Democrats’ historic victories in this week’s U.S. midterm elections could also transform the tech industry. The public voted on 41 data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — in all but one, the majority voted to impose more restrictions on data center development.
Bitter energy drinks turned out to be ChatGPT-steered poisoning, lawsuit says.
Google is technically offering schools more choice but not the choices anyone wants.
On Tuesday night, Democrats made history as they took control of the House and the Senate, and a blue wave swept through traditionally red and swing states. In these and other campaigns, one theme kept coming up: holding AI companies accountable to the American people.
OpenAI is responding to the clear vote by US voters against new data centers with voluntary commitments for future sites. The pledges only apply to facilities OpenAI operates itself, though, and a large share of its infrastructure is built by partners like Oracle. Voters rejected new data centers in 40 out of 41 local ballot measures.
OpenAI introduces its National Community Compact and Compute Campus Policy Blueprint to protect local resources, create jobs, and guide responsible AI infrastructure development.
Data center opposition crossed party lines in Tuesday’s midterms.
AI industry PACs spent millions influencing the 2026 midterms, with mixed results. Political groups are already looking toward the next election cycle.
Tech industry in denial as US overwhelmingly votes to restrict AI, data centers.
OpenAI’s Chris Lehane wants AI to define the 2028 election, proposing a new social contract that could benefit Americans while also advancing the AI giant’s own business interests.
Anthropic is rolling out text watermarks to four more Claude models ahead of the EU AI Act's December deadline. But on older models like Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, API users can disable the watermark by changing a single sampling parameter. Anthropic's response to the loophole? A compliance warning.
Texas is the fastest-growing data center market in the US and ground zero for Big Tech’s largest AI buildouts. But the blue wave that swept the Lone Star State may jeopardize that position. Democrat James Talarico won the US Senate seat against Ken Paxton.
DuckDuckGo is courting schools frustrated by Google's AI restrictions, pointing educators to its search engine and options to disable AI features.
Data center developers are poised to face a more restrictive building environment after voters across the country voted in candidates who favor moratoriums and ballot measures that put more obstacles on their expansion, delivering a stinging blow to a central pillar of the AI industry.
Politicians on the left, like NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani and former FTC chair Lina Khan, accused Google of acting as an unregulated monopoly.
Starting in 2027, Google plans to turn off AI features in its school products by default, letting schools decide what to enable. The catch: schools that block AI entirely on their devices will also lose access to Google Search, since the two systems are now too deeply intertwined to separate.
In the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, AI ranked last among campaign issues: only 56 percent of respondents cited AI and data centers as an important factor. According to NBC exit polls, corruption (90 percent) and the cost of living (89 percent) clearly dominated, despite growing public attention to the issue.
The PC gaming mods repository Nexus Mods is making disclosures about AI mandatory for uploads of new mods, meaning that mod authors will have to declare "whether AI has been used in their work," the site announced today as part of a big post about AI-generated content on the platform.
Russia tries to fix exposed digital infrastructure as data center war backfires.
Google will offer schools AI tools that purportedly don't give away the answers.
Google is completely turning off Search in schools that reject its AI features, the company told The New York Times.
Schools choosing to restrict AI altogether will no longer be able to access Google Search, as AI features are now integrated into the search engine.
OpenAI hires Dan Driscoll, the former civilian head of the US Army, as "Senior Counselor for National Security Modernization," likely to win government contracts and help shape AI rules for the military and intelligence agencies.
The 2026 midterm elections will determine the scope of President Donald Trump’s power in his final two years in office, and signal what voters care about going into the 2028 presidential election.
Apple's new App Store rules will require 18+ ratings for dating apps and AI companions that offer sexual or romantic content.
Nvidia has told some cloud customers to take on less business from Chinese companies.
Anthropic is blocking its coding assistant Claude Code from recreating existing video games.
The tsunami of imitators is way bigger than any one model maker can stem.
Anthropic has updated Claude Code's system prompt to prevent the AI tool from being used to recreate existing video games, as reported by Tom's Hardware.
At a Brooklyn midterm party five days before Election Day, every conversation, from a council member’s fireside chat to a debate about the Democratic Party, kept circling back to AI and data centers.
I was reminded today of AI Adoption Rate Trending Down for Large Companies , a chart produced by Apollo Global Management in September 2025, which appeared to show a slowdown in U.S. corporate AI adoption based on numbers collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
OpenAI is gearing up for a political lobbying and PR push after the US midterms.
Data centers are deeply unpopular. But what if we called them something else?
Anthropic is expanding its text watermark to four more Claude models to meet the EU AI Act's December deadline. On the older models Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, developers can bypass the watermark by tweaking a single sampling parameter. Anthropic addresses the loophole with just a compliance warning.
An NAACP lawsuit accuses the SpaceX-owned AI company of violating the Clean Air Act.
Starting November 29, OpenAI will use data from Daybreak Blue sessions to train its models, even when users have turned off training. After backlash, a follow-up email promised a separate opt-out. The move revives concerns from the dispute with mathematicians who suspected OpenAI used their unpublished research for training without consent.
OpenAI shares excerpts from court briefs by creators, academics, accessibility advocates, and legal experts, among others, on how fair use supports AI training and innovation.
OpenAI has updated its Model Spec, restructuring its AI behavior guidelines around five core values, including faithfulness to human intent and correctability. GPT models should now draw on conversation history to figure out what users actually want and disclose their own assumptions. Whether the models follow these rules is another matter.
Applying for FAFSA may get messy as DOJ “ghost student” crackdown ramps up.
OpenAI will honor a shared robots.txt signal to help website operators communicate their AI training preferences to participating providers.