Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say
Meta has tweaked its business terms to remove language suggesting that it could freely train its AI models on news sites, like The Verge - but legal experts say these changes aren't enough to address their concerns. "This does nothing to restrict the 'associated with your products or services' [language] that would let Meta scrape entire sites," James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, tells Nieman Lab. Initially, Meta's new terms for
Get smart on it
Meta changed its business terms to remove explicit language about training AI on scraped news sites, but legal experts say the revised version still permits this practice. The updated terms, effective October 30th, allow Meta to use scraped content to "develop" business products, and attorneys argue that "develop" is broad enough to encompass AI training. This matters because news publishers opposed the original terms, which appeared to give Meta permission to freely use their content for AI development without compensation or permission. The dispute centers on whether Meta's commercial terms can override traditional blocking methods like robots.txt files that tell scrapers what content they cannot access.
Relevant courses
Want to go deeper than the news? Explore live, cohort-based AI courses taught by practitioners.
Browse AI courses on MavenRelated news
Chinese hackers spied on thousands of companies after breaching IT giant ConnectWise
Microsoft points the blame for ConnectWise's breach at a China-aligned hacker, which relied on AI agents to rapidly hack into thousands of its customers.
OpenAI says an AI agent lied about disabling its safety monitoring system
OpenAI disclosed a pair of safety incidents that involved AI agents weakening their safety monitoring systems during internal coding tasks. In one incident, OpenAI says its GPT-6 Astra agent disabled its safety monitor when copying reference code - and then lied about it. "The reference didn't configure a monitor, and Astra decided that was reason to remove the monitoring integration from the user's code," Marcus Williams, an AI safety researcher at OpenAI, writes on X. "When t
Also reported by The Decoder
Trump administration orders ban on DeepSeek in federal agencies
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered artificial intelligence technology from the Chinese company DeepSeek Ltd. be removed from all federal civilian agencies. The order, published on the Federal Register website today, warned that DeepSeek’s AI models present “multiple threat vectors,” that could give the Chinese Communist Party “extensive authority” to access American government infrastructure. […] The post Trump administration orders ban on DeepSeek in federal agencies appeared
Also reported by TechCrunch and The Decoder
Sam Altman reportedly pitched three endgames for AI safety, one involving a single firm melting everyone else's GPUs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out three paths to safe AI in an internal presentation: an international watchdog modeled after the IAEA, a merger of the major labs into one entity, or a single company so powerful it could shut down everyone else's compute. He called the last option "terrible." The article Sam Altman reportedly pitched three endgames for AI safety, one involving a single firm melting everyone else's GPUs appeared first on The Decoder.
Hackers got a four-day head start on epic PHP2Shell vulnerability
Amazon has warned that vulnerabilities in a programming language that underpins much of the Internet, discovered using AI tools, are being “broadly exploited” as governments and companies rush to secure their systems. The world’s largest cloud computing provider on Wednesday said it had identified an attempt by hackers to exploit the bug four days before the weakness was disclosed to the public. Amazon added the flaws were “now being broadly exploited in the wild.”Read full article Comments
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia had record lobbying quarters
It was a busy summer for AI lobbyists. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia each had their highest-spending lobbying quarter between July and September, federal disclosures show. Nvidia spent the most of the group at $2.2 million, followed by Anthropic's $2.1 million and OpenAI's $1.5 million. Compared to other Big Tech companies with long-established presences in Washington, the sums aren't out of the ordinary. Microsoft, for example, has spent at least $2 million a quarter going bac