Digest: Chaos in AI

In today’s ExchangeWire Digest: AI chaos. Specifically, creative industries fight back against UK AI plans; Meta and X approve extremist AI ads; and Chegg sues Google over AI search tool.

Creative industries fight back against UK AI plans

Thousands of UK creative industry professionals, alongside national publications, are currently protesting against government plans on AI copyright laws. The coordinated effort, dubbed “Make it Fair”, is in protest against proposals under which media companies, artists, or authors, would have to proactively opt-out of having their work being used (or copied) by AI systems. The effort includes publications such as The Guardian and The Times running an identical cover wrap across their print and digital platforms, and the release of a “silent” album by over 1000 musicians including The Clash, Kate Bush, and Hans Zimmer.

Meta & X approve extremist AI ads

Research undertaken by corporate accountability group Ekō has demonstrated that Meta and X are failing to block AI-generated ads advocating hate speech and violence. On the eve of the German elections, Ekō submitted ten ads to each platform, five of which were approved by Meta, while all ten were immediately approved by X. Content in the approved ads included references to Nazi-era crimes, dehumanising speech, extremist narratives, and defacement of religious buildings. Many of the ads are believed likely to breach national laws within Germany.

Chegg sues Google over AI search tool

Education technology platform Chegg is suing Google over the release of its AI Overviews product, claiming that the tool directly uses its content and has decimated its online traffic. Concurrently, the firm is exploring “strategic alternatives” for its business, stating that Google’s anticompetitive conduct has threatened the viability of its business.

The lawsuit alleges that Google’s conduct, “threatens to leave the public with an increasingly unrecognizable internet experience, in which users never leave Google’s walled garden and receive only synthetic, error-ridden answers in response to their queries — a once robust but now hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust”