it important to increase the transparency and accountability for how AI systems are deployed, and how would it benefit people's understanding of how the technology works?

I'm Mark Scott, POLITICO's chief technology correspondent, and after a week of vacation, I'm honestly struggling to get myself up and running this week. With that in mind, here's the pep song that has been keeping me going as I've written this week's newsletter. Warning: it'll get stuck in your mind. We'll tell you where to look for it. HERE'S MY PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WEEK: let's cool the hype around OpenAI, Google's Bard and the sudden tsunami of so-called generative artificial intelligence use cases that have just popped up (looking at you, Pope in a puffer coat.)

The Italian privacy regulator Friday ordered a ban on ChatGPT over alleged privacy violations. The national data protection authority said it will immediately block and investigate OpenAI, the U.S. company behind the popular artificial intelligence tool, from processing the data of Italian users. The order is temporary until the company respects the EU's landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Calls to suspend new ChatGPT releases and investigate its maker OpenAI over a range of risks for privacy, cybersecurity and disinformation are growing on both sides of the Atlantic. Elon Musk and dozens of AI experts this week called for a pause to updates of ChatGPT.

As generative AI and its eerily human chatbots explode into the public realm -- including Google's Bard, released yesterday -- Silicon Valley looks ripe for another big era of disruption. Think about the era of personal computers, or online businesses, or social platforms, when an accessible, unpredictable new idea shakes up the establishment. But unlike earlier disruptions, the reality of the generative AI race is already looking a little … top-heavy. With AI, the big innovation isn't the kind of cheap, accessible technology that helps garage startups grow into world-changing new companies. The models that underpin the AI era can be extremely, extremely expensive to build.

As generative AI and its eerily human chatbots explode into the public realm -- including Google's Bard, released yesterday -- Silicon Valley looks ripe for another big era of disruption. Think about the era of personal computers, or online businesses, or social platforms, when an accessible, unpredictable new idea shakes up the establishment. But unlike earlier disruptions, the reality of the generative AI race is already looking a little … top-heavy. With AI, the big innovation isn't the kind of cheap, accessible technology that helps garage startups grow into world-changing new companies. The models that underpin the AI era can be extremely, extremely expensive to build.

The first was Do Kwon, the Terra/Luna mogul who canceled his talk abruptly at a Web3 conference last year. Now it's Silicon Valley Bank executive Rochelle Stewart, who didn't appear here at SXSW in Austin on Monday for a scheduled "mentor session" (the link now produces a 404 error) on entrepreneurship and business development. Which is understandable, considering the bank's sudden collapse over the weekend is the biggest U.S. financial disaster since the 2008 crisis. The Silicon Valley Bank saga might seem at first like a pure finance story, an update of 2008 for the Uber-for-everything startup era. But that update is exactly why it's something much bigger: It is a cold-water reminder that the sprawling ecosystem of startups working on blockchain, AI and virtual-reality tech (among other things) isn't just driven by pure intellect and ambition.