Digital Future Daily

Smart glasses are facing a global backlash over privacy concerns. Some lawmakers in Congress have recently pressed companies on whether law enforcement is using the technology with facial recognition, while several European countries are considering bans . On Wednesday, a German nonprofit filed a criminal complaint against Meta, alleging the company's smart glasses violate the country's privacy laws.

Distillation, a technique for extracting capabilities from AI models, has become a bogeyman in Washington. Major American AI companies have accused developers in China of distilling their proprietary models without permission, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy accused Chinese entities in April of conducting industrial-scale campaigns against U.S. frontier models using the technique.

With help from Aaron Mak Leading U.S. artificial intelligence labs face a dilemma after some of their most advanced models escaped to the open internet: Slow down to focus on safety, or stay on the gas to keep ahead of China's rapidly advancing models. Over the last several weeks, OpenAI Anthropic and Meta all disclosed separate instances in which their newest models escaped closed testing environments and wormed their way onto the open internet to carry out cyberattacks.

With help from Aaron Mak A New Mexico judge issued a landmark ruling against Meta last week. | Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images The milestone ruling by a New Mexico court last Thursday that found Meta contributed to a youth mental health crisis could serve as a blueprint for other state and individual legal challenges seeking to hold tech companies liable for harms stemming from their platforms.

With help from Owen Dahlkamp OpenAI disclosed this week that a combination of its models launched a fully autonomous cyberattack against the AI platform Hugging Face after escaping a secure testing environment during a benchmarking evaluation. Hugging Face pointed DFD to a blog post indicating its systems prevented the breach. OpenAI did not respond to an inquiry, but it has committed to working with Hugging Face to investigate the incident.

Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out a comprehensive vision for global AI regulation in his keynote address during his first appearance at the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which was held over the weekend. Xi pressed for an open-source AI ecosystem and international collaboration to integrate the technology in the Global South.

With help from Brendan Bordelon Over the past week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has raced go-karts , brandished a Chinese finger trap and delivered remarks in front of ellipticals to trumpet a new click-to-cancel rule — which requires companies to make canceling a subscription online as easy as it is to sign up for one.

One of the most contentious sticking points in the national debate over artificial intelligence is the extent to which states rather than the federal government should be able to regulate the technology. But a growing number of cities are also asserting their own authority over AI. Last week, Rockville became the first city in Maryland to prohibit the use of AI for setting rental costs.

Programming note: We'll be off this Friday, but will be back in your inboxes on Monday. Writer and podcaster Ed Zitron is the artificial intelligence boom's most acerbic gadfly , known for his fervent criticism of the sector, which he says is undergirded by empty promises and shaky finances. Zitron also works as a public relations specialist for tech companies, putting him in the unusual position of being both a Silicon Valley insider and antagonist.

With help from Aaron Mak Liberal operatives behind the emerging “Project 2029” agenda argued earlier this week that social media and artificial intelligence are heading towards the same kind of legal reckoning that ultimately reshaped the Big Tobacco industry. “In the 1990s, parents, states, courts, and the federal government came together to prevent cigarette companies from targeting kids,” the organizing group wrote in its framework for online child safety .