AI

• The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced plans to integrate AI drafting of regulations into its rulemaking process, making the agency “the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules” [ProPublica] | Ars Technica]

• The European Commission and California have opened investigations into Elon Musk’s x.AI after an avalanche of complaints that Grok repeatedly created non-consensual deepfake porn for X (formerly Twitter) users, including depictions of children; India, France and Malaysia have announced potential actions against Grok [NY Times ($) | European Commission Press release | PBS News | The Verge | The MarkUp | TechCrunch | Mashable | Times of India]

• Related: An assessment of Grok’s outputs by Common Sense Media, including its AI companions and “Kid’s Mode” features, found that the AI platform had “inadequate identification of users under 18, weak safety guardrails, and frequently generates sexual, violent, and inappropriate material” [TechCrunch summary | Common Sense Media assessment]

• There is a bill in the California legislature to ban the use of GenAI for decision-making in arbitration and to prohibit state-licensed attorneys from 1) adding client confidential information to a public GenAI platform; and 2) submitting legal filings where the attorney “has not personally read and verified [the citations wherein], including any citation provided by generative artificial intelligence” [CA Legislative website: SB574 | Law360 ($) | Video and transcript: CA State Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary - January 13, 2026]

• Actor Matthew McConaughey has successfully trademarked audio and video of himself saying catchphrases from the movie “Dazed and Confused”, in an effort to prevent unauthorized ‘AI misuse’ [Variety | Bloomberg Law ($) | Wall St. Journal ($)]

• From Sam Harden: “Welcome to Law Town: What the future of legal practice could be if we really took advantage of AI agents”

Blockchain/Digital Currency

• The Senate Banking Committee version of a bill to clarify regulatory authority over digital assets has been indefinitely stalled after Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, pulled its support; a draft of the bill passed the Senate Agriculture Committee earlier today [Digital Commodities Intermediaries Act - bill text & section-by-section summary| CNBC | CoinDesk | Davis Wright Tremaine blog post | NY Times | Senate Ag Committee mark-up meeting video]

Data Privacy

• The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case regarding the definition of the term “consumer” used in the Video Privacy Protection Act, with oral argument likely to be scheduled for the court’s next term starting October 2026 [Ars Technica | SCOTUSblog]

• Google is settling a class-action lawsuit for $68 million over Google Voice Assistant recording conversations via their devices without user consent [CBS News | Reuters ($) | Docket]

• From 404 Media ($): “Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error”

Miscellaneous

• An open letter “supporting the rule of law” is circulating among legal technologists, practitioners and academics [LawSites | Letter (Google Site)]

• Just before the start of a “bellwether” trial against Tiktok, Meta and Google for promoting social media addiction that led to psychological harm to teen users, TikTok has settled with the plaintiffs [The Hill | AP News | Ars Technica]

• A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to prohibit federal employees (including politicians) from using financial prediction markets, following the betting on the removal of former Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, by US forces where one anonymous Polymarket user parlayed $30K into $400K in less than 24 hours [Press Release | Congress.gov | Yahoo! News]

• A man charged with hacking several federal government servers in Fall 2023, including the Supreme Court e-filing system, has pled guilty [ Justice.gov | Task & Purpose | TechCrunch]

Long Reads

• Rory Pulvino, Dan Sutton & J.J. Naddeo, Hiding in Plain Sight: An Empirical Study of Prosecutorial Bias in AI Legal Analysis, 27 Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. (2026) https://doi.org/10.52214/stlr.v27i1.14543
  

• Mary Burns, Rebecca Winthrop, Natasha Luther, Emma Venetis, and Rida Karim, A new direction for students in an AI world: Prosper, prepare, protect, Brookings Institute (Jan. 14, 2026) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-new-direction-for-students-in-an-ai-world-prosper-prepare-protect/ [NPR News summary]