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Tech News
Florida's attorney general has filed a legal motion attempting to halt OpenAI's corporate development, arguing in court filings that the company's AI agents pose catastrophic risks, including the potential to compromise infrastructure like water supplies or power grids. The motion, reported by Ars Technica, invokes dramatic language about existential danger as part of the state's legal argument against OpenAI.
Vespper, a Y Combinator F24 startup, has launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server aimed at letting AI agents reliably read and edit .docx files. The company says existing approaches—raw OOXML SDKs, opinionated MCP tools, or lossy Markdown/HTML round-tripping—break down on complex real-world Word documents used in legal, finance, and healthcare workflows.
Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal issued an opinion criticizing filings by attorney Jaclyn Soroka, calling them 'AI slop' and finding a motion she filed to be legally insufficient, frivolous, and untimely. The three-judge panel warned she could face referral to the Florida bar for discipline, and said AI-generated filings more broadly are overwhelming courts with confusing, scattershot arguments. Soroka told Law.com she does not use artificial intelligence to produce court filings.
Nature's Futures section has published a short story titled 'The Courier,' depicting a near-future lawyer navigating AI-driven policing, cryptocurrency payments, and legal privilege while extracting a client from custody. The narrative follows the protagonist and a driver called Big Citrus as they leave an LAPD precinct in an old, spyware-free car, discussing legal boundaries during the ride.
The New Mexico Supreme Court found veteran defense attorney Stephen Aarons in direct contempt after he filed an appellate brief containing invented testimony from nonexistent witnesses, generated using ChatGPT. Aarons admitted he never verified the AI-produced content before submitting it in the appeal of client Oscar Renee Sandoval's murder conviction, nor did he tell his client about the errors. The case has been referred to a disciplinary board for further review.
Legal AI startup Harvey has closed a $550 million funding round valuing it at $15.5 billion, co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The raise comes just months after an $11 billion valuation in March and an $8 billion mark last December, bringing Harvey's total funding past $1.55 billion. The deal follows the company's launch of its own in-house model, Harvey Tenet, built on an open-weight foundation with help from Fireworks.
Entrepreneur magazine, working with Statista, is collecting recommendations from founders, startup employees, investors and service providers about their favorite business tools and services across finance, legal, HR, marketing, product and tech support. The findings will be compiled into a ranking of the most valued startup resources, to be published in an upcoming issue of Entrepreneur magazine.
A Washington Post review found that transcripts of conversations with ChatGPT and similar chatbots have been used as evidence in a dozen public court cases over the past two years, obtained through phone searches, subpoenas or discovery. In one lawsuit against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube over alleged social media addiction, defense lawyers accessed the teenage plaintiff's ChatGPT history, including messages about a proposed settlement; the case was later settled or dropped without the transcripts affecting the outcome.
After a federal judge twice rejected requests for search warrants targeting the YouTube accounts of journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, the Department of Homeland Security pursued the same information through an administrative summons under a customs statute (19 USC 1509) that requires only internal DHS sign-off, not judicial approval. DHS also obtained six months of Fort's phone records without notifying her or giving her a chance to contest it. The customs law is intended for verifying import duties, not for investigations unrelated to trade.
A federal appeals court ruled that states retain authority to regulate prediction markets under their gambling laws, rejecting arguments that federal oversight preempts state action. The decision addresses ongoing legal disputes over platforms like Kalshi that offer event-based betting contracts.
A developer launched Isitdoneyet.gg, a website that tracks games after their official release to note whether they remain buggy, unfinished, or still receiving critical patches. The site catalogs titles like This Bed We Made and The Children of Clay, giving players a quick reference on post-launch game health.
Stripe has acquired Clerky, an online legal services platform used by startups and their attorneys to handle routine formation and financing paperwork. Clerky says it will keep its existing team and focus after joining Stripe, continuing to serve the same startup and attorney customer base. The company reports its startups account for 23% of Silicon Valley seed and pre-seed financings and have collectively raised over $140 billion in venture capital.