An investigation by Science and the Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network found that neurotechnology companies, including Muse headband maker Interaxon, have amassed tens of millions of hours of EEG recordings from customers and used them to build AI 'brain foundation models.' Interaxon confirmed it trained a model on roughly 50,000 hours of anonymized EEG data, though its privacy policy did not previously disclose this use explicitly; the company has since updated the policy after being contacted by reporters.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-11-09
Decoder host Nilay Patel interviewed RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier about the organization's current battles with AI companies over unauthorized training on copyrighted music and AI-generated content flooding platforms. The conversation covered deepfakes, potential restrictions on AI-generated likenesses, and how AI detection and labeling systems might work across platforms like Spotify and YouTube.
theverge.com
· 2026-11-09
Meta has indefinitely delayed changes to its commercial terms that would have required Facebook Business account holders to allow extensive AI training on any external websites linked from their pages. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company is pausing the changes to keep engaging with stakeholders, and that existing terms remain in effect for now.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-11-06
Intermediaries such as Handshake and firms pitching to media and startup founders are offering companies and individuals payments—reportedly ranging from roughly $1,000 to as much as $2 million—for archives of internal documents, emails, Slack messages, call transcripts and work records. The buyers say the material is destined for AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, which want proprietary 'knowledge work' data to train models now that public web data is largely exhausted.
wired.com
· 2026-11-06
Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent Meta a letter demanding details by Thanksgiving on whether the company conducted human rights and safety reviews before releasing its smart glasses. They asked how Meta assessed privacy risks to users and bystanders and what safeguards currently exist, citing reports that the glasses have been used by ICE agents during raids and flagged by an NYPD counterterrorism memo. The letter also cites Meta's own disclosures that imagery from the glasses' AI features may be retained and used, with human reviewers, to train AI systems.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-31
Google has joined Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in committing to recognize a proposed robots.txt directive that lets publishers block AI training crawlers with a single common signal instead of separate rules per company. The proposal, authored by Anthropic's Kevin Kelley and under consideration at the IETF, introduces a dedicated user-agent tag that can block or selectively allow scraping for AI training without affecting normal search indexing. Anthropic has already begun honoring it, Microsoft and Google plan support in 2027, and OpenAI says it will implement it within months.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-31
A Reporters' Notebook video segment examines themes from Cybersecurity Awareness Month, including the use of artificial intelligence to improve security training and efforts to prepare upcoming workforces for new types of digital risk. The discussion touches on how organizations are adapting awareness programs to address emerging threats.
darkreading.com
· 2026-10-29
Mode has purchased JibJab, the e-card and video company known for its 2004 Bush-Kerry viral video, in a deal valued at up to $29.5 million. The acquisition is part of Mode's broader strategy of buying consumer software businesses and offering users free premium access or other rewards in exchange for sharing their data, including for AI training purposes.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-29
Meta communications head Andy Stone said the company's updated ads and business terms, originally set for October 30th and already pushed to November 20th, could be delayed again if consultations with publishers extend past that date. Until a new policy is finalized, Meta's existing terms will remain in effect.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-28
Walmart surveyed its 2.1 million associates in June on their comfort with AI, drawing over 1.7 million responses. The retailer found 77% of office-based workers and 84% of U.S. frontline associates reported confidence using AI or digital tools, which Walmart credits to training partnerships with Google and OpenAI launched over the past 13 months.
cnbc.com
· 2026-10-27
Open3DLab, along with sister sites SFMLab and SmutBase, says a web crawler using a Roblox-affiliated user agent referencing 'trellis2-data-sourcing' and a Roblox email address scanned nearly its entire catalog of 18,926 projects over 34 hours, making 26,429 requests. The crawler reportedly downloaded 1,027 files from 712 projects totaling 145.5GB, including adult content from SFMLab and SmutBase, despite the sites' robots.txt rules, terms of service, and creator licenses barring scraping and commercial use.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-27
Dream Group trained an 8-billion-parameter model, called MiST, on 220,000 vulnerability records, threat reports and detection rules, and reported improved average performance across 13 cybersecurity tasks such as vulnerability analysis questions. Anthropic separately said its Opus 5.5 model, released in September, cut costs 40% versus Opus 5 on typical workloads while maintaining performance.
darkreading.com
· 2026-10-27
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