Australia's eSafety commissioner says the pressure on Roblox is about ensuring the gaming platform is a safe place for children. Australia's eSafety commissioner says the pressure on Roblox is about ensuring the gaming platform is a safe place for children. Regulator says verifiable safety measures are'critical' to the online service's viability Roblox has committed to making changes to its online gaming platform after Australia's eSafety commissioner discovered adults were still able to see child accounts and send connection requests without parental consent. The company has provided a legal agreement to the online safety regulator after testing earlier this year also revealed children and adults could view and respond to one another's posts on forums outside game environments without parental consent. Additionally, the regulator found children's connections and profiles - including account names and interests - were visible to anyone on Roblox.

Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy AI4Media Humans Do The Heavy Data Lifting Licenced by CC-BY 4.0 The Royal Statistical Society's AI Task Force has issued a critical mandate via a new paper, AI Regulation Needs Statistics, which demands that statistical principles actively shape global AI governance. The publication escalates the core argument of their foundational work, AI is Statistics . This earlier paper argued that AI is fundamentally statistical, meaning effective and ethical deployment is impossible without statistical literacy. You can watch our expert panel discuss the topic here . A major focus of that work was around the challenges of evaluating AIs, given that they are dynamic systems that continue to evolve once they have been deployed in the real world.

The BoE and City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority will aim to ensure the four main providers of cloud and tech services to banks are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber attack. The BoE and City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority will aim to ensure the four main providers of cloud and tech services to banks are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber attack. Direct oversight of'critical third parties' such as Oracle and Microsoft given to ensure resilient cyber-defences and help safeguard UK economy The Bank of England has been handed powers to regulate important tech firms including Amazon and Google from next week, amid fears that system failures could threaten financial stability and harm consumers. From Monday, the Bank and fellow City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will be in charge of ensuring that four large-scale providers of cloud and tech services to banks are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber-attacks and major outages that could disrupt services for millions of people and businesses across the UK. This will mean having "direct" oversight of local arms of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Oracle and Microsoft, all of which have been identified as "critical third parties" by the UK government, according to an announcement on Friday.

UK's top data and AI regulator quits after'inappropriate' humour John Edwards, the UK's information commissioner, has resigned following a workplace investigation. I have accepted that there have been occasions where I exercised poor judgement and made attempts at humour that were inappropriate and caused offence, he said in a statement on Friday. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is responsible for regulating AI in the UK and also oversees data protection regulation and the freedom of information law. Edwards' resignation was confirmed by the government, which said it had come after an independent probe that took place regarding allegations made against him. The government expects the highest standards of conduct from all senior leaders in public life, said a spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

Musk's Grok accused of violating Canadian privacy laws on deepfakes The official report, which was released on Thursday, comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform rolled out changes that would prevent Grok from allowing users to edit images of real people in revealing clothing. Is dollar dominance at risk? Dufresne, however, does not have the authority to impose fines or order policy changes for xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is set to go public on United States markets on Friday, marking the biggest initial public offering in modern history. The watchdog report comes amidst a newly released digital safety bill aimed at children. The bill, if passed, would ban social media use for children under 16, with exceptions for companies that meet safety standards. The legislation would create a digital regulator to help establish safety standards for AI chatbots, much like Grok.

Regulatory frameworks, such as the EU AI Act, encourage openness of general-purpose AI models by offering legal exemptions for open-source models. Despite this legislative attention on openness, the definition of open-source foundation models remains ambiguous. This paper presents a stylized model of the regulator's choice of an open-source definition in order to evaluate which standards will establish appropriate economic incentives for developers.

Government departments and other public bodies in the UK must consider requests to release information about AI-produced content, regulators have confirmed. The move follows a successful request by New Scientist for the release of a minister's ChatGPT logs The use of AI chatbots is subject to the UK's Freedom of Information laws Text, images and other content produced by UK government departments and other public bodies using artificial intelligence are subject to freedom of information (FOI) laws, regulators have confirmed - potentially opening the door for the public to gain access to ministers' ChatGPT or other chatbot records. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data-protection agency, has released new guidance confirming that "If staff at a public authority use AI for work purposes, the information generated will be subject to FOIA [the Freedom of Information Act] along with the prompts used". Last year, successfully requested the then-UK tech secretary Peter Kyle's ChatGPT logs under FOI legislation, in what is believed to be a world first. That triggered subsequent requests from other news outlets to obtain other information, but many have either been rejected on cost grounds or labelled as "vexatious", an umbrella term that allows authorities to reject a request.

A judge ordered Kalshi to immediately halt sports and election contracts in the state, intensifying a growing regulatory battle over prediction markets. Kalshi has been temporarily banned in Nevada, marking the latest escalation in the widening regulatory war over prediction markets. The First Judicial District Court of Nevada has issued a 14-day restraining order, effective immediately, barring the company from "offering a derivatives exchange and prediction market which offers event-based contracts relating to sports, election, and entertainment related events" without first obtaining gaming licenses. This is the first time a US state has forced the company to cease operations. This particular legal battle began just over a year ago, when Nevada regulators sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop offering sports-related events contracts.

Ad for AI editing app which said it could'remove anything' banned An advert for a video and image editing tool that implied viewers could digitally remove a woman's clothing has been banned by the UK advertising regulator. The YouTube ad for PixVideo - AI Video Maker, seen in January, showed a before and after image of a young women, with red scribble overlaid on her midriff in the former, and parts of her bare skin exposed in the latter. Text across the bottom of the picture stated: Erase anything followed by a heart-eyes emoji. Eight people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ad sexualised and objectified women, and was irresponsible, offensive and harmful. It is not clear whether the image in the ad is of a real person or is itself AI-generated, with the ASA telling the BBC making such an assessment had not been part of its investigation.

RWDS Big Questions: how do we balance innovation and regulation in the world of AI? AI development is accelerating, while regulation moves more deliberately. That tension creates a core challenge: how do we maintain momentum without breaking the things that matter? The aim isn't to slow innovation unnecessarily, but to ensure progress happens at a pace that protects individuals and society. Responsible actors should not be disadvantaged -- yet safeguards are essential to maintain trust. For the latest video in our RWDS Big Questions series, our panel explores this delicate balance.