Aoife Walsh / Washington Post: President Trump expresses support for Flock “because of law enforcement”, while acknowledging some people consider the surveillance technology “an infringement” — The president, while acknowledging some people consider the surveillance technology “an infringement …
Washington Post: Survey: 27% of Americans say they turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT for personal, emotional, or social queries, rising to nearly 40% among adults under 50 — More than a quarter of U.S. adults turn to chatbots for personal or emotional discussions, including for entertainment or social advice, a new survey found.
Anna Liss-Roy / Washington Post: How Congressional lawmakers and aides are using AI tools with little oversight to write speeches and news releases, sort constituent mail, and more — The amendment was one of hundreds filed this summer to an annual defense bill making its way through Congress.
Washington Post: A Wyoming woman joined a federal suit against xAI alleging her stepfather used Grok to turn one childhood photo of her into 7,000+ CSAM images he traded online — When Jane Doe 4, as she is identified in legal filings, arrived at her parents' house in Wyoming to set up a family party earlier this year …
Washington Post: Flock says it will now require US law enforcement to attach a criminal case number to license plate searches, after a WaPo investigation into police misuse — The license-plate-reader firm said it will require stricter oversight after a Washington Post investigation found dozens of officers …
Evan Halper / Washington Post: Allegations that China is behind US data center protests draw criticism from allies of the AI industry, who say the industry and politicians are in denial — Claims that China and overseas propaganda drive Americans to rise up against data centers are based on scant evidence. — Summary
Washington Post: A section of the Pope's encyclical describing AI's unpredictability suggests influence from Anthropic, whose co-founder Christopher Olah attended the unveiling — In “Magnifica humanitas,” he fires a broadside against AI companies, warning of the technology's dangers in the same way Pope Francis did about climate change.
Tim Craig / Washington Post: Gallup: 70% of Americans oppose local data center construction, citing water and electricity issues, with opposition higher among Democrats than Republicans — The survey found that Republicans and Democrats are uncomfortable living near a data center, but opposition is especially intense among Democrats.
Washington Post: Survey: 35% of Virginia voters are comfortable with new data center construction, down from 69% in 2023, and 37% support data center tax breaks, down from 61% — Virginians previously embraced the facilities, but a Post-Schar School poll finds they are now almost as undesirable as nuclear power plants.
Washington Post: Sources: Anthropic met with Christian leaders in March to seek input on Claude's moral and spiritual development and if it could be considered a “child of God” — The artificial intelligence company asked religious leaders for guidance on building a moral chatbot. — Summary
Drew Harwell / Washington Post: Social media accounts showing AI-generated women as pro-Trump soldiers, truckers, and cops have gone viral, with thousands appearing to believe they are real — The beautiful Army blonde Jessica Foster has posed with an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, donned camouflage in the desert and walked …
Washington Post: GovAI and Brookings: many of the people most at risk if AI transforms work are also the best placed to find new jobs, as researchers disagree over AI's impact — No one has a perfect road map to the future, but researchers at GovAI, which studies technology policy, and the Brookings Institution …
Washington Post: Sources: the US used Palantir's Maven Smart System, integrated with Claude, to find and prioritize 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours of the Iran strikes — Advanced AI technology is identifying targets in Iran and quickly prioritizing them, supporting the massive military operations carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces.
Shira Ovide / Washington Post: Economists at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan report the AI boom contributed “basically zero” to US economic growth in 2025, challenging claims of up to 92% growth — Massive investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, Goldman Sachs has calculated.
Evan Halper / Washington Post: Tech companies are increasingly building private power plants to fuel off-grid data centers, a move some warn faces reliability challenges and climate risks — Tech companies are building data centers with their own private power plants, a risky bet that will increase carbon emissions and other pollution.
Ian Duncan / Washington Post: Meta, TikTok, and Snap agree to undergo independent assessments to rate how effectively they protect teen users based on 24 standards developed by experts — A system of two dozen standards was developed by mental health experts to assess how well social media platforms protect young users.
Washington Post: How the US government is adopting AI: NASA reports 420 AI use cases in 2025, up from 18 in 2024, HHS reports 398, Energy 325, DOJ 295, Interior 234, and DHS 205 — The White House is accelerating AI adoption across government, embedding the technology in policing, health care, defense and science.
Washington Post: Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a porn generator; sources say xAI's AI safety team was just two or three people for most of 2025 — Under pressure to boost its popularity, Elon Musk's xAI loosened its guardrails and relaxed controls on sexual content, setting off internal concern.
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: SEC complaint: a whistleblower alleges Google broke its ethics rules in 2024 to help an Israeli military contractor use AI to analyze drone surveillance video — A whistleblower complaint filed with the SEC claims that Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor apply AI to drone surveillance video.
Washington Post: US court filings detail Anthropic's Project Panama, an effort to “destructively scan” up to 2M books with a hydraulic “cutting machine” led by an ex-Google exec — In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet.
Chris Velazco / Washington Post: CES 2026: how some companies are trying to make their AI products cute and relatable, from Lenovo's chatty motorized laptop to Sharp's ChatGPT-powered Poketomo — Robots for seniors, AI “pals” for women, and laptops are embracing the power of cute — for better or worse.
Washington Post: ChatGPT told a teen who died by suicide to call for help 74 times over months but also used words like “hanging” and “suicide” very often, say family's lawyers — Help Nitasha Tiku report on mental health and AI by contacting her securely on Signal at nitasha.10.
Pranshu Verma / Washington Post: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google pledged a combined $67.5B in Indian investments since October, 80% of those in December, as part of an AI spending frenzy in India — Amazon, Microsoft and Google have pledged a combined $67.5 billion in Indian investments since October. Eighty percent of those commitments came this month.
Naomi Nix / Washington Post: Internal documents show Instagram's aggressive campaign to win back teens, including by boosting teen-friendly influencers, adjusting its algorithm, and more — The company pursued a yearslong strategy to win teens back even after critics said it wasn't safe, records show.
Lisa Bonos / Washington Post: A look at the humans employed to rescue robotaxis; Waymo uses the Honk app to pay $20 to $24 to manually close robotaxi doors and $60 to $80 to tow its cars — A recent power outage in San Francisco shows how vulnerable self-driving vehicles can be when problems arise.
Naomi Nix / Washington Post: Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams — By exposing the harms of Big Tech, many whistleblowers say they faced poorer job prospects and professional exile in Silicon Valley.
Washington Post: How David Sacks and AI adviser Sriram Krishnan overcame the opposition to Trump's AI EO, reaching out to lawmakers and finally modifying the text of the order — President Trump's executive order limiting states' power to regulate AI split his supporters and highlighted Silicon Valley's growing influence over his agenda.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post: TTP: Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store host dozens of apps linked to US-sanctioned foreign companies; Google removed 17 apps and Apple removed 35 — Watchdog finds firms and organizations in Apple and Google stores that were banned for issues including human rights abuses in China and facilitating war in Ukraine.
Jacob Bogage / Washington Post: Sources: Amazon, the USPS' top customer with $6B+ in revenue in 2025, is considering ending its deal at the end of 2026 and expanding its own delivery network — Amazon has long been the Postal Service's top customer, providing more than $6 billion in annual revenue to the agency in 2025.
Eva Dou / Washington Post: Sources and docs: Palantir's Immigration OS helps ICE track undocumented immigrants and deport them; a decade ago, Alex Karp said Trump's plans made “no sense” — “The truly progressive position on immigration” is “extreme skepticism,” says Alex Karp, a longtime Democrat and the data-mining company's chief executive.
Emmanuel Felton / Washington Post: Omnicom's DM9 returned three Cannes awards after a NC state senator and CNN Brazil found the company had used AI to manipulate their content and used it for ads — North Carolina state Sen. DeAndrea Salvador discovered her 2018 TED Talk had been altered by an ad agency working for Whirlpool in Brazil, leading to a lawsuit.
Washington Post: An analysis of 47,000 publicly shared ChatGPT conversations: ~10% related to emotional or mental health, ChatGPT exhibits a “default to yes” behavior, and more — The questions flood in from every corner of the human psyche. “What are permanent hair removal solutions?”
Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Sources: the US Commerce Department proposed banning TP-Link Systems' networking devices due to TP-Link's China ties, gaining support from 6+ federal agencies — The Commerce Department has proposed barring sales of TP-Link products, citing a national security risk from ties to China, people familiar with the matter said.
Will Oremus / Washington Post: A profile of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who left in 2002 and whose claims that Wikipedia has a liberal bias are fueling the right's campaign against it — Larry Sanger's long-standing claims of liberal bias and mismanagement at the world's dominant online encyclopedia are being enthusiastically embraced on the right.
William Wan / Washington Post: How the FBI's hunt for the person who coerced a 13-year-old into livestreaming his suicide led to the arrest of a German member of the online predator group 764 — GIG HARBOR, Wash. — The early-morning fog had yet to rise when police found the 13-year-old boy in a parking lot behind a grocery store.
Washington Post: An internal Google email said it received many complaints over Israeli government YouTube ads about food access in Gaza, but ruled the ads could remain online — An internal Google email said it received many complaints about Israeli government YouTube ads about food access in Gaza, but ruled they could remain online.
Daniel Wu / Washington Post: Data center proposals are facing growing opposition from towns across the US, as residents and officials raise concerns about water and electricity use — A developer sued a Michigan township after it voted against a data center proposal. Cities in Ohio and Missouri have explored data center bans.
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Washington Post: An analysis of nearly 50 Amazon purchases over six months in 2025: during the October 7-8 Prime Day sales, average savings were only 0.6% and some items went up — Next time Amazon hypes its Prime Days savings, remember this: The prices during the sale aren't always better. I've got the receipts to prove it.
Washington Post: An analysis of 1,100 TikTok users' watch histories across six months in 2024 shows how effective TikTok is at getting even its heaviest users to watch more — More than 800 U.S. TikTok users shared their data with The Washington Post. We used it to find out why some people become power users, spending hours per day scrolling.
Washington Post: A look at a growing number of medical startups that are using robots and AI to fertilize embryos through IVF, helping bring at least 20 babies to term — MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she would try to conceive a child.
Washington Post: Tests show OpenAI's Sora can closely mimic Netflix shows, movies, TikTok videos, and Twitch streams, suggesting it was trained on versions of such content — Tests by The Post suggest the training data for OpenAI's video generators Sora included versions of movies, TikTok clips and Netflix shows.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post: CrowdStrike: DeepSeek refuses to write code or produces less-secure code when English prompts say the code will be used by groups or regions disfavored by China — Research by a U.S. security firm points to the country's leading player in AI providing higher-quality results for some purposes than others.
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: OpenAI releases the first detailed public study on how people use ChatGPT: 73% of chats were non-work related, practical guidance was the top use case, and more — OpenAI released the first detailed public study on who uses its chatbot and what they most often ask it to do.
Washington Post: A look at Starlink's plans to launch a cellphone service that some experts say will likely remain complementary to existing networks, focusing on rural coverage — The tech entrepreneur has upended one business after another. Now he may be going after our phone networks. — Just now
Washington Post: Current and ex-Meta employees submitted documents and affidavits to Congress alleging that Meta suppressed research on child safety risks in its VR platforms — The company's lawyers intervened to shape research that might have shed light on risks in virtual reality, four current and former staffers have told Congress.
Washington Post: PitchBook: VCs have invested $5B+ in humanoid robotics startups since the beginning of 2024, as years of steady progress and GenAI triggers an investment frenzy — A frenzy of investment has created a crowd of new human-like designs. — SALEM, Ore. — In an office park opposite an Amazon warehouse, the robots are at work.
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post: Study: Character.AI chatbots of Timothée Chalamet, Chappell Roan, and Patrick Mahomes chatted inappropriately with teen accounts on topics like sex and drugs — The chatbots made by users of Character.AI used recognizable synthetic voices for the stars. — Just now
Drew Harwell / Washington Post: Analysis: porn sites that don't comply with the UK's age verification laws have seen their traffic from UK users grow, while sites complying had declines — The age-verification laws rapidly expanding across the United States and United Kingdom are bringing with them some surprising downsides …
Washington Post: In a trial over a fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla denied having crash-snapshot data, until a hacker hired by the plaintiffs recovered the data from the vehicle — The critical evidence was presented last month to a jury, which found the company partially liable for the 2019 crash in Key Largo, Florida.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post: Families and funeral directors are using AI obituary generators to memorialize the dead, as critics worry about AI coarsening how people remember one another — Families and funeral directors are using AI obituary generators to more efficiently memorialize the dead. What happens when they get it wrong?