Replacing lawyers?

https://www.bespacific.com/from-hype-to-habits-comparing-data-on-generative-ai-in-law-firms/

From Hype to Habits: Comparing Data on Generative AI in Law Firms

Via LLRX – From Hype to Habits: Comparing Data on Generative AI in Law Firms – Since generative AI was first publicly released over two years ago, a litany of reports has been released that provide insight into how law firms are approaching it and the changing perspectives on its benefits and risks.  Nicole L. Black brings the facts to the discussion of how and to what extent law firms are actually implementing AI.

Again, AI is not people?

https://apnews.com/article/ai-lawsuit-suicide-artificial-intelligence-free-speech-ccc77a5ff5a84bda753d2b044c83d4b6

In lawsuit over teen’s death, judge rejects arguments that AI chatbots have free speech rights

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence  company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.

The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

If not an act of war, at least a new branch of the military. This is not a couple of kids working in their basement.

https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/russia-hacking-ukraine-aid-logistics-tech-companies-advisory/748723/

Russia stepping up attacks on firms aiding Ukraine, Western nations warn

As Russian missiles have rained down on Ukraine, Moscow’s hackers have increased their efforts to sabotage Western companies providing support to Kyiv.

The state-linked cyber team known as Fancy Bear has “expanded its targeting of logistics entities and technology companies involved in the delivery of aid, the U.S. and 10 of its closest allies said in a cyber threat advisory published Wednesday.

Russian hackers have targeted defense contractors, transportation facilities, maritime operators, air traffic control systems and IT service providers, according to the advisory. Their techniques are a mixture of brute-force password cracking, spear-phishing to obtain credentials and deliver malware and the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook and other software programs.

Do we have a consensus on problems?

https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-gdpr-technology-rewrites-prized-loathed-privacy-law/

GDPR is cracking: Brussels rewrites its prized privacy law

… The EU executive on Wednesday will present its plan to amend the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR for short, to ease reporting requirements for small and cash-strapped businesses. That same evening, EU officials are negotiating the final details of a separate law that's meant to fix some of what's seen as the GDPR's original design flaws.

(Related)

https://cdt.org/insights/cdt-europe-joins-an-open-letter-against-the-reopening-of-gdpr/

CDT Europe Joins an Open Letter Against the Reopening of GDPR

A broad coalition of 108 civil society organisations, academics, companies, trade unions, and experts, including CDT Europe, have published an open letter addressed to the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President Virkkunen, and Commissioner McGrath, to express their grave concerns regarding the ongoing proposals to reopen the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the backbone of the EU’s digital rulebook, and a hard-fought legislative achievement that sets high standards and safeguards people’s dignity in a data-driven world.

How? Is it that hard to check the output of AI?

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/20/nx-s1-5405022/fake-summer-reading-list-ai

How an AI-generated summer reading list got published in major newspapers

Some newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer have published a syndicated summer book list that includes made-up books by famous authors.

Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende never wrote a book called Tidewater Dreams, described in the "Summer reading list for 2025" as the author's "first climate fiction novel."

Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, never wrote a book called The Rainmakers, supposedly set in a "near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity."

Only five of the 15 titles on the list are real.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/solo-attorney-compared-current-lexis-subscription-to-chatgpt-deep-research/

Solo attorney compared current LEXIS subscription to ChatGPT Deep Research

Via LinkedIn – Carolyn Elefant – “I just compared my current LEXIS subscription to ChatGPT Deep Research and was blown away. My takeaways:

✅ ChatGPTDeepResearch – Comprehensive, well-organized memo.
❌ LEXIS – A big, over-inclusive data dump

❎ ChatGPTDeepResearch – Identified key SCOTUS precedent in first sentence.
❌ LEXIS – Missed precedent entirely.

✅ ChatGPTDeepResearch – Seamlessly accessible via browser
❌ LEXIS – Layers of paywall and log-in hell.

✅ ChatGPTDeepResearch: Part of my $200/month enterprise subscription with all other features but can be accessed as part of $20/month subscription.
❌ LEXIS – $270/month subscription that LEXIS has yet to update to include all AI features like every other tech product.

Why law school professors aren’t putting out these kinds of demos daily is a mystery – or perhaps the schools’ contracts with the WEXIS duopoly bar public criticism.  To view my longer blog post visit here and to see video documentation, visit this link.”

Tools & Techniques. (Anything on fact checking?)

https://www.bespacific.com/getting-the-most-from-ai-tools-a-practical-guide-to-writing-effective-prompts/

Getting the Most from AI Tools: A Practical Guide to Writing Effective Prompts

Lande, John, Getting the Most from AI Tools: A Practical Guide to Writing Effective Prompts (May 14, 2025). University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-24, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5254164 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5254164

“This article is a companion to How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot: What I Learned About AI and What You Can Too. This article helps users, especially those in dispute resolution roles, learn how to write effective prompts and engage productively with artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The goal is to make AI less intimidating and more useful – one good question at a time. The article shows how users can choose appropriate tools, formulate effective prompts, and generate useful results.  It offers role-specific prompt suggestions for mediators, attorneys, disputants, ADR program managers, law school faculty, students, and scholars. These examples are designed to support clear communication, creative problem-solving, intentional practice, and continuous learning. Though focused on the Real Practice Systems Coach tool, most suggestions can be used with other AI platforms.”

Still covered by attorney-client relationship?

https://www.bespacific.com/heads-up-for-lawyers-who-use-chatgpt-outside-firm-approved-systems/

Heads-up for lawyers who use ChatGPT outside firm-approved systems

Via Ray Lament, LinkedIn [click graphic to enlarge]

“On 13 May 2025 the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered OpenAI to preserve and segregate every chat record that would normally be deleted. The directive stands until the court decides otherwise. Surveys show plenty of practitioners have preferred the public version of ChatGPT to enterprise legal-AI tools, counting on auto-deletion to keep the risk down. This ruling shows a court can tell an AI provider to keep data you assumed had vanished, even if the order is later narrowed or overturned…”

Interesting that the obvious controls must be missing. This driver had too much access...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/05/doordash-hack.html

DoorDash Hack

A DoorDash driver stole over $2.5 million over several months:

The driver, Sayee Chaitainya Reddy Devagiri, placed expensive orders from a fraudulent customer account in the DoorDash app. Then, using DoorDash employee credentials, he manually assigned the orders to driver accounts he and the others involved had created. Devagiri would then mark the undelivered orders as complete and prompt DoorDash’s system to pay the driver accounts. Then he’d switch those same orders back to “in process” and do it all over again. Doing this “took less than five minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for many of the orders,” writes the US Attorney’s Office.

Interesting flaw in the software design. He probably would have gotten away with it if he’d kept the numbers small. It’s only when the amount missing is too big to ignore that the investigations start.

New types of wealth attract old types of crime.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-16/kidnappings-torture-and-severed-fingers-attacks-on-crypto-entrepreneurs-shake-france.html

Kidnappings, torture, and severed fingers: Attacks on crypto entrepreneurs shake France

At 8:20 a.m. on May 13, just as parents were accompanying their children to school in the wealthy 11th arrondissement of Paris, three hooded, armed men got out of a white delivery van and tried to kidnap a woman walking down the street with her two-year-old son. The father threw himself to the ground between them and received several blows to the head before a neighbor armed with a fire extinguisher appeared on the scene. Blindsided, the kidnappers took off in their van, abandoning one of the weapons on the sidewalk.

The woman is the daughter of Pierre Noizat, owner of the Paymium platform and a cryptocurrency pioneer. This is a sector being targeted by organized crime in France and this case is not atypical. The country has been experiencing a wave of kidnappings with extreme violence against cryptocurrency investors and their families for months. The advantages of this type of currency in the market is its speed and anonymity while the fact it is untraceable makes it attractive to organized crime operators, who see it as the perfect currency for ransoms and extortion. France has declared a full-scale war against organized crime, which in recent years has defied the state and even attacked prisons, protesting the reforms planned by the Ministry of the Interior to deal with mafias that operate from inside.

The porn industry has always been an early adapter. What can we learn?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dinesh-Deckker/publication/391576123_Artificial_Intelligence_and_Pornography_A_Comprehensive_Research_Review/links/681d76c0bfbe974b23c4f913/Artificial-Intelligence-and-Pornography-A-Comprehensive-Research-Review.pdf

Artificial Intelligence and pornography: A comprehensive research review

This comprehensive review examines the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and pornography, analyzing how AIdriven technologies such as deepfakes, recommendation systems, and content moderation tools are reshaping the adult entertainment industry. While AI introduces efficiencies in content creation and personalization, it also generates significant ethical, psychological, legal, and societal challenges. The proliferation of non-consensual deepfake pornography raises urgent concerns about consent, privacy, and image-based sexual abuse. AI's role in influencing user behaviour, reinforcing unrealistic sexual norms, and altering perceptions of intimacy is explored through psychological and media effects theories. Additionally, the paper highlights gaps in global regulation, inconsistencies in legal enforcement, and the urgent need for longitudinal and intervention studies to assess the real-world impacts of AIenhanced pornography. Future directions emphasise the development of ethical frameworks, robust technological safeguards, and interdisciplinary research to guide responsible innovation and protect human dignity in digital environments.