Clearly a concern.

https://pogowasright.org/privacy-in-2026-will-ai-further-supercharge-surveillance/

Privacy in 2026: Will AI further supercharge surveillance?

Mikael Thalen writes:

The tug of war between widespread data collection and data privacy has only intensified, with disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence supercharging both. Going into 2026, experts say that trends in privacy are at once reassuring and alarming. The increase in data collection, often in the form of domestic surveillance, has sparked debate across the country. But the level of pushback doesn’t seem to have outpaced the current surveillance rollout.

Experts feel that many of the privacy trends witnessed in 2025 will expand in the coming year. Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, believes the hasty adoption of AI by law enforcement agencies will prove even more controversial in 2026.

“The ramp of immigration surveillance in a variety of ways has been alarming, with the government vacuuming up data from a huge range of sources and pushing for more reckless deployment of surveillance technologies in the field,” Laperruque told Straight Arrow News. “The rapid integration of AI into surveillance and policing is also a big concern — lots of AI technologies have not proven their efficacy or at best only work under very precise and controlled scenarios, yet unvetted and unregulated technologies are being built into surveillance and policing in ways that could lead to errors with extremely serious consequences for individuals.”

Read more at SAN.

Can you spot the hallucinations? (That’s a joke, I think.)

https://www.bespacific.com/aba-task-force-on-law-and-artificial-intelligence/

ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence

ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence Addressing the Legal Challenges of AI Year 2 Report on the Impact of AI on the Practice of Law, December 2025. This report focuses on the future of AI and the law. One of the most high-profile and transformative developments of our time, complex and multi-faceted AI technologies have ubiquitous societal impacts and present far-reaching implications for the practice of law. As the national voice for the legal profession, the ABA is uniquely positioned to assess the opportunities and challenges that AI presents and to help ensure its integration is ethical and responsible and serves the public good.

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/lawyers-caught-misusing-ai-fuel-emerging-legal-education-sector/

Lawyers Caught Misusing AI Fuel Emerging Legal Education Sector

Bloomberg Law [no paywall]: “When a federal judge asked California solo practitioner William Becker Jr. to explain why a motion seemed to be riddled with AI-hallucinated citations, he knew what he needed to do. Becker, representing a defendant in a case involving former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, informed the judge that he’d taken “affirmative steps” to learn about professional responsibility issues around the use and misuse of AI, and that he attended a continuing legal education class on AI ethics for lawyers, promising to take another class soon. “I take the Court’s admonitions seriously,” said Becker in his Oct. 29 declaration. “I found it highly instructive and am integrating its guidance into my practice.” State bar and law firm leaders say attorneys such as Becker, and the growing number who have gotten into trouble for misusing AI like him, need to take greater responsibility for their AI use, and specifically when using generative AI programs like ChatGPT. Legal industry veterans are developing a broad range of AI-focused educational programs to help lawyers avoid embarrassing pitfalls and more effectively harness transformative tech that’s already streamlining lawyer workflows. “Lawyers are seeking more guidance, and we haven’t been giving them enough,” said Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the US District Court for the District of West Texas. “State bars are now recognizing that we need to do a better job,” said Rodriguez, who’s also a CLE instructor. After OpenAI introduced a more advanced iteration of ChatGPT in November 2022, the rise in misuse of generative AI chatbots in legal filings was modest and gradual from 2023 to 2024, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. But with litigants’ use of the technology becoming increasingly common, instances of litigants’ misuse exploded in 2025, from 31 in the first quarter to 167 in the third. AI-focused CLE course offerings are proliferating, as pro se litigants, solo practitioners, small-firm lawyers, and “Big Law” attorneys increasingly face consequences for presenting courts with hallucinated, GenAI-devised citations and non-existent cases. Although tech advocates say CLE is a belated fix, it comes as scores of federal judges have issued standing orders and sanction orders meant to govern and guide AI use, according to BLaw data…”