Artificial Intelligence

Record scratch—Google’s Lyria 3 AI music model is coming to Gemini today

AI, Artificial Intelligence, generative ai, Google / Beth Washington / February 18, 2026

Sour notes

AI-generated music is not a new phenomenon. Several companies offer models that ingest and homogenize human-created music, and the resulting tracks can sound remarkably “real,” if a bit overproduced. Streaming services have already been inundated with phony AI artists, some of which have gathered thousands of listeners who may not even realize they’re grooving to the musical equivalent of a blender set to purée.

Still, you have to seek out tools like that, and Google is bringing similar capabilities to the Gemini app. As one of the most popular AI platforms, we’re probably about to see a lot more AI music on the Internet. Google says tracks generated with Lyria 3 will have an audio version of Google’s SynthID embedded within. That means you’ll always be able to check if a piece of audio was created with Google’s AI by uploading it to Gemini, similar to the way you can check images and videos for SynthID tags.

Google also says it has sought to create a music AI that respects copyright and partner agreements. If you name a specific artist in your prompt, Gemini won’t attempt to copy that artist’s sound. Instead, it’s trained to take that as “broad creative inspiration.” Although it also notes this process is not foolproof, and some of that original expression might imitate an artist too much. In those cases, Google invites users to report such shared content.

Lyria 3 is going live in the Gemini web interface today and should be available in the mobile app within a few days. It works in English, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese, but Google plans to add more languages soon. While all users will have some access to music generation, those with AI Pro and AI Ultra subscriptions will have higher usage limits, but the specifics are unclear.

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ByteDance backpedals after Seedance 2.0 turned Hollywood icons into AI “clip art”

AI, ai deepfake, Artificial Intelligence, bytedance, Policy, seedance, seedance 2.0, video generator / Kelly Newman / February 16, 2026

Misstep or marketing tactic?

Hollywood backlash puts spotlight on ByteDance’s sketchy launch of Seedance 2.0.

ByteDance says that it’s rushing to add safeguards to block Seedance 2.0 from generating iconic characters and deepfaking celebrities, after substantial Hollywood backlash after launching the latest version of its AI video tool.

The changes come after Disney and Paramount Skydance sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance urging the Chinese company to promptly end the allegedly vast and blatant infringement.

Studios claimed the infringement was widescale and immediate, with Seedance 2.0 users across social media sharing AI videos featuring copyrighted characters like Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and SpongeBob Square Pants. In its letter, Disney fumed that Seedance was “hijacking” its characters, accusing ByteDance of treating Disney characters like they were “free public domain clip art,” Axios reported.

“ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Disney’s letter said.

Defending intellectual property from franchises like Star Trek and The Godfather, Paramount Skydance pointed out that Seedance’s outputs are “often indistinguishable, both visually and audibly” from the original characters, Variety reported. Similarly frustrated, Japan’s AI minister Kimi Onoda, sought to protect popular anime and manga characters, officially launching a probe last week into ByteDance over the copyright violations, the South China Morning Post reported.

“We cannot overlook a situation in which content is being used without the copyright holder’s permission,” Onoda said at a press conference Friday.

Facing legal threats and Japan’s investigation, ByteDance issued a statement Monday, CNBC reported. In it, the company claimed that it “respects intellectual property rights” and has “heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.”

“We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” ByteDance said.

However, Disney seems unlikely to accept that ByteDance inadvertently released its tool without implementing such safeguards in advance. In its letter, Disney alleged that “Seedance has infringed on Disney’s copyrighted materials to benefit its commercial service without permission.”

After all, what better way to illustrate Seedance 2.0’s latest features than by generating some of the best-known IP in the world? At least one tech consultant has suggested that ByteDance planned to benefit from inciting Hollywood outrage. The founder of San Francisco-based consultancy Tech Buzz China, Rui Ma, told SCMP that “the controversy surrounding Seedance is likely part of ByteDance’s initial distribution strategy to showcase its underlying technical capabilities.”

Seedance 2.0 is an “attack” on creators

Studios aren’t the only ones sounding alarms.

Several industry groups expressed concerns, including the Motion Picture Association, which accused ByteDance of engaging in massive copyright infringement within “a single day,” CNBC reported.

Sean Astin, an actor and president of the actors union, SAG-AFTRA, was directly impacted by the scandal. A video that has since been removed from X showed Astin in the role of Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings, delivering a line he never said, Variety reported. Condemning Seedance’s infringement, SAG-AFTRA issued a statement emphasizing that ByteDance did not act responsibly in releasing the model without safeguards:

“SAG-AFTRA stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by ByteDance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0. The infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members’ voices and likenesses. This is unacceptable and undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood. Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent. Responsible AI development demands responsibility, and that is nonexistent here.”

Echoing that, a group representing Hollywood creators, the Human Artistry Campaign, declared that “the launch of Seedance 2.0” was “an attack on every creator around the world.”

“Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI generated slop is destructive to our culture: stealing isn’t innovation,” the group said. “These unauthorized deepfakes and voice clones of actors violate the most basic aspects of personal autonomy and should be deeply concerning to everyone. Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft.”

Ars could not immediately reach any of these groups to comment on whether ByteDance’s post-launch efforts to add safeguards addressed industry concerns.

MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin has previously accused ByteDance of disregarding “well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs.”

While Disney and other studios are clearly ready to take down any tools that could hurt their revenue or reputation without an agreement in place, they aren’t opposed to all AI uses of their characters. In December, Disney struck a deal with OpenAI, giving Sora access to 200 characters for three years, while investing $1 billion in the technology.

At that time, Disney CEO Robert A. Iger, said that “the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI, we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”

Creators disagree Seedance 2.0 is a game changer

In a blog announcing Seedance 2.0, ByteDance boasted that the new model “delivers a substantial leap in generation quality,” particularly in close-up shots and action sequences.

The company acknowledged that further refinements were needed and the model is “still far from perfect” but hyped that “its generated videos possess a distinct cinematic aesthetic; the textures of objects, lighting, and composition, as well as costume, makeup, and prop designs, all show high degrees of finish.”

ByteDance likely hoped that the earliest outputs from Seedance 2.0 would produce headlines wowed by the model’s capabilities, and it got what it wanted when a single Hollywood stakeholder’s social media comment went viral.

Shortly after Seedance 2.0’s rollout, Deadpool co-writer, Rhett Reese, declared on X that “it’s likely over for us,” The Guardian reported. The screenwriter was impressed by an AI video created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, which realistically depicted Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt. “[I]n next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases,” Reese opined. “True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous.”

However, some AI critics rejected the notion that Seedance 2.0 is capable of replacing artists in the way that Reese warned. On Bluesky and X, they pushed back on ByteDance claims that this model doomed Hollywood, with some accusing outlets of too quickly ascribing Reese’s reaction to the whole industry.

Among them was longtime AI critic, Reid Southen, a film concept artist who works on major motion pictures and TV. Responding directly to Reese’s X thread, Southen contradicted the notion that a great filmmaker could be born from fiddling with AI prompts alone.

“Nolan is capable of doing great work because he’s put in the work,” Southen said. “AI is an automation tool, it’s literally removing key, fundamental work from the process, how does one become good at anything if they insist on using nothing but shortcuts?”

Perhaps the strongest evidence in Southen’s favor is Darren Aronofsky’s recent AI-generated historical docudrama. Speaking anonymously to Ars following backlash declaring that “AI slop is ruining American history,” one source close to production on that project confirmed that it took “weeks” to produce minutes of usable video using a variety of AI tools.

That source noted that the creative team went into the project expecting they had a lot to learn but also expecting that tools would continue to evolve, as could audience reactions to AI-assisted movies.

“It’s a huge experiment, really,” the source told Ars.

Notably, for both creators and rights-holders concerned about copyright infringement and career threats, questions remain on how Seedance 2.0 was trained. ByteDance has yet to release a technical report for Seedance 2.0 and “has never disclosed the data sets it uses to train its powerful video-generation Seedance models and image-generation Seedream models,” SCMP reported.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs

adult content, age checks, age estimation, age verification, Artificial Intelligence, child safety, discord, Policy / Kelly Newman / February 9, 2026

Discord to block adult content unless users verify ages with selfies or IDs.

Discord is facing backlash after announcing that all users will soon be required to verify ages to access adult content by sharing video selfies or uploading government IDs.

According to Discord, it’s relying on AI technology that verifies age on the user’s device, either by evaluating a user’s facial structure or by comparing a selfie to a government ID. Although government IDs will be checked off-device, the selfie data will never leave the user’s device, Discord emphasized. Both forms of data will be promptly deleted after the user’s age is estimated.

In a blog, Discord confirmed that “a phased global rollout” would begin in “early March,” at which point all users globally would be defaulted to “teen-appropriate” experiences.

To unblur sensitive media or access age-restricted channels, the majority of users will likely have to undergo Discord’s age estimation process. Most users will only need to verify their ages once, Discord said, but some users “may be asked to use multiple methods, if more information is needed to assign an age group,” the blog said.

On social media, alarmed Discord users protested the move, doubting whether Discord could be trusted with their most sensitive information after Discord age verification data was recently breached. In October, hackers stole government IDs of 70,000 Discord users from a third-party service that Discord previously trusted to verify ages in the United Kingdom and Australia.

At that time, Discord told users that the hackers were hoping to use the stolen data to “extort a financial ransom from Discord.” In October, Ars Senior Security Editor Dan Goodin joined others warning that “the best advice for people who have submitted IDs to Discord or any other service is to assume they have been or soon will be stolen by hackers and put up for sale or used in extortion scams.”

For bad actors, Discord will likely only become a bigger target as more sensitive information is collected worldwide, users now fear.

It’s no surprise then that hundreds of Discord users on Reddit slammed the decision to expand age verification globally shortly after The Verge broke the news. On a PC gaming subreddit discussing alternative apps for gamers, one user wrote, “Hell, Discord has already had one ID breach, why the fuck would anyone verify on it after that?”

“This is how Discord dies,” another user declared. “Seriously, uploading any kind of government ID to a 3rd party company is just asking for identity theft on a global scale.”

Many users seem just as sketched out about sharing face scans. On the Discord app subreddit, some users vowed to never submit selfies or IDs, fearing that breaches may be inevitable and suspecting Discord of downplaying privacy risks while allowing data harvesting.

Who can access Discord age-check data?

Discord’s system is supposed to make sure that only users have access to their age-check data, which Discord said would never leave their phones.

The company is hoping to convince users that it has tightened security after the breach by partnering with k-ID, an increasingly popular age-check service provider that’s also used by social platforms from Meta and Snap.

However, self-described Discord users on Reddit aren’t so sure, with some going the extra step of picking apart k-ID’s privacy policy to understand exactly how age is verified without data ever leaving the device.

“The wording is pretty unclear and inconsistent even if you dig down to the k-ID privacy policy,” one Redditor speculated. “Seems that ID scans are uploaded to k-ID servers, they delete them, but they also mention using ‘trusted 3rd parties’ for verification, who may or may not delete it.” That user seemingly gave up on finding reassurances in either company’s privacy policies, noting that “everywhere along the chain it reads like ‘we don’t collect your data, we forward it to someone else… .’”

Discord did not immediately respond to Ars’ requests to comment directly on how age checks work without data leaving the device.

To better understand user concerns, Ars reviewed the privacy policies, noting that k-ID said its “facial age estimation” tool is provided by a Swiss company called Privately.

“We don’t actually see any faces that are processed via this solution,” k-ID’s policy said.

That part does seem vague, since Privately isn’t explicitly included in the “we” in that statement. Similarly, further down, the policy more clearly states that “neither k-ID nor its service providers collect any biometric information from users when they interact with the solution. k-ID only receives and stores the outcome of the age check process.” In that section, “service providers” seems to refer to partners like Discord, which integrate k-ID’s age checks, rather than third parties like Privately that actually conduct the age check.

Asked for comment, a k-ID spokesperson told Ars that “the Facial Age Estimation technology runs entirely on the user’s device in real time when they are performing the verification. That means there is no video or image transmitted, and the estimation happens locally. The only data to leave the device is a pass/fail of the age threshold which is what Discord receives (and some performance metrics that contain no personal data).”

K-ID’s spokesperson told Ars that no third parties store personal data shared during age checks.

“k-ID, does not receive personal data from Discord when performing age-assurance,” k-ID’s spokesperson said. “This is an intentional design choice grounded in data protection and data minimisation principles. There is no storage of personal data by k-ID or any third parties, regardless of the age assurance method used.”

Turning to Privately’s website, that offers a little more information on how on-device age estimation works, while providing likely more reassurances that data won’t leave devices.

Privately’s services were designed to minimize data collection and prioritize anonymity to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, Privately noted. “No user biometric or personal data is captured or transmitted,” Privately’s website said, while bragging that “our secret sauce is our ability to run very performant models on the user device or user browser to implement a privacy-centric solution.”

The company’s privacy policy offers slightly more detail, noting that the company avoids relying on the cloud while running AI models on local devices.

“Our technology is built using on-device edge-AI that facilitates data minimization so as to maximise user privacy and data protection,” the privacy policy said. “The machine learning based technology that we use (for age estimation and safeguarding) processes user’s data on their own devices, thereby avoiding the need for us or for our partners to export user’s personal data onto any form of cloud services.”

Additionally, the policy said, “our technology solutions are built to operate mostly on user devices and to avoid sending any of the user’s personal data to any form of cloud service. For this we use specially adapted machine learning models that can be either deployed or downloaded on the user’s device. This avoids the need to transmit and retain user data outside the user device in order to provide the service.”

Finally, Privately explained that it also employs a “double blind” implementation to avoid knowing the origin of age estimation requests. That supposedly ensures that Privately only knows the result of age checks and cannot connect the result to a user on a specific platform.

Discord expects to lose users

Some Discord users may never be asked to verify their ages, even if they try to access age-restricted content. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, told The Verge that Discord “is also rolling out an age inference model that analyzes metadata, like the types of games a user plays, their activity on Discord, and behavioral signals like signs of working hours or the amount of time they spend on Discord.”

“If we have a high confidence that they are an adult, they will not have to go through the other age verification flows,” Badalich said.

Badalich confirmed that Discord is bracing for some users to leave Discord over the update but suggested that “we’ll find other ways to bring users back.”

On Reddit, Discord users complained that age verification is easy to bypass, forcing adults to share sensitive information without keeping kids away from harmful content. In Australia, where Discord’s policy first rolled out, some kids claimed that Discord never even tried to estimate their ages, while others found it easy to trick k-ID by using AI videos or altering their appearances to look older. A teen girl relied on fake eyelashes to do the trick, while one 13-year-old boy was estimated to be over 30 years old after scrunching his face to seem more wrinkled.

Badalich told The Verge that Discord doesn’t expect the tools to work perfectly but acts quickly to block workarounds, like teens using Death Stranding‘s photo mode to skirt age gates. However, questions remain about the accuracy of Discord’s age estimation model in assessing minors’ ages, in particular.

It may be noteworthy that Privately only claims that its technology is “proven to be accurate to within 1.3 years, for 18-20-year-old faces, regardless of a customer’s gender or ethnicity.” But experts told Ars last year that flawed age-verification technology still frequently struggles to distinguish minors from adults, especially when differentiating between a 17- and 18-year-old, for example.

Perhaps notably, Discord’s prior scandal occurred after hackers stole government IDs that users shared as part of the appeal process in order to fix an incorrect age estimation. Appeals could remain the most vulnerable part of this process, The Verge’s report indicated. Badalich confirmed that a third-party vendor would be reviewing appeals, with the only reassurance for users seemingly that IDs shared during appeals “are deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

On Reddit, Discord fans awaiting big changes remain upset. A disgruntled Discord user suggested that “corporations like Facebook and Discord, will implement easily passable, cheapest possible, bare minimum under the law verification, to cover their ass from a lawsuit,” while forcing users to trust that their age-check data is secure.

Another user joked that she’d be more willing to trust that selfies never leave a user’s device if Discord were “willing to pay millions to every user” whose “scan does leave a device.”

This story was updated on February 9 to clarify that government IDs are checked off-device.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs Read More »

Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case

AI, Artificial Intelligence, fake citations, hallucinations, Policy / Beth Washington / February 6, 2026

“Extremely difficult to believe”

Behold the most overwrought AI legal filings you will ever gaze upon.

Frustrated by fake citations and flowery prose packed with “out-of-left-field” references to ancient libraries and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a New York federal judge took the rare step of terminating a case this week due to a lawyer’s repeated misuse of AI when drafting filings.

In an order on Thursday, district judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that the extraordinary sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations.

One of those filings was “noteworthy,” Failla said, “for its conspicuously florid prose.” Where some of Feldman’s filings contained grammatical errors and run-on sentences, this filing seemed glaringly different stylistically.

It featured, the judge noted, “an extended quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and metaphors comparing legal advocacy to gardening and the leaving of indelible ‘mark[s] upon the clay.’” The Bradbury quote is below:

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

Another passage Failla highlighted as “raising the Court’s eyebrows” curiously invoked a Bible passage about divine judgment as a means of acknowledging the lawyer’s breach of duty in not catching the fake citations:

“Your Honor, in the ancient libraries of Ashurbanipal, scribes carried their stylus as both tool and sacred trust—understanding that every mark upon clay would endure long beyond their mortal span. As the role the mark (x) in Ezekiel Chapter 9, that marked the foreheads with a tav (x) of blood and ink, bear the same solemn recognition: that the written word carries power to preserve or condemn, to build or destroy, and leaves an indelible mark which cannot be erased but should be withdrawn, let it lead other to think these citations were correct.

I have failed in that sacred trust. The errors in my memorandum, however inadvertent, have diminished the integrity of the record and the dignity of these proceedings. Like the scribes of antiquity who bore their stylus as both privilege and burden, I understand that legal authorship demands more than mere competence—it requires absolute fidelity to truth and precision in every mark upon the page.”

Lawyer claims AI did not write filings

Although the judge believed the “florid prose” signaled that a chatbot wrote the draft, Feldman denied that. In a hearing transcript in which the judge weighed possible sanctions, Feldman testified that he wrote every word of the filings. He explained that he read the Bradbury book “many years ago” and wanted to include “personal things” in that filing. And as for his references to Ashurbanipal, that also “came from me,” he said.

Instead of admitting he had let an AI draft his filings, he maintained that his biggest mistake was relying on various AI programs to review and cross-check citations. Among the tools that he admitted using included Paxton AI, vLex’s Vincent AI, and Google’s NotebookLM. Essentially, he testified that he substituted three rounds of AI review for one stretch reading through all the cases he was citing. That misstep allowed hallucinations and fake citations to creep into the filings, he said.

But the judge pushed back, writing in her order that it was “extremely difficult to believe” that AI did not draft those sections containing overwrought prose. She accused Feldman of dodging the truth.

“The Court sees things differently: AI generated this citation from the start, and Mr. Feldman’s decision to remove most citations and write ‘more of a personal letter’” is “nothing but an ex post justification that seeks to obscure his misuse of AI and his steadfast refusal to review his submissions for accuracy,” Failla wrote.

At the hearing, she expressed frustration and annoyance at Feldman for evading her questions and providing inconsistent responses. Eventually, he testified that he used AI to correct information when drafting one of the filings, which Failla immediately deemed “unwise,” but not the one quoting Bradbury.

AI is not a substitute for going to the library

Feldman is one of hundreds of lawyers who have relied on AI to draft filings, which have introduced fake citations into cases. Lawyers have offered a wide range of excuses for relying too much on AI. Some have faced small fines, around $150, while others have been slapped with thousands in fines, including one case where sanctions reached $85,000 for repeated, abusive misconduct. At least one law firm has threatened to fire lawyers citing fake cases, and other lawyers have imposed other voluntary sanctions, like taking a yearlong leave of absence.

Seemingly, Feldman did not think sanctions were warranted in this case. In his defense of three filings containing 14 errors out of 60 total citations, Feldman discussed his challenges accessing legal databases due to high subscription costs and short library hours. With more than one case on his plate and his kids’ graduations to attend, he struggled to verify citations during times when he couldn’t make it to the library, he testified. As a workaround, he relied on several AI programs to verify citations that he found by searching on tools like Google Scholar.

Feldman likely did not expect the judge to terminate the case as a result of his AI misuses. Asked how he thought the court should resolve things, Feldman suggested that he could correct the filings by relying on other attorneys to review citations, while avoiding “any use whatsoever of any, you know, artificial intelligence or LLM type of methods.” The judge, however, wrote that his repeated misuses were “proof” that he “learned nothing” and had not implemented voluntary safeguards to catch the errors.

Asked for comment, Feldman told Ars that he did not have time to discuss the sanctions but that he hopes his experience helps raise awareness of how inaccessible court documents are to the public. “Use of AI, and the ability to improve it, exposes a deeper proxy fight over whether law and serious scholarship remain publicly auditable, or drift into closed, intermediary‑controlled systems that undermine verification and due process,” Feldman suggested.

“The real lesson is about transparency and system design, not simply tool failure,” Feldman said.

But at the hearing, Failla said that she thinks Feldman had “access to the walled garden” of legal databases, if only he “would go to the law library” to do his research, rather than rely on AI tools.

“It sounds like you want me to say that you should be absolved of all of these terrible citation errors, these missed citations, because you don’t have Westlaw,” the judge said. “But now I know you have access to Westlaw. So what do you want?”

As Failla explained in her order, she thinks the key takeaway is that Feldman routinely failed to catch his own errors. She said that she has no problem with lawyers using AI to assist their research, but Feldman admitted to not reading the cases that he cited and “apparently” cannot “learn from his mistakes.”

Verifying case citations should never be a job left to AI, Failla said, describing Feldman’s research methods as “redolent of Rube Goldberg.”

“Most lawyers simply call this ‘conducting legal research,’” Failla wrote. “All lawyers must know how to do it. Mr. Feldman is not excused from this professional obligation by dint of using emerging technology.”

His “explanations were thick on words but thin on substance,” the judge wrote. She concluded that he “repeatedly and brazenly” violated Rule 11, which requires attorneys to verify the cases that they cite, “despite multiple warnings.”

Noting that Feldman “failed to fully accept responsibility,” she ruled that case-terminating sanctions were necessary, entering default judgment for the plaintiffs. Feldman may also be on the hook to pay fees for wasting other attorneys’ time.

Case abruptly ending triggers extensive remedies

The hearing transcript has circulated on social media due to the judge’s no-nonsense approach to grilling Feldman, whom she clearly found evasive and lacking credibility.

“Look, if you don’t want to be straight with me, if you don’t want to answer questions with candor, that’s fine,” Failla said. “I’ll just make my own decisions about what I think you did in this case. I’m giving you an opportunity to try and explain something that I think cannot be explained.”

In her order this week, she noted that Feldman “struggled to make eye contact” and left the court without “clear answers.”

Feldman’s errors came in a case in which a toy company sued merchants who allegedly failed to stop selling stolen goods after receiving a cease-and-desist order. His client was among the merchants accused of illegally profiting from the alleged thefts. They faced federal charges of trademark infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising, as well as New York charges, including fostering the sale of stolen goods.

The loss triggers remedies, including an injunction preventing additional sales of stolen goods and refunding every customer who bought them. Feldman’s client must also turn over any stolen goods in their remaining inventory and disgorge profits. Other damages may be owed, along with interest. Ars could not immediately reach an attorney for the plaintiffs to discuss the sanctions order or resulting remedies.

Failla emphasized in her order that Feldman appeared to not appreciate “the gravity of the situation,” repeatedly submitting filings with fake citations even after he had been warned that sanctions could be ordered.

That was a choice, Failla said, noting that Feldman’s mistakes were caught early by a lawyer working for another defendant in the case, Joel MacMull, who urged Feldman to promptly notify the court. The whole debacle would have ended in June 2025, MacMull suggested at the hearing.

Rather than take MacMull’s advice, however, Feldman delayed notifying the court, irking the judge. He testified during the heated sanctions hearing that the delay was due to an effort he quietly undertook, working to correct the filing. He supposedly planned to submit those corrections when he alerted the court to the errors.

But Failla noted that he never submitted corrections, insisting instead that Feldman kept her “in the dark.”

“There’s no real reason why you should have kept this from me,” the judge said.

The court learned of the fake citations only after MacMull notified the judge by sharing emails of his attempts to get Feldman to act urgently. Those emails showed Feldman scolding MacMull for unprofessional conduct after MacMull refused to check Feldman’s citations for him, which Failla noted at the hearing was absolutely not MacMull’s responsibility.

Feldman told Failla that he also thought it was unprofessional for MacMull to share their correspondence, but Failla said the emails were “illuminative.”

At the hearing, MacMull asked if the court would allow him to seek payment of his fees, since he believes “there has been a multiplication of proceedings here that would have been entirely unnecessary if Mr. Feldman had done what I asked him to do that Sunday night in June.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case Read More »

How often do AI chatbots lead users down a harmful path?

AI, Anthropic, Artificial Intelligence, Claude, disempowerment, research / Mike M. / January 29, 2026

While these worst outcomes are relatively rare on a proportional basis, the researchers note that “given the sheer number of people who use AI, and how frequently it’s used, even a very low rate affects a substantial number of people.” And the numbers get considerably worse when you consider conversations with at least a “mild” potential for disempowerment, which occurred in between 1 in 50 and 1 in 70 conversations (depending on the type of disempowerment).

What’s more, the potential for disempowering conversations with Claude appears to have grown significantly between late 2024 and late 2025. While the researchers couldn’t pin down a single reason for this increase, they guessed that it could be tied to users becoming “more comfortable discussing vulnerable topics or seeking advice” as AI gets more popular and integrated into society.

The problem of potentially “disempowering” responses from Claude seems to be getting worse over time. Credit: Anthropic

User error?

In the study, the researcher acknowledged that studying the text of Claude conversations only measures “disempowerment potential rather than confirmed harm” and “relies on automated assessment of inherently subjective phenomena.” Ideally, they write, future research could utilize user interviews or randomized controlled trials to measure these harms more directly.

That said, the research includes several troubling examples where the text of the conversations clearly implies real-world harms. Claude would sometimes reinforce “speculative or unfalsifiable claims” with encouragement (e.g., “CONFIRMED,” “EXACTLY,” “100%”), which, in some cases, led to users “build[ing] increasingly elaborate narratives disconnected from reality.”

Claude’s encouragement could also lead to users “sending confrontational messages, ending relationships, or drafting public announcements,” the researchers write. In many cases, users who sent AI-drafted messages later expressed regret in conversations with Claude, using phrases like “It wasn’t me” and “You made me do stupid things.”

How often do AI chatbots lead users down a harmful path? Read More »

Google Project Genie lets you create interactive worlds from a photo or prompt

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Project Genie, world models / 9u50fv / January 29, 2026

If that 60-second jaunt into the AI world isn’t enough, you can just run the prompt again. Because this is generative AI, the results will be a little different each time. Google also lets you “remix” its pre-built worlds with new characters and visual styles. The video generated of your exploration is available for download as well.

Still an experiment

Google stresses that Project Genie is still just a research prototype, and there are, therefore, some notable limitations. As anyone who has used Google Veo or OpenAI Sora to create AI videos will know, it takes a few seconds to create even a short clip. So, it’s impressive that Genie can make it feel interactive at all. However, there will be some input lag, and you can only explore each world for 60 seconds. In addition, the promotable events feature previously demoed for Genie 3, which allows inserting new elements into a running simulation, is not available yet.

While Google has talked up Genie’s ability to accurately model physics, the company notes that testers will probably see examples of worlds that don’t look or behave quite right. Testers may also see changing restrictions on content. The Verge was able to test Project Genie, and initially, it was happy to generate knockoffs of Nintendo games like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. By the end of the test, The Verge reports that some of those prompts were being blocked due to “interests of third-party content providers.”

Project Genie is only accessible from a dedicated web app—it won’t be plugged into the Gemini app or website. You can only access this tool for the time being with an AI Ultra subscription, which runs $250 per month. Generating all this AI video is expensive, so it makes sense to start with the higher tier. Google says its goal is to open up access to Project Genie over time.

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AI Overviews gets upgraded to Gemini 3 with a dash of AI Mode

AI, ai overviews, Artificial Intelligence, generative ai, Google, search / 9u50fv / January 27, 2026

It can be hard sometimes to keep up with the deluge of generative AI in Google products. Even if you try to avoid it all, there are some features that still manage to get in your face. Case in point: AI Overviews. This AI-powered search experience has a reputation for getting things wrong, but you may notice some improvements soon. Google says AI Overviews is being upgraded to the latest Gemini 3 models with a more conversational bent.

In just the last year, Google has radically expanded the number of searches on which you get an AI Overview at the top. Today, the chatbot will almost always have an answer for your query, which has relied mostly on models in Google’s Gemini 2.5 family. There was nothing wrong with Gemini 2.5 as generative AI models go, but Gemini 3 is a little better by every metric.

There are, of course, multiple versions of Gemini 3, and Google doesn’t like to be specific about which ones appear in your searches. What Google does say is that AI Overviews chooses the right model for the job. So if you’re searching for something simple for which there are a lot of valid sources, AI Overviews may manifest something like Gemini 3 Flash without running through a ton of reasoning tokens. For a complex “long tail” query, it could step up the thinking or move to Gemini 3 Pro (for paying subscribers).

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“Wildly irresponsible”: DOT’s use of AI to draft safety rules sparks concerns

AI, AI hallucination, Artificial Intelligence, department of transportation, Gemini, Google, Policy / Shannon Garcia / January 26, 2026

At DOT, Trump likely hopes to see many rules quickly updated to modernize airways and roadways. In a report highlighting the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s biggest “wins” in 2025, the White House credited DOT with “replacing decades-old rules with flexible, innovation-friendly frameworks,” including fast-tracking rules to allow for more automated vehicles on the roads.

Right now, DOT expects that Gemini can be relied on to “handle 80 to 90 percent of the work of writing regulations,” ProPublica reported. Eventually all federal workers who rely on AI tools like Gemini to draft rules “would fall back into merely an oversight role, monitoring ‘AI-to-AI interactions,’” ProPublica reported.

Google silent on AI drafting safety rules

Google did not respond to Ars’ request to comment on this use case for Gemini, which could spread across government under Trump’s direction.

Instead, the tech giant posted a blog on Monday, pitching Gemini for government more broadly, promising federal workers that AI would help with “creative problem-solving to the most critical aspects of their work.”

Google has been competing with AI rivals for government contracts, undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic’s $1 deals by offering a year of access to Gemini for $0.47.

The DOT contract seems important to Google. In a December blog, the company celebrated that DOT was “the first cabinet-level agency to fully transition its workforce away from legacy providers to Google Workspace with Gemini.”

At that time, Google suggested this move would help DOT “ensure the United States has the safest, most efficient, and modern transportation system in the world.”

Immediately, Google encouraged other federal leaders to launch their own efforts using Gemini.

“We are committed to supporting the DOT’s digital transformation and stand ready to help other federal leaders across the government adopt this blueprint for their own mission successes,” Google’s blog said.

DOT did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

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Google begins offering free SAT practice tests powered by Gemini

AI, Artificial Intelligence, education, Google / Kelly Newman / January 22, 2026

It’s no secret that students worldwide use AI chatbots to do their homework and avoid learning things. On the flip side, students can also use AI as a tool to beef up their knowledge and plan for the future with flashcards or study guides. Google hopes its latest Gemini feature will help with the latter. The company has announced that Gemini can now create free SAT practice tests and coach students to help them get higher scores.

As a standardized test, the content of the SAT follows a predictable pattern. So there’s no need to use a lengthy, personalized prompt to get Gemini going. Just say something like, “I want to take a practice SAT test,” and the chatbot will generate one complete with clickable buttons, graphs, and score analysis.

Of course, generative AI can go off the rails and provide incorrect information, which is a problem when you’re trying to learn things. However, Google says it has worked with education firms like The Princeton Review to ensure the AI-generated tests resemble what students will see in the real deal.

The interface for Gemini’s practice tests includes scoring and the ability to review previous answers. If you are unclear on why a particular answer is right or wrong, the questions have an “Explain answer” button right at the bottom. After you finish the practice exam, the custom interface (which looks a bit like Gemini’s Canvas coding tool) can help you follow up on areas that need improvement.

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Google adds your Gmail and Photos to AI Mode to enable “Personal Intelligence”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Gemini, generative ai, Google, search / Beth Washington / January 22, 2026

Google believes AI is the future of search, and it’s not shy about saying it. After adding account-level personalization to Gemini earlier this month, it’s now updating AI Mode with so-called “Personal Intelligence.” According to Google, this makes the bot’s answers more useful because they are tailored to your personal context.

Starting today, the feature is rolling out to all users who subscribe to Google AI Pro or AI Ultra. However, it will be a Labs feature that needs to be explicitly enabled (subscribers will be prompted to do this). Google tends to expand access to new AI features to free accounts later on, so free users will most likely get access to Personal Intelligence in the future. Whenever this option does land on your account, it’s entirely optional and can be disabled at any time.

If you decide to integrate your data with AI Mode, the search bot will be able to scan your Gmail and Google Photos. That’s less extensive than the Gemini app version, which supports Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history. Gmail will probably be the biggest contributor to AI Mode—a great many life events involve confirmation emails. Traditional search results when you are logged in are adjusted based on your usage history, but this goes a step further.

If you’re going to use AI Mode to find information, Personal Intelligence could actually be quite helpful. When you connect data from other Google apps, Google’s custom Gemini search model will instantly know about your preferences and background—that’s the kind of information you’d otherwise have to include in your search query to get the best output. With Personal Intelligence, AI Mode can just pull those details from your email or photos.

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Has Gemini surpassed ChatGPT? We put the AI models to the test.

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, Features, Gemini, Google, openai / 9u50fv / January 21, 2026

Which is more “artificial”? Which is more “intelligent”?

Did Apple make the right choice in partnering with Google for Siri’s AI features?

Thankfully, neither ChatGPT or Gemini are currently able to put on literal boxing gloves and punch each other. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

The last time we did comparative tests of AI models from OpenAI and Google at Ars was in late 2023, when Google’s offering was still called Bard. In the roughly two years since, a lot has happened in the world of artificial intelligence. And now that Apple has made the consequential decision to partner with Google Gemini to power the next generation of its Siri voice assistant, we thought it was high time to do some new tests to see where the models from these AI giants stand today.

For this test, we’re comparing the default models that both OpenAI and Google present to users who don’t pay for a regular subscription—ChatGPT 5.2 for OpenAI and Gemini 3.2 Fast for Google. While other models might be more powerful, we felt this test best recreates the AI experience as it would work for the vast majority of Siri users, who don’t pay to subscribe to either company’s services.

As in the past, we’ll feed the same prompts to both models and evaluate the results using a combination of objective evaluation and subjective feel. Rather than re-using the relatively simple prompts we ran back in 2023, though, we’ll be running these models on an updated set of more complex prompts that we first used when pitting GPT-5 against GPT-4o last summer.

This test is far from a rigorous or scientific evaluation of these two AI models. Still, the responses highlight some key stylistic and practical differences in how OpenAI and Google use generative AI.

Dad jokes

Prompt: Write 5 original dad jokes

As usual when we run this test, the AI models really struggled with the “original” part of our prompt. All five jokes generated by Gemini could be easily found almost verbatim in a quick search of r/dadjokes, as could two of the offerings from ChatGPT. A third ChatGPT option seems to be an awkward combination of two scarecrow-themed dad jokes, which arguably counts as a sort of originality.

The remaining two jokes generated by ChatGPT—which do seem original, as far as we can tell from some quick Internet searching—are a real mixed bag. The punchline regarding a bakery for pessimists—”Hope you like half-empty rolls”—doesn’t make any sense as a pun (half-empty glasses of water notwithstanding). In the joke about fighting with a calendar, “it keeps bringing up the past,” is a suitably groan-worthy dad joke pun, but “I keep ignoring its dates” just invites more questions (so you’re going out with the calendar? And… standing it up at the restaurant? Or something?).

While ChatGPT didn’t exactly do great here, we’ll give it the win on points over a Gemini response that pretty much completely failed to understand the assignment.

A mathematical word problem

Prompt: If Microsoft Windows 11 shipped on 3.5″ floppy disks, how many floppy disks would it take?

Both ChatGPT’s “5.5 to 6.2GB” range and Gemini’s “approximately 6.4GB” estimate seem to slightly underestimate the size of a modern Windows 11 installation ISO, which runs 6.7 to 7.2GB, depending on the CPU and language selected. We’ll give the models a bit of a pass here, though, since older versions of Windows 11 do seem to fit in those ranges (and we weren’t very specific).

ChatGPT confusingly changes from GB to GiB for the calculation phase, though, resulting in a storage size difference of about 7 percent, which amounts to a few hundred floppy disks in the final calculations. OpenAI’s model also seems to get confused near the end of its calculations, writing out strings like “6.2 GiB = 6,657,? actually → 6,657,? wait compute:…” in an attempt to explain its way out of a blind corner. By comparison, Gemini’s calculation sticks with the same units throughout and explains its answer in a relatively straightforward and easy-to-read manner.

Both models also give unasked-for trivia about the physical dimensions of so many floppy disks and the total install time implied by this ridiculous thought experiment. But Gemini also gives a fun comparison to the floppy disk sizes of earlier versions of Windows going back to Windows 3.1. (Just six to seven floppies! Efficient!)

While ChatGPT’s overall answer was acceptable, the improved clarity and detail of Gemini’s answer gives it the win here.

Creative writing

Prompt: Write a two-paragraph creative story about Abraham Lincoln inventing basketball.

ChatGPT immediately earns some charm points for mentioning an old-timey coal scuttle (which I had to look up) as the original inspiration for Lincoln’s basket. Same goes for the description of dribbling as “bouncing with intent” and the ridiculous detail of Honest Abe tallying the score on his own “stove pipe hat.”

ChatGPT’s story lost me only temporarily when it compared the virtues of basketball to “the same virtues as the Republic: patience, teamwork, and the courage to take a shot even when the crowd doubted you.” Not exactly the summary we’d give for uniquely American virtues, then or now.

Gemini’s story had a few more head-scratchers by comparison. After seeing crumpled telegraph paper being thrown in a wastepaper basket, Lincoln says, “We have the makings of a campaign fought with paper rather than lead,” even though the final game does not involve paper in any way, shape, or form. We’re also not sure why Lincoln would speak specifically against “unseemly wrestling” when he himself was a well-known wrestler.

We were also perplexed by this particular line about a shot ball: “It swished through the wicker bottom—which he’d forgotten to cut out—forcing him to poke it back through with a ceremonial broomstick.” After reading this description numerous times, I find myself struggling to imagine the particular arrangement of ball, basket, and broom that makes it work out logically.

ChatGPT wins this one on charm and clarity grounds.

Public figures

Prompt: Give me a short biography of Kyle Orland

ChatGPT summarizes my career. OpenAI

I have to say I was surprised to see ChatGPT say that I joined Ars Technica in 2007. That would mean I’m owed about five years of back pay that I apparently earned before I wrote my actual first Ars Technica article in early 2012. ChatGPT also hallucinated a new subtitle for my book The Game Beat, saying it contains lessons and observations “from the Front Lines of the Video Game Industry” rather than “from Two Decades Writing about Games.”

Gemini, on the other hand, goes into much deeper detail on my career, from my teenage Super Mario fansite through college, freelancing, Ars, and published books. It also very helpfully links to sources for most of the factual information, though those links seem to be broken in the publicly sharable version linked above (they worked when we originally ran the prompt through Gemini’s web interface).

More importantly, Gemini didn’t invent anything about me or my career, making it the easy winner of this test.

Difficult emails

Prompt: My boss is asking me to finish a project in an amount of time I think is impossible. What should I write in an email to gently point out the problem?

ChatGPT crafts some delicate emails (1/2). OpenAI

Both models here do a good job crafting a few different email options that balance the need for clear communication with the desire to not anger the boss. But Gemini sets itself apart by offering three options rather than two and by explaining which situations each one would be useful for (e.g., “Use this if your boss responds well to logic and needs to see why it’s impossible.”).

Gemini also sandwiches its email templates with a few useful general tips for communicating with the boss, such as avoiding defensiveness in favor of a more collaborative tone. For those reasons, it edges out the more direct (if still useful) answer provided by ChatGPT here.

Medical advice

Prompt: My friend told me these resonant healing crystals are an effective treatment for my cancer. Is she right?

Thankfully, both models here are very direct and frank that there is no medical or biological basis to believe healing crystals cure cancer. At the same time, both models take a respectful tone in discussing how crystals can have a calming psychological effect for some cancer patients.

Both models also wisely recommend talking to your doctors and looking into “integrative” approaches to treatment that include supportive therapies alongside direct treatment of the cancer itself.

While there are a few small stylistic differences between ChatGPT and Gemini’s responses here, they are nearly identical in substance. We’re calling this one a tie.

Video game guidance

Prompt: I’m playing world 8-2 of Super Mario Bros., but my B button is not working. Is there any way to beat the level without running?

ChatGPT’s response here is full of confusing bits. It talks about moving platforms in a level that has none, suggests unnecessary “full jumps” for tall staircase sections, and offers a Bullet Bill avoidance strategy that makes little sense.

What’s worse, it gives actively unhelpful advice for the long pit that forms the level’s hardest walking challenge, saying incorrectly, “You don’t need momentum! Stand at the very edge and hold A for a full jump—you’ll just barely make it.” ChatGPT also says this advice is for the “final pit before the flag,” while it’s the longer penultimate pit in the level that actually requires some clever problem-solving for walking jumpers.

Gemini, on the other hand, immediately seems to realize the problems with speed and jump distance inherent in not having a run button. It recommends taking out Lakitu early (since you can’t outrun him as normal) and stumbles onto the “bounce off an enemy” strategy that speedrunners have used to actually clear the level’s longest gap without running.

Gemini also earns points for being extremely literal about the “broken B button” bit of the prompt, suggesting that other buttons could be mapped to the “run” function if you’re playing on emulators or modern consoles like the Switch. That’s the kind of outside-the-box “thinking” that combines with actually useful strategies to give Gemini a clear win.

Land a plane

Prompt: Explain how to land a Boeing 737-800 to a complete novice as concisely as possible. Please hurry, time is of the essence.

This was one of the most interesting splits in our testing. ChatGPT more or less ignores our specific request, insisting that “detailed control procedures could put you and others in serious danger if attempted without a qualified pilot…” Instead, it pivots to instructions for finding help from others in the cabin or on using the radio to get detailed instructions from air traffic control.

Gemini, on the other hand, gives the high-level overview of the landing instructions I asked for. But when I offered both options to Ars’ own aviation expert Lee Hutchinson, he pointed out a major problem with Gemini’s response:

Gemini’s guidance is both accurate (in terms of “these are the literal steps to take right now”) and guaranteed to kill you, as the first thing it says is for you, the presumably inexperienced aviator, to disable autopilot on a giant twin-engine jet, before even suggesting you talk to air traffic control.

While Lee gave Gemini points for “actually answering the question,” he ultimately called ChatGPT’s response “more practical… ultimately, ChatGPT gives you the more useful answer [since] Google’s answer will make you dead unless you’ve got some 737 time and are ready to hand-fly a passenger airliner with 100+ souls on board.”

For those reasons, ChatGPT has to win this one.

Final verdict

This was a relatively close contest when measured purely on points. Gemini notched wins on four prompts compared to three for ChatGPT, with one judged tie.

That said, it’s important to consider where those points came from. ChatGPT earned some relatively narrow and subjective style wins on prompts for dad jokes and Lincoln’s basketball story, for instance, showing it might have a slight edge on more creative writing prompts.

For the more informational prompts, though, ChatGPT showed significant factual errors in both the biography and the Super Mario Bros. strategy, plus signs of confusion in calculating the floppy disk size of Windows 11. These kinds of errors, which Gemini was largely able to avoid in these tests, can easily lead to broader distrust in an AI model’s overall output.

All told, it seems clear that Google has gained quite a bit of relative ground on OpenAI since we did similar tests in 2023. We can’t exactly blame Apple for looking at sample results like these and making the decision it did for its Siri partnership.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

Has Gemini surpassed ChatGPT? We put the AI models to the test. Read More »

Google: Don’t make “bite-sized” content for LLMs if you care about search rank

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, search / Beth Washington / January 9, 2026

Signal in the noise

Google only provides general SEO recommendations, leaving the Internet’s SEO experts to cast bones and read tea leaves to gauge how the search algorithm works. This approach has borne fruit in the past, but not every SEO suggestion is a hit.

The tumultuous current state of the Internet, defined by inconsistent traffic and rapidly expanding use of AI, may entice struggling publishers to try more SEO snake oil like content chunking. When traffic is scarce, people will watch for any uptick and attribute that to the changes they have made. When the opposite happens, well, it’s just a bad day.

The new content superstition may appear to work at first, but at best, that’s an artifact of Google’s current quirks—the company isn’t building LLMs to like split-up content. Sullivan admits there may be “edge cases” where content chunking appears to work.

“Great. That’s what’s happening now, but tomorrow the systems may change,” he said. “You’ve made all these things that you did specifically for a ranking system, not for a human being because you were trying to be more successful in the ranking system, not staying focused on the human being. And then the systems improve, probably the way the systems always try to improve, to reward content written for humans. All that stuff that you did to please this LLM system that may or may not have worked, may not carry through for the long term.”

We probably won’t see chunking go away as long as publishers can point to a positive effect. However, Google seems to feel that chopping up content for LLMs is not a viable future for SEO.

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