WORLD

Growing concern in the US over unchecked and rapidly developing artificial intelligence models is increasing the urgency for companies using AI to put their houses in order, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

Warnings from leaders of top AI labs about existential risks posed by the most advanced models mark an inflection point for companies facing competitive pressure to accelerate AI adoption while aggressively re-examining their safety guardrails.

Legal counsel are advising companies to mitigate their risks by following core practices: use pioneering AI models from leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI cautiously, keep a human in the loop, vet vendors and carefully review the level of access to company information given to AI agents. And, they say, companies should not panic.

“A lot of people are worried that the sky is falling, and it may be, but our job is to make sure the roof doesn’t cave in,” said Eric Dodson Greenberg, executive vice president and chief legal officer of Cox Media Group.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who published an essay on Saturday urging a slowdown in AI growth, has acknowledged the challenge facing companies. He and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday that companies have only just begun taking advantage of AI and could need more help to make that transformation.

Still, at this point, there is no turning back for companies using AI in pursuit of efficiency gains to remain competitive and meet the expectations of their boards and executive teams.

“The toothpaste is out of the tube when it comes to AI deployment across companies,” said Virginia Johnson, a partner at OGC, a firm that includes general counsel providing legal help to companies. “That means for the GC, the primary mandate is having proper governance internally to make sure that your use of AI is done according to policies, procedures, proper training, ethical deployment, and managing the risk within your own company.”

Uneven Scenario

A thorough examination of how companies are keeping AI in check cannot come soon enough. An EY survey released recently pointed to an uneven picture as companies try to balance speed and safety. About half of AI leaders at companies said their organisations had sidestepped AI governance frameworks to deploy AI quickly.

It is another warning sign for companies navigating the rapid evolution of AI. “We have to be embracing it through incremental calibrated steps and safe experiments that allow us to move this forward where we’re managing the risk level,” said Cox Media’s Greenberg, who is also a Bloomberg Law columnist.

His advice is to think of AI governance as an ongoing process because the technology is constantly changing, as is the way humans interact with it.

That means examining exactly where AI is being used within a company, identifying the highest-risk uses, assigning a human owner, vetting vendors and establishing a process for identifying problems, said Jobe Danganan, a former founding enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who is now co-founder and CEO of LexText AI, a legal text platform.

“You won’t eliminate every risk, but you should understand the risks you’re taking and be able to explain why your safeguards were reasonable,” said Danganan, who previously served as general counsel for financial technology companies.

Slowing down could mean that the next frontier model is delayed, potentially leading to higher costs. “There’s going to be more cost in the system that maybe we have to absorb as a customer because OpenAI, Anthropic, etc., are going to have to absorb more cost for governance, pass it along to us possibly,” said Dana Rao, former general counsel and executive vice president of Adobe.

“We have to have a hard conversation now about the earnings we just reported, the forecast we just reported. Are they still good? We have to go back to the street. We have to be transparent to our investors,” said Rao, an AI fellow at Fordham University.

Still, many companies using standard AI models will be fine, legal leaders said.

“Generally speaking, if I’ve successfully deployed today’s version of an LLM, I would feel pretty comfortable saying just keep using it,” Rao said.

Shared Responsibility

The public nature of the disclosures last weekend could help companies talk more openly about AI risks, said Scott Meyers, chairman and CEO of Akerman LLP.

“What it means is that we all need to work together because this goes candidly beyond just helping a company survive or meet its revenue targets,” he said. “The risk here goes far beyond just how it impacts the company, but all of the companies now are aware of what this can mean, both from an external attack plus using agents inside the firewall.”

Political leaders have so far differed over when and how Congress should intervene with increased regulation. President Donald Trump has argued against regulation, saying it would help China.

Separately, technology leaders such as Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind have advocated for a regulatory body modelled on Finra, which monitors US brokerage firms and stockbrokers.

“It’s very much in the US government’s interest to be at the forefront of this conversation and the convener and the drafter. And if they don’t, I do think the industry is going to have to look elsewhere to help them come up with industry standards,” said Beth George, head of US litigation, arbitration and global investigations at Freshfields.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the US government cannot remove people to so-called third countries not named in their removal orders without providing meaningful notice and an opportunity to raise fears of potential persecution or torture.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Friday largely upheld a lower court ruling that restricted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from carrying out such removals without adequate notice. The ruling requires people facing removal to a third country to be informed of their destination and given a meaningful opportunity to raise relevant protection claims.

Various federal laws protect people from being removed to countries where they face persecution or could be subjected to torture. The appeals court said those protections would have little practical effect if people facing removal were not told where they were being sent or given a meaningful opportunity to raise concerns about the destination.

DHS issued guidance permitting such removals in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s broader immigration enforcement programme. The government subsequently reached agreements with third countries to accept people being removed from the US who are not citizens of those countries.

Court Rejects Streamlined Process

“An individual’s right to contest removal to a country based on a fear of persecution in that country means little if one does not receive prior notice of the intended removal destination and a meaningful opportunity to contest that destination,” Judge Seth Aframe wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.

The court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to establish what it described as an exception “from whole cloth” to existing laws requiring fair notice and procedures for people seeking protection from persecution or torture.

“The question in this case is not whether, if the government were starting from scratch, it could by statute or regulation lawfully adopt the streamlined process for third-party removals contemplated by the Guidance,” the court said. “The question is whether that process is consistent with the applicable statutes and regulations that presently govern fear-of-persecution claims.”

The appeals court therefore largely upheld the lower court’s conclusion that the DHS guidance was unlawful to the extent that it authorised third-country removals without effective notice and a meaningful opportunity to raise protection claims.

Part Of Lower Court Order Vacated

The First Circuit did, however, overturn part of the lower court’s order.

In its opinion, the appellate panel vacated the district court’s requirement that DHS first seek to remove members of the class to countries they had designated or to countries where they were nationals or citizens.

The panel found that the plaintiffs could not pursue their claim that DHS had unlawfully applied the relevant statutes out of order. That finding provided the basis for the lower court’s requirement concerning the order in which countries should be considered for removal.

The decision therefore limits the process DHS can use for third-country removals without eliminating the government's ability to carry out such removals altogether. The central requirement affirmed by the appeals court is that people must receive adequate notice of the intended destination and a meaningful opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture.

Case Draws Immigration Debate

Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which represented the plaintiffs, said the court had rejected the government’s effort to turn third-country removals into a process without adequate notice or an opportunity to raise concerns.

The panel comprised Aframe, Judge Lara Montecalvo and Senior Judge Jeffrey Howard. The class of plaintiffs is represented by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First.

The case is D.V.D. v. US Department of Homeland Security, No. 26-1212, US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The opinion was issued on September 18, 2026.

Starbucks has agreed to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought by the state of Florida, pledging not to adopt race- or sex-based quotas or preferences in hiring, promotion and pay decisions.

Starbucks and Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier jointly announced the settlement on Thursday of a lawsuit filed by the state last December.

Florida accused the company of violating state anti-discrimination law, including by setting racial quotas and linking executive compensation to the achievement of diversity goals.

Starbucks denied wrongdoing and said in a statement that it would focus “on offering great jobs and career opportunities to our partners who wear the green apron”.

Under the settlement, Starbucks agreed to comply with Florida law and pay $1 million to the Florida Department of Legal Affairs to cover litigation costs. The company must also submit annual certifications of compliance for four years.

In addition, Starbucks agreed not to participate in organisations that require companies to increase the racial diversity of their boards of directors.

A spokesperson for Uthmeier’s office said the agreement applies nationwide. He said the settlement ensures that Starbucks’ employment policies and practices comply with Florida’s anti-discrimination laws. “DEI can never be an excuse to violate civil rights,” he said.

The case is part of broader efforts by Republican officials, including members of President Donald Trump’s administration, to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes from the private sector, government and education.

In February, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by the Missouri Attorney General’s office targeting Starbucks’ alleged diversity policies. The state is appealing the decision.

A federal judge has ordered Google to relax rules governing its online advertising auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, while stopping short of requiring the Alphabet unit to break up its advertising technology business.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, set out the remedies in a 106-page decision unsealed on Wednesday, two weeks after rejecting the US Department of Justice's demand that Google break up its advertising technology business.

Brinkema said Google should instead change some of its business practices, after finding in April 2025 that the company maintained an illegal monopoly over parts of the online advertising technology market.

The remedies "will be sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google's unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets", Brinkema wrote.

Second Judge Rejects Breakup

Google said on Wednesday that it disagreed with Brinkema's liability ruling concerning its Google Ad Manager publishing tool and would appeal. The company also maintained that forcing a divestiture would have made it harder for small businesses to reach customers.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr said in a statement that the decision was a "significant victory" in the Justice Department's efforts to protect and restore competition. He added that the department was reviewing the opinion to determine its legal options.

The decision spared Google from having to break up another part of its internet business as the Mountain View, California-based company races to expand in artificial intelligence against rivals including Anthropic and OpenAI.

Last September, a different judge ordered Google to open up competition in online search, but declined to require the sale of its widely used Chrome browser.

Annual global digital advertising spending could grow to $605 billion next year from $424 billion in 2023, according to Brinkema's decision.

Advertising accounted for about 73% of Alphabet's revenue last year. The company's market value exceeds $4.1 trillion.

Six Years

The government had sought to force Google to sell AdX, where publishers pay a 20% fee to sell ads through auctions that take place instantly when users load websites. The government argued that Google could not be trusted to operate the service.

Brinkema rejected that remedy, saying that allowing other publisher ad servers to access real-time bids from AdX would restore "much-needed" competition.

The judge accepted proposals requiring Google not to force websites that use its ad server to also use AdX. Google would also have to end practices that publishers had complained kept them locked into its advertising technology tools.

Brinkema also said an internal compliance monitor was necessary given the "gravity" of Google's antitrust violations, although the monitor would have less oversight than the government had sought.

The changes must remain in place for six years, rather than the 15 years sought by the Justice Department and several states that also sued Google.

After issuing her ruling, Brinkema gave both sides 14 days to seek redactions of confidential information from the written decision and 30 days to file a proposed final judgment reflecting the remedies she has ordered.

Two women whose images as girls were found in pornography seized from Jeffrey Epstein have filed a class action lawsuit seeking damages from the late sex offender’s estate on behalf of people featured in his collection of thousands of images and videos of child sexual abuse material.

The lawsuit seeks at least $6 million on behalf of more than 40 people, some of whom appeared in Epstein’s so-called “modelling book”, a collection of sexualised images of children seized by federal investigators in 2019 from his New York home, according to a filing in Manhattan federal district court.

Others were depicted in thousands of downloaded videos and images of child sexual abuse material and other pornography recovered from Epstein’s properties, according to the lawsuit.

The action seeks to broaden the legal claims against Epstein’s estate beyond women who have sued over alleged sexual assaults, to people he allegedly exploited as children through images he and his associates took of them or obtained. In some cases, the images were subsequently distributed to others.

The lawsuit names Epstein’s former attorney Darren Indyke and former accountant Richard Kahn, the co-executors of his estate, as defendants. Daniel Weiner, a lawyer representing Indyke, declined to comment. An attorney for Kahn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One of the plaintiffs, identified as Jane Doe, alleges that Epstein stole partially nude photographs of her taken when she was 12. The other, who uses the pseudonym “Amy”, says she is featured in child sexual abuse material seized from Epstein’s properties in 2019 that is still being traded.

Hillary Nappi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit could potentially involve thousands of class members. In an interview, she said most of the people pictured in Epstein’s collection had never been identified.

The lawsuit calls for Epstein’s estate and federal authorities to work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to identify individuals in the collection and notify them. It asks the estate to pay class members $150,000 each, along with other penalties.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from a minor and was charged with sex trafficking of minors in 2019, months before he was found dead in a New York jail cell. His death was ruled a suicide. He was never prosecuted for creating, obtaining or distributing child sexual abuse material.

A federal judge in Texas has ordered Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI to disclose an agreement they reached with Apple to resolve antitrust claims against the iPhone maker, after Apple’s co-defendant OpenAI sought access to the deal to strengthen its defence in the case.

US District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth said X must file with the court any agreement or combination of agreements with Apple relating to the resolution of the plaintiffs’ claims against the company.

X this week resolved its lawsuit against Apple without revealing the terms and said it would continue pursuing claims against OpenAI in the case.

The lawsuit, filed last year, alleged that Apple violated antitrust law by exclusively integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence features on iPhones and other Apple devices.

In a court filing on Tuesday, OpenAI’s lawyers at Wachtell asked Pittman to order disclosure of any settlement agreement.

OpenAI said it wants to see the terms to help rebut Musk’s pending claims against the company. It also said X’s apparent agreement with Apple could undermine any effort by X to seek a monetary payment from OpenAI. X and SpaceXAI were ordered to respond to OpenAI’s request by Thursday.

Companies Deny Wrongdoing

Apple and OpenAI have each denied wrongdoing in the lawsuit. Apple has previously said its agreement with OpenAI was not exclusive.

In May, OpenAI defeated a separate lawsuit brought by Musk that accused the company of straying from its original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit.

Apple is also suing OpenAI in a separate case over alleged trade secret theft. OpenAI has denied those claims.

The US Senate failed to advance comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation backed by President Donald Trump, dealing a major blow to digital asset companies and Republicans who had championed the bill for months.

The bill, called the Clarity Act, fell 10 votes short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation in the 100-member chamber, as four Republican senators — Jerry Moran, Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Thom Tillis — joined all Democrats in voting against it. The vote was 50-49 in favour.

The vote effectively put the bill on ice, as Congress is set to leave Washington this month ahead of the November midterm elections, in which Trump's fellow Republicans are fighting to retain control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Tillis switched his vote from yes to no in a procedural move that preserves his ability to bring the measure back up for reconsideration later.

Senate Republicans on Sunday night released a new version of the bill in a last-ditch effort to address concerns from the banking industry and some Democrats, but opponents were not swayed.

The Clarity Act aimed to create a regulatory framework for digital assets, which crypto companies say would put them on a more solid legal footing. The deep-pocketed industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning for the bill's passage.

Trump, who has earned more than $1.4 billion from his family's crypto ventures, had urged Congress to pass the legislation. Trump courted financial support from the crypto industry on the campaign trail during the 2024 election, calling himself a "crypto president".

His regulators, particularly the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will now be positioned to fill the crypto policy void, but efforts to establish favourable rules for the digital asset industry could prove challenging.

Industry experts have said only Congress can create a lasting regulatory framework. Without legislation, regulations will be vulnerable to the shifting political climate and court challenges, creating lingering risks for the crypto industry, executives and analysts said.

"The CLARITY Act didn't advance in the Senate today, which was a disappointment," said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in a social media post on Tuesday after the vote.

"The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need to create clear rules under existing authority, and I expect they will begin working on this in earnest," he added.

The Trump administration's own extensive rollback of dozens of SEC and consumer watchdog policies introduced under former Democratic President Joe Biden has underscored that risk.

Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, fell more than 5% as the vote appeared on track to fail, its biggest daily percentage decline since June. Shares of crypto exchange Coinbase and stablecoin issuer Circle fell as much as 10%.

Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty in the murder case against Nick Reiner, who is accused of fatally stabbing his parents, Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner and photographer-producer Michele Singer Reiner, at their home in December.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office had taken into account the wishes of the slain couple’s two surviving children, Jake Reiner, 35, and his sister Romy Reiner, 28, as well as unspecified mitigating factors, in reaching its decision.

“We did speak with Nick Reiner’s siblings; they made their views very clear,” Hochman told reporters outside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse.

“This decision reflects our careful judgment about the most appropriate path to take in this case and does not diminish the severity of these crimes,” the district attorney said in a statement.

The maximum penalty Reiner now faces if convicted is life in prison without the possibility of parole, Hochman said, adding that a trial was unlikely to begin before next year.

The announcement came shortly before Nick Reiner, 33, appeared in court for a hearing during which prosecutors also formally informed the presiding judge that they would not seek capital punishment in the case.

The defendant, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, sat beside his lawyer, shackled to his seat and dressed in brown prison clothing during the hearing. He answered “yes” in a soft voice to several procedural questions from Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta.

Origins Of Case

His parents, Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Reiner, 70, were found stabbed to death on December 14 at their mansion in the upmarket West Los Angeles neighbourhood of Brentwood, marking one of the most high-profile celebrity homicide cases in the city’s history.

Nick Reiner, who has acknowledged a years-long struggle with substance abuse and mental health issues, was arrested later that day and charged with the killings. He was widely reported to have quarrelled with his parents while the three were attending a holiday party hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien the night before the couple were killed.

He was formally indicted by a grand jury earlier this month, clearing the way for prosecutors to bring the case to trial without the additional step of having to convince a judge that sufficient evidence existed to establish probable cause.

Hochman said Nick Reiner’s siblings had urged the court to keep the grand jury transcripts sealed to prevent public disclosure of details of their parents’ killings that would “cause them additional trauma”.

The judge said his final decision on whether to unseal the transcripts would await further proceedings on any motion the news media might bring seeking to make the records public.

The next hearing in the case, including proceedings on the grand jury transcripts, was set for October 7.

Rob Reiner, a prominent Democratic Party activist and donor, gained fame as a co-star in the 1970s hit television comedy “All in the Family” and later directed popular films including “When Harry Met Sally”, “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Princess Bride”.

Hollywood paid tribute to the couple at Monday night’s Emmy Awards ceremony. Actor Jamie Lee Curtis called Rob Reiner “generous and kind and funny as hell” and noted that he had won a posthumous Emmy a week earlier for his guest comedic appearance as a restaurant consultant on “The Bear”.

The win set a new Emmy record for the longest gap between acting awards, with Rob Reiner’s previous Emmy having come 48 years earlier for his role in “All in the Family” as Mike “Meathead” Stivic, the son-in-law and liberal foil to the lead character, working-class bigot Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor.

The previous record holder was his father, television comedy pioneer Carl Reiner, who won Emmys 37 years apart.

Although capital punishment remains on the books in California, nobody has been put to death in the state since 2006, and Governor Gavin Newsom imposed an indefinite moratorium on executions in 2019.

A federal judge in California has set aside a rule eliminating automatic extensions of work permits for certain immigrants, finding that the Department of Homeland Security failed to follow required rulemaking procedures.

Judge David O. Carter of the US District Court for the Central District of California ruled on September 11 that DHS had failed to justify its decision to bypass the notice-and-comment process when issuing the rule.

But the ruling applies only to the seven plaintiffs who challenged the interim final rule, while DHS may soon issue final regulations codifying the changes to automatic extensions.

The agency issued the interim final rule in October 2025, ending automatic extensions of work permits for individuals with pending renewal applications from the end of that month. DHS cited national security and public safety concerns in support of the change.

Several spouses of H-1B specialty occupation workers argued that the failure to follow the normal rulemaking process violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

“If an EAD applicant is a national security threat, the issue is that they are able to live in the United States, not that they are able to work in the United States,” Carter wrote. “The IFR does nothing to eliminate the former concern.”

The plaintiffs argued that the agency had not established good cause for skipping notice-and-comment rulemaking. Family members of H-1B workers are admitted in dependent H-4 status, which permits eligibility for employment authorisation in limited circumstances.

A final rule by DHS eliminating automatic extensions was approved by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on September 9, two days before Carter's ruling.

The case is Jane Doe v. Department of Homeland Security, C.D. Cal., No. 8:26-cv-00060, order issued September 11, 2026.

A defence lawyer appealing his client's murder conviction submitted a brief containing fabricated police testimony and witnesses created by OpenAI's ChatGPT, New Mexico's highest court said.

The New Mexico Supreme Court fined the attorney, Stephen Aarons, and held him in contempt for failing to verify the accuracy of the court filing. Aarons said he prepared it with help from the AI programme.

The filing "contained false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses", the court said.

The panel also said Aarons had "demonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern for his client". The justices fined Aarons $5,000 and said they would refer him to an attorney disciplinary board for investigation.

Aarons said in a statement to Reuters that he had used ChatGPT to summarise the trial proceedings when he agreed to take up the defendant's appeal last year, and did not understand the extent to which AI could "hallucinate" facts.

"I am remorseful but hopeful that the disciplinary board takes into account it was an honest mistake," he said. "It is a lesson learned for all professionals who rely upon this powerful but sometimes unstable technology."

The court's sanction is the latest in a growing number of cases in which state and federal judges have disciplined lawyers for submitting court documents generated by AI tools without adequately checking them. Some judges have also faced scrutiny over their use of AI.

Dozens of lawyers have been sanctioned for filing briefs in which AI made up case citations or misquoted the law. Aarons' filing appears to have gone further, containing fabricated witness testimony in a criminal appeal.

Aarons, a private attorney based in Santa Fe, was handling the appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval, who pleaded not guilty to murdering the mother of his children before being convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year.

The appeal is still pending and was assigned on September 2 to Kim Chavez Cook, a New Mexico public defender. Cook declined to comment. The district attorney's office for Doña Ana County also declined to comment.

The state Supreme Court last month ordered Aarons to explain how the fabricated material, which it said appeared to include "fictional statements that the shooter was wearing dark pants and a white shirt", was included in his primary brief in the appeal.

Aarons told the court at an August 21 hearing that he fed a computer-generated transcript and other case materials into ChatGPT, presuming it would generate "a bulletproof summary".

The justices sounded incredulous that Aarons was not fully aware of how AI can make mistakes. "Counsel, do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what's going on in the world?" Justice C. Shannon Bacon said at the hearing. "Because the problem with lawyers relying on AI hallucinations is an above-the-fold story every single day."