Legaltech conference season starts
AI
The Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into investments of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google in Anthropic and OpenAI, maker of AI chatbots Claude & ChatGPT, respectively [Agency press release | Verge article]
From Bloomberg Law [$]: "Generative AI Use Poses Threats to Attorney-Client Privilege"
Also, Bloomberg (on the financial side) has unveiled its first GenAI tool, providing AI-written summaries of earnings calls and analyses of company performance
18 U.S. senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, expressing concern over "(DOJ) funding and oversight of" facial recognition technologies as deployed by law enforcement agencies, specifically whether such tools violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [The Hill | The Record | Letter]
OpenAI failed to convince a federal judge to dismiss the defamation suit against OpenAI by a Georgia radio host
One month into the election year, and AI voice cloning is already being used for political dirty tricks in New York City and in the NH presidential primary
Related: OpenAI has banned a developer who worked with Dean Phillips' super PAC to create an AI chatbot of the presidential candidate
From NPR: a brief interview with the co-chair of the Florida Bar's Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence Tools & Resources on how judges and attorneys should use AI
From Bloomberg Law [$]: "Don’t let [generative AI] make you intellectually lazy." - Judge Laurel Isicoff of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, at an American Bankruptcy Institute event, advising lawyers not to become "overly dependent" on these new tools
Mlex [$] has an interview with the founder and CEO of Clearview AI discusses litigation and regulation focused on facial recognition technology
Something a touch lighter - AI-generated influencers are drinking the milkshakes of human influencers [meme explanation/movie spoiler here]
Blockchain/digital currency
Cryptocurrency exchanges Biance and Coinbase are seeking dismissal of the SEC lawsuits against them, both arguing that crypto assets are outside of the scope of agency regulations [Courthouse News | Politico | Coindesk]
Miscellaneous
From Law360 [$]: Texas has rejected a proposal to allow for non-attorney ownership in legal service organizations but an alternative that would allow paraprofessionals to assist in some basic legal services is going forward
Two organizations are suing the state of North Carolina to allow people who aren't attorneys to provide legal advice, arguing that the restriction is a violation of First Amendment speech rights [Docket | Complaint]
Long Reads
Arvind Narayanan, Sayash Kapoor and Peter Henderson, "Promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence for legal applications," January 24, 2024, forthcoming in the Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law [Summary]
The papers (and presentations) from a Computational Law conference held in November are available, on topics such as generative AI, legal education, access to justice , old vs. new AI, and more