Florida’s Big Tech Brawler Finally Meets the Voters; Politico, October 31, 2026

 ANDREW ATTERBURY, Politico; Florida’s Big Tech Brawler Finally Meets the Voters

"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier telegraphed what was coming before even saying a word. At his podium, just like his former boss, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, had done so many times, he taped a red, white and blue sign that read: “Stop big tech surveillance.”

Taking swipes at tech titans is a common theme for the Sunshine State’s top legal official. Just the day before, at a press conference in Tampa, Uthmeier had attached a poster to a podium blasting OpenAI for its use of chatbots...

As Congress punts on regulating AI and tech titans openly fret about its existential threat, Florida stands out as an example for those who hope to decelerate the frantic growth of AI. There’s a reason for that. Last year, after Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody departed for the Senate, DeSantis installed a key player to score points for the governor’s tech agenda: Uthmeier, his former chief of staff. Through a combination of subpoenas, lawsuits and constant public pressure, Uthmeier has aggressively positioned Florida’s most powerful legal office into a new front in the battle over artificial intelligence and the tech companies behind it."

Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations; Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, April 20, 2026

 Ann Skeet , Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations

"Notably, what Meta did not say after the verdict was that it was sorry for the harms children experienced."

What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots; The New York Times, April 4, 2026

  

Kashmir Hill

Photographs by Frances F. Denny

, The New York Times ; What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots

"There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs.

Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI.

“If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.

Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.

At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly."