Author: Frank Salvato

A Chicago man has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the company’s identity-verification process for its Claude chatbot violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by requiring a government-issued ID and a live facial image without providing legally sufficient disclosures about the collection, retention, and destruction of biometric information. Jose Enrique Ortiz Colon alleges that he was locked out of Claude until completing the verification process through third-party identity-verification provider Persona, which allegedly scanned facial geometry and compared his live image with his driver’s-license photograph. The lawsuit contends that Anthropic failed to tell him in writing how long…

Artificial intelligence is moving from behind-the-scenes production into the broadcast booth, raising a fundamental question about whether radio can preserve the human relationships that have long distinguished it from automated music services. Los Angeles’ José FM has found surprising success pairing Geraldine “GeeGee” Guzman with Coyotec, an AI-generated co-host that discusses news, sports, immigration and other local topics, with the station reporting significant audience growth and expanding the character into additional markets. The experiment follows earlier deployments of synthetic personalities elsewhere and comes as broadcasters face declining advertising revenue, shrinking staffs and relentless pressure to lower operating costs. Yet the…

A federal judge has ruled that a law-enforcement officer violated the Fourth Amendment by using automated license-plate-reader databases to reconstruct a motorist’s historical movements without a warrant or probable cause. U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill found that Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff Freddie Alaniz improperly searched Flock Safety and another plate-reader system after noticing a California-plated vehicle driven by Melisa Kyle, obtaining more than 50 records documenting roughly a month of travel across multiple states. Although the subsequent traffic stop itself was initially lawful, Hill concluded that the historical database search amounted to an unconstitutional warrantless search and characterized the…

Rep. Jim Clyburn, the 86-year-old South Carolina Democrat and longtime congressional power broker, acknowledged that he had only learned what ChatGPT was roughly a week before a summer podcast interview that recently resurfaced, despite artificial intelligence rapidly becoming one of the most consequential economic, national-security and regulatory issues confronting Washington. Clyburn said he had never used ChatGPT or Claude and had never visited a data center, explaining that he relies on knowledgeable staff, relationships and outside expertise when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. His comments have renewed concerns about whether members of Congress possess sufficient technological literacy to oversee an industry…

California State University is making one of higher education’s largest bets on artificial intelligence, spending $13 million annually to provide ChatGPT Edu across its roughly 470,000-student system while awarding more than $3 million in grants for faculty AI experimentation and expanding workforce-oriented training. The strategy rests on the assumption that AI proficiency will become increasingly valuable to employers, but students confronting a difficult entry-level labor market are far less certain. CSU’s own survey found 82% of students concerned about AI’s effect on job security, even as 69% believe AI will become essential to most professions. The tension exposes a fundamental…

Simon Leviev, the convicted fraudster widely known as the “Tinder Swindler,” is attempting an extraordinary reinvention: launching a dating platform designed to protect users from the very forms of deception that made him notorious. Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, says his planned Safe Love app will require government identification, facial verification and other safeguards intended to prevent fake identities and romance fraud. The platform is also expected to feature an SOS system capable of recording audio and video and transmitting location information during potentially dangerous encounters. Leviev argues that his firsthand knowledge of manipulation gives him unusual insight into defeating scammers,…

McDonald’s is facing a proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit accusing the fast-food giant of using an artificial-intelligence-powered pricing system to coordinate menu prices across independently owned franchises and company-operated restaurants. Filed in federal court in Chicago by Illinois customer Michael Thomas, the complaint alleges that since at least 2019 McDonald’s has pooled nonpublic sales information and used machine-learning algorithms to generate pricing recommendations, undermining the independent price competition that should exist among franchisees. The lawsuit contends the arrangement violates federal antitrust law and caused consumers to pay artificially inflated prices. McDonald’s rejects the allegations as speculative, maintaining that its technology merely…

The debate over artificial intelligence has become strangely fixated on the machine. Will AI become smarter than humanity? Will it eliminate millions of jobs? Will autonomous systems eventually escape human control? These are legitimate questions, but they can distract us from a danger that is already here. AI does not own companies, write corporate policies, lobby Congress, sign government contracts, decide what information users may see, or determine which values should be embedded into its systems. Human beings do those things. Perhaps the institution requiring the greatest scrutiny in the AI revolution is not artificial intelligence itself. It is the…

The U.S. Army is rapidly transforming the smartphone from a civilian convenience into a critical battlefield tool, testing networked handheld devices, tactical radios, drones, and cloud-based systems that allow soldiers to track friendly forces, communicate digitally, coordinate operations, and make faster decisions. Recent exercises in Indonesia demonstrated the promise of the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control system, which seeks to replace cumbersome, easily targeted command infrastructure with smaller, mobile networks connecting troops across dispersed battlefields. The technology could dramatically improve situational awareness, casualty evacuation and targeting, but exercises have also exposed serious weaknesses, including overheating devices, inaccurate information and…

Artificial-intelligence companies are increasingly wrapping powerful AI agents in colorful, friendly characters as they confront growing public unease over job displacement, safety, privacy, and the broader social consequences of increasingly autonomous systems. OpenAI has introduced brightly colored “Dots,” Meta has paired its Muse assistant with a fuzzy character called Jolly, and Anthropic’s Claude Code has become associated with the pixelated orange crab Clawd. The approach borrows from an old advertising formula: give an unfamiliar or intimidating product a recognizable personality that consumers can relate to and trust. But the timing is notable. AI companies are deploying friendlier branding precisely as…