The Deep Doubt Era
A small newsletter about legaltech
AI
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a complaint and proposed consent agreement against the AI legal service app/website DoNotPay, which would include a fine, a notice to consumers who subscribed to the service and a ban on “making claims about its ability to substitute for any professional service without evidence to back it up” [FTC Proceedings for DoNotPay]
There is already a lawsuit against California following Gov. Newsom’s signing of three bills regulating AI use in election and campaign ads: Kohls v. Bonta [CBS News | Docket]
The proliferation of AI-generated images on social media is likely to lead to intense skepticism towards media that accurately captures events
Microsoft has launched a new product called Correction, which the company claims can detect and fix AI hallucinations in text, but there are skeptics
What are reasonable fees when it comes to AI usage by legal professionals and billing practices?
News regarding copyright lawsuits by authors against OpenAI:
Representatives for plaintiffs across the three suits will have access to OpenAI’s training datasets used for ChatGPT
The Joseph Saveri Law Firm, which represents a range of plaintiffs in copyright cases against AI developers, was excoriated last week by the judge overseeing Kadrey v. Meta Platforms over questions of adequacy of representation; this week, four partners from Boies Schiller Flexner (including David Boies and Joshua Schiller) have been added to the legal team [Law.com ($)]
Tech lawyer and developer Raymond Sun has launched a global AI regulation tracker
A start-up based in Tel Aviv has received approval from Israel’s financial regulator to make public an AI chatbot that would give stock recommendations to users
The CEOs of Meta, Spotify, and other companies have signed an open letter advocating that “Europe needs regulatory certainty on AI”; AI policy analyst Luiza Jarovsky has a rebuttal
From 404Media: “Google is serving AI-generated images of mushrooms when users search for some species, a risky and potentially fatal error for foragers who are trying to figure out what mushrooms are safe to eat”
Blockchain/Digital Currency
The lawsuit that Consensys, a blockchain technology company, brought against the Securities and Exchange Commission has been dismissed by the court
From CNBC: “FTX fraudster Caroline Ellison sentenced to 2 years in prison, ordered to forfeit $11 billion”
The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing last week: “Dazed and Confused: Breaking Down the SEC’s Politicized Approach to Digital Assets”
Law enforcement in Germany seized 47 cryptocurrency exchanges in the country used by “ransomware groups, darknet dealers, and botnet operators”
Data Privacy
Prof. Eric Goldman has a blogpost regarding a case brought against Snapchat, claiming its augmented reality filters violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
From Yahoo!: “Snapchat reserves the right to put photos of its users’ faces in ads as part of the terms of service of its “My Selfie” tool, which lets people and their friends create artificial intelligence-generated images that are trained on their selfies”
Long Reads
Wilf-Townsend, Daniel, The Deletion Remedy (August 01, 2024). 103 North Carolina Law Review __ (forthcoming 2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4933011 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4933011
Wei, Kevin and Ezell, Carson and Gabrieli, Nick and Deshpande, Chinmay, How Do AI Companies "Fine-Tune" Policy? Examining Regulatory Capture in AI Governance (August 20, 2024). 2024 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4931927 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4931927