Artificial Intelligence (AI)

On January 12, 2024, California state Assembly member Marc Berman introduced a bill that would impose criminal penalties for the creation, distribution, and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) created using artificial intelligence (AI).  The bill would expand California’s definition of “obscene matter” to include “representations of real or fictitious persons generated through the

On January 16, the attorneys general of 25 states – including California, Illinois, and Washington – and the District of Columbia filed reply comments to the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) November Notice of Inquiry on the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for efforts to mitigate robocalls and robotexts. 

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

On January 30, 2024, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a request for information (RFI) soliciting public input on how agencies can be more effective in their use of privacy impact assessments (PIAs) to mitigate privacy risks, including those “exacerbated by artificial intelligence (AI).”  The RFI notes that federal agencies may develop

On January 29, 2024, the Department of Commerce (“Department”) published a proposed rule (“Proposed Rule”) to require providers and foreign resellers of U.S. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (“IaaS”) products to (i) verify the identity of their foreign customers and (ii) notify the Department when a foreign person transacts with that provider or reseller to train a large artificial intelligence (“AI”) model with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity. The proposed rule also contemplates that the Department may impose special measures to be undertaken by U.S. IaaS providers to deter foreign malicious cyber actors’ use of U.S. IaaS products.  The accompanying request for comments has a deadline of April 29, 2024.Continue Reading Department of Commerce Issues Proposed Rule to Regulate Infrastructure-as-a-Service Providers and Resellers

U.S. policymakers have continued to express interest in legislation to regulate artificial intelligence (“AI”), particularly at the state level.  Although comprehensive AI bills and frameworks in Congress have received substantial attention, state legislatures also have been moving forward with their own efforts to regulate AI.  This blog post summarizes key themes in state AI bills introduced in the past year.  Now that new state legislative sessions have commenced, we expect to see even more activity in the months ahead.Continue Reading Trends in AI:  U.S. State Legislative Developments

On January 24, 2024, the U.S. National Science Foundation (“NSF”) announced the launch of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (“NAIRR”) pilot, a two-year initiative to develop a shared national research infrastructure for responsible AI discovery and innovation. The launch makes progress on a goal in President Biden’s recent Executive Order on AI safety and

On 15 January 2024, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) announced the launch of a consultation series (“Consultation”) on how elements of data protection law apply to the development and use of generative AI (“GenAI”). For the purposes of the Consultation, GenAI refers to “AI models that can create new content e.g., text, computer code, audio, music, images, and videos”.

As part of the Consultation, the ICO will publish a series of chapters over the coming months outlining their thinking on how the UK GDPR and Part 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 apply to the development and use of GenAI. The first chapter, published in tandem with the Consultation’s announcement, covers the lawful basis, under UK data protection law, for web scraping of personal data to train GenAI models. Interested stakeholders are invited to provide feedback to the ICO by 1 March 2024.Continue Reading ICO Launches Consultation Series on Generative AI

On January 9, the FTC published a blog post discussing privacy and confidentiality obligations for companies that provide artificial intelligence (“AI”) services.  The FTC described “model-as-a-service” companies as those that develop, host, and provide pre-trained AI models to users and businesses through end-user interfaces or application programming interfaces (“APIs”).  According to the FTC, when model-as-a-service

This quarterly update highlights key legislative, regulatory, and litigation developments in the fourth quarter of 2023 and early January 2024 related to technology issues.  These included developments related to artificial intelligence (“AI”), connected and automated vehicles (“CAVs”), data privacy, and cybersecurity.  As noted below, some of these developments provide companies with the opportunity for participation and comment.Continue Reading U.S. Tech Legislative, Regulatory & Litigation Update – Fourth Quarter 2023

The Biden administration’s October 2023 Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (the “Order”) sets out an extensive list of deadlines for the various federal agencies tasked with implementing the Order’s requirements. 

We previously summarized the Order, compared its requirements with those of the EU’s AI Act, and identified initial implementation steps.  This post highlights the Order’s key actions with implementation deadlines during 1Q24. Continue Reading Anticipated 1Q24 Actions Implementing the White House AI Executive Order