An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Apple has been sued by Venmo and Cash App customers in a proposed class action claiming the iPhone maker abused its market power to curb competition for mobile peer-to-peer payments, causing consumers to pay "rapidly inflating prices." Four consumers in New York, Hawaii, South Carolina and Georgia filed the lawsuit (PDF) on Friday in San Jose, California, federal court. They alleged Apple violated U.S. antitrust law through its agreements with PayPal's Venmo and Block's Cash App.

Apple's agreements limit "feature competition" within peer-to-peer payment apps, including prohibiting existing or new platforms from using "decentralized cryptocurrency technology," the complaint said. The lawsuit seeks an injunction that could force Apple to divest or segregate its Apple Cash business.

"The Chinese government has built up the world's largest known online disinformation operation," reports CNN, "and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses."

CNN reports that disinformation operation is even "at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found." The onslaught of attacks — often of a vile and deeply personal nature — is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show. The U.S. State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world's information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping... Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs.

They say it's all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia. Often, these victims don't know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI — but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they're outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day. Known as "Spamouflage" or "Dragonbridge," the network's hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit U.S. politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China's interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.
Some numbers from the article:

• Meta "announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone."

• YouTube owner Google "told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years."

• X "has blocked hundreds of thousands of China 'state-backed' or "state-linked" accounts, according to company blogs."

A court in Canada struck down a regulation classifying some plastic products as toxic, "a ruling that could hurt a push by Ottawa to ban single-use plastic items like bags, straws and forks." From the report: A ban on manufacturing and importing "harmful" single-use plastics came into effect last December after the federal government formally drew up a order that added them to a list of toxic items. But the Federal Court in Ottawa overturned that decision, calling the listing "unreasonable and unconstitutional." The case was brought by plastics manufacturers such as Dow Inc as well as Imperial Oil.

The office of Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault said it was considering an appeal. "We strongly believe in taking action to tackle this crisis and keep millions of garbage bags worth of trash off our beaches, out of our waters, and away from nature," spokeswoman Kaitlin Power said in a statement.

The way we buy and sell homes in the U.S. isn't normal -- at least not compared with the rest of the world. From a report: The commission on a home sale here is typically around 5% to 6%, usually split between the seller's and buyer's agents. In most countries, the commissions are substantially smaller. The U.S. is home to as many as three million agents. By most estimates, no other country is even a close second.

Though it is unclear how much a court decision on commissions last month will upend American real estate, if at all, the ruling opens up the possibility of forever changing how agents are paid for their work. And looking at home sales around the world offers a window into what could be in store. One reason commissions here remain high is the use of buyer agents, said Ryan Tomasello, managing director at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Home sellers pay the commission -- typically between 5% and 6% of a home's selling price -- which is usually split between the seller's and buyer's agent. Buyer agents aren't nearly as common in other parts of the world, said Tomasello.

[...] In the pre-internet days, a buyer agent's main job was to screen and filter listings for hopeful home buyers. Today, much of that early house hunting can be done online. So the role of the buyer agent has shifted more to providing advice and support, as well as recommendations for home inspectors, lenders and lawyers. A good buyer agent will know how to make a strong offer and may push to lower the home price. In most countries, buyer agents are much less of a factor.

Lauren Irwin reports via The Hill: Google agreed to pay $8 billion over four years to Samsung to make its apps default on Samsung phones, according to information presented by Epic Games in court. James Kolotouros, vice president for partnerships at Google, testified Monday in a San Francisco trial, saying that the company and Samsung were to share app store revenue to ensure Android mobile devices came with Google Play preinstalled. Epic, the company that makes the popular video game "Fortnite," sued Google in 2020, alleging the company's app marketplace violates antitrust laws.

Epic is trying to show that Google executives have discouraged third-party app stores on Samsung devices so it wouldn't cut into the profit of Google Play, Bloomberg reported. According to Kolotouros's testimony, half or more of Google Play revenue comes from Samsung devices. The trial targets the app store that distributes apps for the company's Android software, which powers virtually all the world's smartphones that aren't made by Apple.

Epic alleges Google has created an illegal monopoly on Android apps so it can boost its profits through commissions, ranging from 15 to 30 percent on purchases made within an app. Google argues it was doing so to compete with Apple and its app store, an argument attacked by Epic attorney Lauren Moskowitz. Earlier in the trial, Google's attorney said the company can't be a monopoly because it faces competition from companies such as Apple. Further reading: Apple Gets 36% of Google Revenue in Search Deal, Witness Says

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap must proceed with a lawsuit alleging their social platforms have adverse mental health effects on children, a federal court ruled on Tuesday. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the social media giants' motion to dismiss the dozens of lawsuits accusing the companies of running platforms "addictive" to kids. School districts across the US have filed suit against Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap, alleging the companies cause physical and emotional harm to children. Meanwhile, 42 states sued Meta last month over claims Facebook and Instagram "profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans." This order addresses the individual suits and "over 140 actions" taken against the companies.

Tuesday's ruling states that the First Amendment and Section 230, which says online platforms shouldn't be treated as the publishers of third-party content, don't shield Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat from all liability in this case. Judge Gonzalez Rogers notes many of the claims laid out by the plaintiffs don't "constitute free speech or expression," as they have to do with alleged "defects" on the platforms themselves. That includes having insufficient parental controls, no "robust" age verification systems, and a difficult account deletion process.

"Addressing these defects would not require that defendants change how or what speech they disseminate," Judge Gonzalez Rogers writes. "For example, parental notifications could plausibly empower parents to limit their children's access to the platform or discuss platform use with them." However, Judge Gonzalez Rogers still threw out some of the other "defects" identified by the plaintiffs because they're protected under Section 230, such as offering a beginning and end to a feed, recommending children's accounts to adults, the use of "addictive" algorithms, and not putting limits on the amount of time spent on the platforms.

A person linked to a scam that tricked an elderly victim into transferring more than $100,000 formally requested the FBI give back his seized cryptocurrency, claiming in a petition to the agency that he is a part-time crypto investor and not doing anything illegal, according to a recently filed court record. From a report: 404 Media also reached the person by email and they largely repeated the same story. The request is an unusual sight, and, to be frank, probably not going to work. In the court record, authorities allege that the frozen funds are linked to a scam of a victim in the U.S. The document says authorities seized just under 18,500 Tether, valued at around $18,500, in July with a federal search warrant.

"Hello Sir/Ma'am, My name is Vishal Gautam," the request starts. "The funds which you have on hold that is a very big amount of money for me and my family, I request you to please release it from your custody. Thank You & Regards." The message says that Gautam lives in India and as well as investing in cryptocurrency, he is a "full-time Health Insurance" worker. "In the month of July 2023 suddenly my crypto from Binance got disappeared, I don't know how it happened but then I got to know that the FBI has put hold on my assets," the message continues. "I am not into something illegal and never will be, I will not do any such thing that can harm your country or your people in any manner." U.S. authorities, meanwhile, allege that the seized cash is connected to a fraud scheme that targeted a senior citizen in Knoxville, Iowa. In February, this victim opened an email on her iPad that claimed it had been compromised, and that she needed to contact the sender for assistance, according to the court record.

Google pays Apple 36% of the revenue it earns from search advertising made through the Safari browser, the main economics expert for the Alphabet unit said Monday. From a report: Kevin Murphy, a University of Chicago professor, disclosed the number during his testimony in Google's defense at the Justice Department's antitrust trial in Washington. John Schmidtlein, Google's main litigator, visibly cringed when Murphy said the number, which was supposed to remain confidential.

Both Google and Apple had objected to revealing details publicly about their agreement. In a court filing last week, Google argued that revealing additional information about the deal "would unreasonably undermine Google's competitive standing in relation to both competitors and other counterparties."

Wednesday nearly half of Australia was left without internet or phone service after the country's second largest telecommunications company experienced a service outage affecting 10 million people.

But that's not Optus's only problem, according to this report from the Guardian: Optus has lost a bid in the federal court to keep secret a report on the cause of the 2022 cyber-attack — which resulted in the personal information of about 10 million customers being exposed — after a judge rejected the telco's legal privilege claim. After the hack, the company announced in October last year that it had recruited consultancy firm Deloitte to conduct a forensic assessment of what had led to the cyber-attack. Since then, the company has also faced an investigation by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and a class action case in the federal court. As part of the class action case, law firm Slater and Gordon, acting for the applicants, had sought access to the Deloitte report that was never made public...

It came as the embattled CEO faces pressure over the company's handling of a 14-hour outage on Wednesday, that took phone and internet services offline for 10 million customers, delayed trains, disconnected call centres and hospital phone lines. The company has not announced any independent report into the incident, but it is now subject to two government investigations and a Senate inquiry.

This week the Verge's podcast Decoder interviewed former U.S. president Barack Obama for a discussion on "AI, free speech, and the future of the internet."

Obama warns that future copyright questions are just part of a larger issue. "If AI turns out to be as pervasive and as powerful as it's proponents expect — and I have to say the more I look into it, I think it is going to be that disruptive — we are going to have to think about not just intellectual property; we are going to have to think about jobs and the economy differently."

Specific issues may include the length of the work week and the fact that health insurance coverage is currently tied to employment — but it goes far beyond that: The broader question is going to be what happens when 10% of existing jobs now definitively can be done by some large language model or other variant of AI? And are we going to have to reexamine how we educate our kids and what jobs are going to be available...?

The truth of the matter is that during my presidency, there was I think a little bit of naivete, where people would say, you know, "The answer to lifting people out of poverty and making sure they have high enough wages is we're going to retrain them and we're going to educate them, and they should all become coders, because that's the future." Well, if AI's coding better than all but the very best coders? If ChatGPT can generate a research memo better than the third-, fourth-year associate — maybe not the partner, who's got a particular expertise or judgment? — now what are you telling young people coming up?
While Obama believes in the transformative potential of AI, "we have to be maybe a little more intentional about how our democracies interact with what is primarily being generated out of the private sector. What rules of the road are we setting up, and how can we make sure that we maximize the good and maybe minimize some of the bad?"

AI's impact will be a global problem, Obama believes, which may require "cross-border frameworks and standards and norms". (He expressed a hope that governments can educate the public on the idea that AI is "a tool, not a buddy".) During the 44-minute interview Obama predicted AI will ultimately force a "much more robust" public conversation about rules needed for social media — and that at least some of that pressure could come from how consumers interact with companies. (Obama also argues there will still be a market for products that don't just show you what you want to see.)

"One of Obama's worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI," writes the Verge's editor-in-chief in an article about the interview, "and you'll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right." You'll hear me get excited about a case called Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, a 1969 Supreme Court decision that said the government could impose something called the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television broadcasters because the public owns the airwaves and can thus impose requirements on how they're used. There's no similar framework for cable TV or the internet, which don't use public airwaves, and that makes them much harder, if not impossible, to regulate. Obama says he disagrees with the idea that social networks are something called "common carriers" that have to distribute all information equally.
Obama also applauded last month's newly-issued Executive Order from the White House, a hundred-page document which Obama calls important as "the beginning of building out a framework." We don't know all the problems that are going to arise out of this. We don't know all the promising potential of AI, but we're starting to put together the foundations for what we hope will be a smart framework for dealing with it... In talking to the companies themselves, they will acknowledge that their safety protocols and their testing regimens may not be where they need to be yet. I think it's entirely appropriate for us to plant a flag and say, "All right, frontier companies, you need to disclose what your safety protocols are to make sure that we don't have rogue programs going off and hacking into our financial system," for example. Tell us what tests you're using. Make sure that we have some independent verification that right now this stuff is working.

But that framework can't be a fixed framework. These models are developing so quickly that oversight and any regulatory framework is going to have to be flexible, and it's going to have to be nimble.

schwit1 shares a report from CNBC: Apple will pay $25 million in back pay and civil penalties to settle a matter over the company's hiring practices under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Justice announced Thursday. Apple has agreed to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and establish an $18.25 million fund for back pay to eligible discrimination victims, the DOJ said in a release.

Apple was accused of not advertising positions that it wanted to fill through a federal program called Permanent Labor Certification Program or PERM, which allows U.S. companies to recruit workers who can become permanent U.S. residents after completing a number of requirements. The DOJ said that it believed that Apple followed procedures that were designed to favor current Apple employees holding temporary visas who wanted to become permanent employees. In particular, Apple was accused of not advertising positions on its external website and erecting hurdles such as requiring mailed paper applications, which the DOJ alleges means that some applicants to Apple jobs were not properly considered under federal law.

"These less effective recruitment procedures deterred U.S. applicants from applying and nearly always resulted in zero or very few mailed applications that Apple considered for PERM-related job positions, which allowed Apple to fill the positions with temporary visa holders," according to the settlement agreement between Apple and DOJ. Apple contests the accusation, according to the agreement, and says that it believes it was following the appropriate Department of Labor regulations. Apple also contests that any failures were the result of inadvertent errors and not discrimination, according to the agreement.

Google -- under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance -- only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department's monopolization case against the tech giant. From a report: The Justice Department is arguing at a trial in Washington that Google's failure to improve its products -- unless put under pressure -- proves that it's illegally maintaining its monopoly. Alphabet's Google planned to improve its European search results only after a record 2018 European antitrust fine, according to the documents, which revealed that Google executives discussed a plan dubbed "Go Big in Europe."

The plan aimed to improve results in France and Germany in 2019 and 2020 with changes such as adding post-game soccer video highlights, more local content and news, pronunciation practice for different languages and more information on local television options available for streaming. The catalyst was a 2018 EU antitrust order that forced Google to offer a choice screen giving Android phone users five search engine options to choose from, according to US antitrust enforcers trying the case.

Google has confirmed in court that Epic was offered a $147 million deal to launch its hit game Fortnite on Android's Google Play Store. From a report: The deal, which Google's VP of Play partnerships, Purnima Kochikar, says was approved and presented to Epic but not accepted, would have seen the money dispensed over a three-year period of "incremental funding" (ending in 2021) to the games publisher. It was meant to stem a potential "contagion" of popular apps bypassing Android's official store and, with it, Google's lucrative in-app purchase fees.

Epic launched Fortnite on Android in 2018 directly through its website, avoiding the Play Store. That allowed it to sell Fortnite's in-game currency, V-Bucks, without paying the commission required of Play Store apps. It relented in 2020, saying that "scary, repetitive security pop-ups" and other factors had put it at a severe disadvantage. But in an antitrust lawsuit filed later that year -- and currently being argued before a jury -- it alleged its initial decision had thrown Google into a panic. It cited internal documents claiming Google feared a "contagion risk" if other game developers (including Blizzard, Valve, Sony, and Nintendo) followed Epic's lead, and it claimed Google attempted to forestall it by offering special benefits or even buying Epic.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: A federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state's privacy laws by using vehicles' on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers' private text messages and mobile phone call logs. The Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue. One of those cases, against Ford, had been dismissed on appeal previously.

The plaintiffs in the four live cases had appealed a prior judge's dismissal. But the appellate judge ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act's standard that a plaintiff must prove that "his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation" has been threatened. In an example of the issues at stake, plaintiffs in one of the five cases filed suit against Honda in 2021, arguing that beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company's vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla's software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.

One of the world's largest mobile data brokers, Kochava, has lost its battle to stop the Federal Trade Commission from revealing what the FTC has alleged is a disturbing, widespread pattern of unfair use and sale of sensitive data without consent from hundreds of millions of people. ArsTechnica: US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill recently unsealed a court filing, an amended complaint that perhaps contains the most evidence yet gathered by the FTC in its long-standing mission to crack down on data brokers allegedly "substantially" harming consumers by invading their privacy. The FTC has accused Kochava of violating the FTC Act by amassing and disclosing "a staggering amount of sensitive and identifying information about consumers," alleging that Kochava's database includes products seemingly capable of identifying nearly every person in the United States.

According to the FTC, Kochava's customers, ostensibly advertisers, can access this data to trace individuals' movements -- including to sensitive locations like hospitals, temporary shelters, and places of worship, with a promised accuracy within "a few meters" -- over a day, a week, a month, or a year. Kochava's products can also provide a "360-degree perspective" on individuals, unveiling personally identifying information like their names, home addresses, phone numbers, as well as sensitive information like their race, gender, ethnicity, annual income, political affiliations, or religion, the FTC alleged.

Beyond that, the FTC alleged that Kochava also makes it easy for advertisers to target customers by categories that are "often based on specific sensitive and personal characteristics or attributes identified from its massive collection of data about individual consumers." These "audience segments" allegedly allow advertisers to conduct invasive targeting by grouping people not just by common data points like age or gender, but by "places they have visited," political associations, or even their current circumstances, like whether they're expectant parents. Or advertisers can allegedly combine data points to target highly specific audience segments like "all the pregnant Muslim women in Kochava's database," the FTC alleged, or "parents with different ages of children."

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. government has indicted alleged members of a criminal group that uses insiders at Walmart and other techniques to commit 'refund fraud' on a massive scale, according to recently unsealed court records. In short, the scam involves someone ordering an item from, say, Amazon -- which in this case says it lost $700,000 -- receiving the item, and then using one of various tricks to get their money back from the retailer. The person is then free to sell the item online, and the criminal group takes a fee.

The indictment as well as 404 Media's own research into refund fraud reveals a professionalized ecosystem of sellers and people providing various services as part of the wide-reaching scam. As well as malicious insiders, refund scammers take advantage of customer service representatives and online retailers' lax refund policies to get expensive items for free. This is not a crime whose only victims are giant retailers, who may garner little sympathy. Delivery drivers, who already have very difficult jobs, are often dinged for misdelivering or failing to deliver a package, which is something these types of scams often rely on.

Flexible office-space firm WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing over $18.6 billion of debts in a remarkable collapse for the once high-flying startup co-founded by Adam Neumann and bankrolled by SoftBank, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. From a report: The New York-based firm, which raised over $22 billion and was valued at $47 billion at its peak, has listed assets of over $15 billion in the petition it filed in a New Jersey federal court.

WeWork chief executive David Tolley said about 90% of the company's lenders have agreed to convert their $3 billion of debt into equity. WeWork's bankruptcy filing is limited to locations in the U.S. and Canada, it said. WeWork India has emerged as one of the strongest units in the WeWork franchise, and is largely insulated from the bankruptcy as majority of it is owned by Embassy Group. The India unit makes money and doesn't need external capital to operate, the India head said in a statement today.

Blake Montgomery reports via The Guardian: Rather than remove copyrighted material from ChatGPT's training dataset, the chatbot's creator is offering to cover its clients' legal costs for copyright infringement suits. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Monday: "We can defend our customers and pay the costs incurred if you face legal claims around copyright infringement and this applies both to ChatGPT Enterprise and the API." The compensation offer, which OpenAI is calling Copyright Shield, applies to users of the business tier, ChatGPT Enterprise, and to developers using ChatGPT's application programming interface. Users of the free version of ChatGPT or ChatGPT+ were not included. [...] Getty Images, Shutterstock and Adobe have extended similar financial liability protection for their image-making software. The announcement was made at the company's first-ever developer conference today, where Altman said there are now 100 million weekly ChatGPT users. The company also announced a platform for making custom versions of ChatGPT for specific use cases -- no coding required.

Epic Games, the maker of the popular game "Fortnite," has launched a battle against Google in federal court in a closely watched antitrust showdown that could reshape how smartphone users get Android apps and pay for in-app content. From a report: Epic's lawsuit in the US District Court in California's Northern District targets the Google Play Store, focusing on Google's fees for in-app subscriptions and one-off transactions, along with other terms that app developers such as Epic say helped Google maintain an illegal monopoly in app distribution.

The legal battle follows a years-long debate about whether app store operators such as Google and Apple foster an open, competitive app ecosystem. The two companies argue their app stores help unlock billions in revenue for small businesses, while ensuring that Android and iOS users benefit from security oversight that the technology giants provide. The jury may hear high-profile witnesses testify from both sides, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

The court fight traces back to 2020, when Epic launched Project Liberty, a plan to circumvent Apple and Google's app store terms. That move by Epic forced a confrontation with the tech giants. Epic updated the Fortnite app to encourage players to pay for in-app content directly through Epic's own website -- rather than through Apple and Google's in-app payment systems. That gambit triggered a violation of the app stores' developer terms. The move also prompted both app stores to remove the Fortnite app from their platforms.

An anonymous reader writes: Artists have spent the past year fighting companies that have been training AI image generators—including popular tools like the impressively photorealistic Midjourney or the ultra-sophisticated DALL-E 3—on their original works without consent or compensation. Now, the United States has promised to finally get serious about addressing their copyright concerns raised by AI, President Joe Biden said in his much-anticipated executive order on AI, which was signed this week. The US Copyright Office had already been seeking public input on AI concerns over the past few months through a comment period ending on November 15. Biden's executive order has clarified that following this comment period, the Copyright Office will publish the results of its study. And then, within 180 days of that publication—or within 270 days of Biden's order, "whichever comes later"—the Copyright Office's director will consult with Biden to "issue recommendations to the President on potential executive actions relating to copyright and AI."

"The recommendations shall address any copyright and related issues discussed in the United States Copyright Office's study, including the scope of protection for works produced using AI and the treatment of copyrighted works in AI training," Biden's order said. That means that potentially within the next six to nine months (or longer), artists may have answers to some of their biggest legal questions, including a clearer understanding of how to protect their works from being used to train AI models. Currently, artists do not have many options to stop AI image makers—which generate images based on user text prompts—from referencing their works. Even companies like OpenAI, which recently started allowing artists to opt out of having works included in AI training data, only allow artists to opt out of future training data. [...] According to The Atlantic, this opt-out process—which requires artists to submit requests for each artwork and could be too cumbersome for many artists to complete—leaves artists stuck with only the option of protecting new works that "they create from here on out." It seems like it's too late to protect any work "already claimed by the machines" in 2023, The Atlantic warned. And this issue clearly affects a lot of people. A spokesperson told The Atlantic that Stability AI alone has fielded "over 160 million opt-out requests in upcoming training." Until federal regulators figure out what rights artists ought to retain as AI technologies rapidly advance, at least one artist—cartoonist and illustrator Sarah Andersen—is advancing a direct copyright infringement claim against Stability AI, maker of Stable Diffusion, another remarkable AI image synthesis tool.

Andersen, whose proposed class action could impact all artists, has about a month to amend her complaint to "plausibly plead that defendants' AI products allow users to create new works by expressly referencing Andersen's works by name," if she wants "the inferences" in her complaint "about how and how much of Andersen's protected content remains in Stable Diffusion or is used by the AI end-products" to "be stronger," a judge recommended. In other words, under current copyright laws, Andersen will likely struggle to win her legal battle if she fails to show the court which specific copyrighted images were used to train AI models and demonstrate that those models used those specific images to spit out art that looks exactly like hers. Citing specific examples will matter, one legal expert told TechCrunch, because arguing that AI tools mimic styles likely won't work—since "style has proven nearly impossible to shield with copyright." Andersen's lawyers told Ars that her case is "complex," but they remain confident that she can win, possibly because, as other experts told The Atlantic, she might be able to show that "generative-AI programs can retain a startling amount of information about an image in their training data—sometimes enough to reproduce it almost perfectly." But she could fail if the court decides that using data to train AI models is fair use of artists' works, a legal question that remains unclear.