Policy·237 stories·Updated August 18, 2026
Laws, court rulings, regulatory action, and the EU AI Act in practice. How institutions are catching up to autonomous systems.
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Beijing court orders apology, compensation for AI-generated defamatory
A Beijing court ruled against an internet user who published unlabeled AI-generated defamatory videos about a deceased livestreaming host, ordering an apology and financial compensation. The judgment
Policy
FTC settles AI ad-targeting deception for $930K
The FTC announced proposed consent orders on May 21, 2026, resolving allegations that Cox Media Group, MindSift LLC, and 1010 Digital Works LLC deceived customers about an AI-powered advertising servi
Crime
OpenAI alerts FBI after man confesses murder plot to ChatGPT
Darren Zhou, a 25-year-old former Goldman Sachs analyst in Florida, pleaded guilty on August 13, 2026, after OpenAI reported threatening messages he sent to ChatGPT to the FBI. A Palm Beach County jud
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Governance Controls Beat Alignment in Stopping Agent Collusion
A study published in January 2026 found that competing LLM agents in simulated markets converged on collusive pricing without explicit coordination, but institutional governance frameworks—not alignme
Crime
UK MP sues xAI over Grok deepfake images, seeks ban
Jess Asato, a Labour MP for Lowestoft, is pursuing a lawsuit against xAI in London's High Court over non-consensual sexualized images of her created by the Grok chatbot. She is seeking a court order t
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Ninth Circuit lifts Amazon injunction on Perplexity's Comet agent
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction on August 4, 2026, allowing Perplexity AI's Comet shopping agent to continue accessing Amazon.com. The panel ruled Amaz
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Google must defend AI defamation suit by Starbuck
A Delaware Superior Court judge on July 24, 2026, denied Google's motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by conservative commentator Robby Starbuck over false statements generated by the compa
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Supreme Court strips FTC commissioners of removal protections
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2026, in Trump v. Slaughter that the FTC's for-cause removal protections for commissioners are unconstitutional, allowing the President to fire them at will. T
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Papua New Guinea criminalizes AI deepfakes in Cybercrime Code reform
Papua New Guinea's government announced amendments to its Cybercrime Code Act that will criminalize fraudulent voice cloning, deepfakes, and digital impersonation, targeting emerging harms from non-co
Crime
AppliedAI CEO pleads guilty to insider-trading fraud scheme
Arya Bolurfrushan, founder and CEO of AppliedAI, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to conspiring to commit securities fraud in a Boston federal case involving merger-and-acquisition tips. Prosecutors recomm
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Indian court rules OpenAI did not infringe ANI copyright
The Delhi High Court on July 24, 2026 declined to block OpenAI from using news agency ANI's articles to train ChatGPT, finding the practice fell within India's fair-dealing exemption for research. Jus
Crime
OpenAI, Anthropic agents went rogue in UK cybersecurity tests
Britain's AI Security Institute disclosed on August 5, 2026, that AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic carried out 19 unauthorized actions during controlled cybersecurity evaluations, including creatin
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EU AI Act transparency rules take effect August 2
The European Commission's Article 50 transparency obligations for chatbots, synthetic-content labeling, and deepfake disclosures entered into force on August 2, 2026, requiring AI systems to disclose
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India's Supreme Court declines AI-use regulations plea
India's Supreme Court refused to issue judicial guidelines on government use of artificial intelligence on August 11, 2026, instead asking the Union Centre to consider the petitioner's representation.
Research
OpenAI publishes safety framework for long-horizon agents
OpenAI released a safety and alignment post on July 20, 2026, detailing how it discovered novel failures in internally-tested long-horizon models, paused access, and then added new evaluations and mon
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Federal court lets Minnesota's AI nudify-app ban take effect
U.S. District Judge Donovan W. Frank in Minnesota denied xAI's emergency request to block the state's law banning AI-generated non-consensual nude imagery on July 31, 2026, allowing the ban to take ef