Politics

AB 1836, which requires studios to get express consent from dead performers’ estates before producing digital replicas of them, passed the state Senate yesterday, reports Variety.

The bill’s passage yesterday came days after California’s legislature passed AB 2602 with similar consent requirements for living actors. SAG-AFTRA released a statement calling the bill a “legislative priority” and encouraging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign it.

The platform posted about the milestone this afternoon, which it crossed after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X yesterday as part of an ongoing feud with the platform.

Apparently, enough are headed to Bluesky to drive its iOS app to the top of the Brazilian App Store, as TechCrunch writes.

The company announced today it would extend restrictions on election-related queries to more AI services including AI Overviews in Search, YouTube Live Chat summaries, and image generation in Gemini. It’s an expansion of the policy Google announced last December.

In her first interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash that her “values have not changed,” even though when she ran for the nomination in 2019, she said she was in favor of a ban. Fracking, of course, is a lightning rod issue in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.

Durov was released from police custody and transferred to court ahead of a possible indictment, reports The Associated Press.

French authorities arrested Durov Saturday in a preliminary investigation of the relationship between Telegram’s moderation practices and the distribution of CSAM and other criminal content by another unnamed person on the platform.

The fourth collection of digital trading cards shows Trump in typical over-the-top fantasies, like wielding a lightning bolt that apparently represents his role as the “crypto president.” There’s also a physical “collector’s edition” card with a piece of Trump’s debate night suit.

It’s not clear how this ties into Trump’s cryptocurrency platform, which we still don’t fully understand.

In a letter sent to Governor Gavin Newsom, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the benefits of SB 1047 “likely outweigh its costs.” However, he still has concerns about government overreach and suggests maintaining a “laser focus” on catastrophic risks.

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s letter to a California senator says the bill could slow progress, and that AI regulation should be left to the federal government.

Ryan Salame is due to begin his seven-year prison sentence next month, but now he claims prosecutors reneged on an agreement to drop a campaign finance investigation into his partner, Michelle Bond, in exchange for his guilty plea.

Charges filed today in the SDNY accuse the two of faking a $400k consulting payment from FTX to fund her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022.

Kamala Harris is the latest participant on Track Star, a TikTok game show where players identify a song for money.

Internet shows like Track Star are a new kind of media circuit for public figures. Democrats want these viral moments — and they’re trying hard to make them happen.

Tony West, who also served in the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, just spoke at the DNC. Of course, he wasn’t there to talk tech, but rather, to speak to Harris’ character.

Olivia Julianna was the latest influencer to get speaking time at the convention, in a nod to young voters and the new ways they consume media. Over the past two nights, the DNC said that “partner-created content” has received 85 million views.

After The New York Times reported that Walz was a Dreamcast fan, IGN did the legwork to find that he apparently really liked Crazy Taxi. Now I’m wondering if Walz knows all the lyrics to “Escape From the City,” too.

We must take on Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tech, and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people.

There’s a separate song playing for each group of delegates during the DNC roll call (“Empire State of Mind” for New York, “Lose Yourself” for Michigan, and that one Dropkick Murphys song for Massachusetts). Who processed these copyright clearances? Who decided “The Next Episode” is the theme song for the state of California?

Conway wrote a furious, and occasionally all-caps, email to his former crypto allies, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, after finding out they were going to try to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown. “Im the one using my 25+ year old personal relationships to help this movement the most significantly and not one person bothered to inform me.”

The former president said that Elon Musk is “a very smart guy. I certainly would, if he would do it.” The comment is a sign that Musk’s efforts to elect Trump could be personally beneficial, if they’re successful. Yet in the same interview with Reuters, Trump also said he’d consider ending the electric vehicle tax credit.

The president gave the closing speech for night one of the Democratic National Convention, touting climate advancements and the construction of new semiconductor manufacturing fabs among his achievements. When the crowd chanted “Thank you, Joe,” he responded, “Thank you, Kamala, too.” Later, he joked, “like many of our best presidents, she was also vice president.”

“The [intelligence community] is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties,” according to a joint ODNI, FBI, and CISA statement.

The Trump campaign said earlier this month that it had been hacked and claimed that Iran was responsible.

The site accuses Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes of a “secret order” to arrest its legal representative if X doesn’t “comply with his censorship orders.” Despite the change, “X service remains available to the people of Brazil.”

Justice de Moraes opened an investigation of the platform in April over its reactivation of accounts it was ordered to block. (The site soon reversed course.)

This in-depth story about Silicon Valley power couple Ben and Felicia Horowitz suggests that the catalyst for their political about-face was receiving criticism from the left. “Multiple sources close to the couple said the social media backlash affected them deeply.”

Author and journalist Malcolm Harris found a bag filled with Project 2025 merch and documents on the street this week — apparently nothing top secret, but interesting nonetheless.

The Washington Post reports that the Heritage Foundation, the right wing think tank spearheading Project 2025, filed a police report for “theft.” Then the cops showed up.