The Taking of All Takings
A small newsletter about legaltech
AI
Anthropic and the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit for copyright infringement come to a preliminary settlement, which includes a payment of US$1.5 billion
Reactions [WSJ | Authors Guild | Jones Walker]
Judge Alsup appears to be not pleased and has postponed approval of the settlement [AP | Ars Technica | Bloomberg Law ($)]
Related: Stewart Baker of Lawfare opines that given the importance of GenAI to military and national security concerns, the President should “invoke the Defense Production Act” to force copyright holders to license their works for training AI models
A coalition of economists, including two former Chairs of the Federal Reserve, have sent a letter to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, asking for more and better data collection to track how AI is affecting the American workforce [Politico | Letter]
Related: A recent paper has found that entry-level workers are experiencing a decline in employment of up to 13%, due to AI adoption
Vanderbilt’s AI Law Lab has an AI legislation tracker for federal and state levels
A Nevada state court judge sanctioned and fined a pair of attorneys for including AI-fabricated citations in a filing, but gave them an opt-out if they agreed to “make themselves available as a resource or mentor to a committee that analyzes AI policies, volunteer to speak at continuing education classes on the topic, and maybe write an article for a legal publication about their mistakes and lessons learn”
Doctor DeepSeek, or what happens when patients turn to LLMs for medical advice: LLMs can appear to be more patient and spend more time with patients, but can also give useless or dangerous advice
NPR has a story about deadbots, AI avatars of deceased people, and how they may be used in advertising, advocacy and more
Hackers have attacked an arts agency website and is threatening to upload all of the artwork to AI developers for use in training models, unless the agency pays the ransom [404 Media ($)]
Miscellaneous
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has vacated and remanded the district court’s preliminary injunction in UpSolve Inc. v. James, which prevented the NY Attorney General from enforcing UPL rules against a start-up that “trained people who aren't lawyers to provide free legal advice to people facing debt-collection lawsuits” [Reuters ($) | Law360 ($) | Appellate Docket | Order]