The Fight to Hold AI Companies Accountable for Children's Deaths After a series of suicides allegedly linked to AI chatbots, one lawyer is trying to hold companies like OpenAI accountable. Cedric Lacey relied on a camera to check on his kids while he was working as a commercial van driver going to and back from Alabama. Each morning, he would tune into the feed of his living room to make sure his teenage son, Amaurie, and his 14-year-old daughter were packing up their bags and getting ready to leave for school. But one morning last June, Lacey didn't see Amaurie up and about. Concerned, he called home, only to find out that his 17-year-old had hanged himself.

Landmark cases on social media's impact on children begin this week in US Two lawsuits accusing the world's largest social media companies of harming children begin this week, marking the first legal efforts to hold companies like Meta responsible for the effects their products have on young users. Opening arguments began today in a case brought by New Mexico's attorney general's office, which alleges that Meta failed to protect children from sexually explicit material. A separate case in Los Angeles, which accuses Meta and the Google-owned YouTube of deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive for children, is set to begin later this week. The New Mexico and California lawsuits are the first of a wave of 40 lawsuits filed by state attorneys general around the US against Meta, specifically, that allege that the social media giant is harming the mental health of young Americans. In the opening argument in the New Mexico case, which was first filed in 2023, prosecutors told jurors on Monday that Meta - Facebook and Instagram's parent company - had failed to disclose its platforms' harmful effects on kids.

Instagram Is Introducing New Restrictions for Teen Users. In this photo illustration a 13-year-old boy looks at an iPhone screen display on May 21, 2025 in Bath, England. In this photo illustration a 13-year-old boy looks at an iPhone screen display on May 21, 2025 in Bath, England. Instagram announced new restrictions for teen accounts on Tuesday amid mounting controversy over safety guidelines for younger users on the social media platform. The photo-sharing app will soon limit content for teens using guidelines similar to those in the film industry for PG-13-rated movies.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. "Free speech" was the battering ram that Elon Musk used to justify his pursuit of Twitter in 2022. He talked about the platform as the new digital town square. He said social media companies' moderation policies should be no more restrictive than national laws. "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means," he wrote after agreeing to a 44 billion takeover. In the three years since making the deal, Musk has continued to cloak himself in the armor of a free speech warrior, out there fighting for the rest of us.

Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has purchased X, according to a post shared by Musk. Besides their similar names and owner, the companies are already connected through xAI's chatbot Grok, which is integrated into X. X was acquired by xAI through an all-stock transaction. "The combination values xAI at 80 billion and X at 33 billion ( 45B less 12B debt)," Musk writes. "xAI and X's futures are intertwined."

With the NHS still struggling, a prisons crisis still teetering and Britain's borrowing costs soaring, there are few easy jobs going in Keir Starmer's cabinet at present. But even in such difficult times, the task of convincing Silicon Valley's finest to help make Britain a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution – all while one leading tech boss uses the Labour government as a regular punching bag and others ostentatiously move closer to Donald Trump – is among the most challenging. This is the mission that has fallen to Peter Kyle, the science and technology secretary, who has become an important figure in Starmer's cabinet. If balancing the concerns over online free speech, AI's impact on the climate crisis and the threat it poses to wiping out humanity are not enough, the economic headwinds Britain is now experiencing makes the launch this week of the government's AI action plan even more important. And Kyle is worried Britain could miss the boat.

High school student Elliston Berry discusses the Take It Down Act, a measure that would force social media companies to remove graphic deepfakes, prevent them from being posted and criminalize the act. Senate lawmakers unanimously passed the bipartisan-led Take It Down Act that would force social media companies to speedily remove sexually explicit deepfakes, prevent them from being posted and criminalize the act. For deepfake pornography victims like 15-year-old Elliston Berry, the measure would be long overdue. The Texas high school student is working with lawmakers to get the bill passed to protect victims like herself. She's inspired by her own story from last year, when she discovered deepfake nude images of herself circulating across social media in a sinister cyber scheme that turned her life upside down.

Elon Musk appears to have many obsessions. The world's richest man is evangelical about electric vehicles, space travel and Donald Trump. Another of his interests may yet have profound consequences for the UK: British politics. The billionaire is reported to be thinking of becoming the biggest donor in history with a rumoured 80m payment to Nigel's Farage's Reform UK party. Like so many who embraced Trump's bellicose brand of rightwing populism, Musk was radicalised by his frustration at lockdowns, according to Musk watchers.

Last year, Kaylin Hayman walked into a Pittsburgh court to testify against a man she'd never met who had used her face to make pornographic pictures with artificial intelligence technology. Kaylin, 16, is a child actress who starred in the Disney show Just Roll With It from 2019 to 2021. The perpetrator, a 57-year-old man named James Smelko, had targeted her because of her public profile. She is one of about 40 of his victims, all of them child actors. In one of the images of Kaylin submitted into evidence at the trial, Smelko used her face from a photo posted on Instagram when she was 12, working on set, and superimposed it onto the naked body of someone else.

The Supreme Court's conservative justices want to reduce government regulation of private industry. Of that they are certain. Unless the private industry is artificial intelligence or social media. On that, they need some time to think. This summer, the Supreme Court issued two decisions that will impact the future of A.I. regulation.