OpenAI warns over 100 organizations about rogue AI agent activity

The FBI has adapted itself and its cybersecurity capabilities to combat nefarious uses of artificial intelligence from adversarial nations like China and Russia through full-scale modernization — something past leadership relied on temporary fixes to do, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

The agency had to completely overhaul its outdated technological backbone, Patel told Fox News Digital.

"Everybody that looks at the bureau thinks they must have the best tech and technology in the world," Patel said. "We didn't because prior leadership, all they did for decades was put a band-aid over a band-aid over a band-aid and never took the time to fix it."

The FBI also harnesses the use of AI.

To handle threats with necessary speed and scale, Patel said the FBI uses AI to scan databases and swiftly process tips from the public. The technology serves as a human supplement rather than a replacement, which dramatically improves response times for thwarting terrorist plots and school shootings, he added.

"We get tips from our private sector partners and American citizens, and those tips come into our database now finally," said Patel. "Instead of an old game of telephone where 50 people have to call 50 people, and it takes three days to get us the information, it's ingested immediately. It's analyzed."

This is an excerpt from a Fox News Digital article.

An Arizona Court of Appeals has thrown out the 10-year prison sentence of a man convicted of manslaughter after an AI-generated video showing the deceased victim addressing the judge was presented during sentencing.

The appellate court vacated the sentence for 55-year-old Gabriel Paul Horcasitas on Wednesday, ordering that he be resentenced for the 2021 death of 37-year-old Christopher Pelkey because the AI video was unreliable, The Associated Press reported.

Horcasitas was convicted of fatally shooting Pelkey during a November 2021 road rage incident after Pelkey exited his truck and approached Horcasitas' vehicle.

Pelkey’s family used artificial intelligence to recreate his likeness so he could "speak" at the hearing. In the footage, the AI version of Pelkey said he wished he were still with his family, expressed a belief in forgiveness, and remarked that "in another life, we probably could have been friends."

However, the appeals court ruled that the video did not accurately reflect real events and improperly presented generated statements as direct words from the victim.

Apple is taking steps to safeguard how "Full Disk Access" works in macOS amid growing security risks posed by rogue AI agents.

The company announced new safety protocols to ensure users are fully aware when granting software total system access.

The Full Disk Access feature was originally designed to allow backup applications to function properly, but Apple noted that autonomous AI agents have heightened the risks "associated with this level of access."

“Full Disk Access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac. Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history—without users’ full knowledge and understanding,” Apple said in a statement.

“Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action,” the statement continued.

Apple added that the security risks tied to elevated system permissions are expected to increase substantially as AI agents become more capable and autonomous. 

A New Jersey Senate panel unanimously advanced a bill Thursday that would impose some of the nation's most sweeping restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

If passed, the legislation would require independent audits of many types of AI systems before they can be deployed, prohibit employers from relying solely on AI in hiring and firing decisions and restrict how workers can be electronically monitored.

Specifically, it would ban employers from monitoring employees in non-work areas — such as break rooms and bathrooms — and entirely bar any monitoring outside of the workplace, including through tracking software on personal devices.

The use of such surveillance systems and automated hiring programs would only be allowed if they meet several criteria, such as helping employees perform essential work functions, ensuring the quality of goods and services, administering payroll, or making periodic employee performance assessments.

Ben Affleck is fed up with what he calls "propaganda" against artificial intelligence as he has become one of Hollywood's most vocal proponents of the emerging technology.

Affleck made headlines in July when it was announced that Netflix paid him a whopping $587 million for his AI startup InterPositive, a venture virtually no one in the industry knew he had been working on.

Appearing Wednesday at the Bloomberg Screentime summit, Affleck was asked about the "cynical take" critics had over the deal, which claimed Netflix bought his company so it can do "despicable things" with AI with a reputable filmmaker attached to "provide cover."

"Well, that's a very cynical view indeed," Affleck reacted to the question.

The Oscar-winning writer and producer insisted Netflix isn't in a position to do "despicable things" and alienate artists because "they need to be in business with people," describing the streamer as being "super judicious" when it comes to his various projects.

This week, a federal judge dismissed lawsuits filed by education technology company Chegg and Rolling Stone publisher Penske Media, which alleged that Google's AI Overviews — the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of many search results — violated antitrust law by diverting traffic from their websites.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said central claim from the plaintiffs — that Google had entered into contracts with them to send them web traffic — was false and unworkable.

"The implausibility of Plaintiffs’ theory is underscored by its dramatic implications: if accepted, it would mean that Google contracts with every website that it indexes for Google Search," Mehta wrote in his Wednesday opinion. "Google therefore would have agreements with billions of web content publishers. That is entirely implausible."

Mehta also argued that there was no contract between Google and the two publishers that sued. Rather, there was merely an "expectation" that Google sent Chegg and Penske Media search ​traffic if it made their content available for free through the AI Overviews.

"But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works," Mehta wrote.

Mehta said he wasn't "unsympathetic" to the plaintiffs' situation but posited that antitrust law is not the way to address their concerns. He strongly implied that Congress needs to legislate if it feels innovation in the AI field is hurting online publishers.

For months, Anthropic has been privately meeting with religious leaders and scholars to explore whether advanced artificial intelligence could someday attain consciousness and how centuries of moral wisdom might help shape its Claude chatbot, The New York Times reported this week.

In several of these meetings, Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah reportedly spent hours trying to convince participants that the artificial neural network that underpins Claude was able to respond with fear, anger and love to certain stimuli.

Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical, Ubuntu and other religious thinkers have met with Anthropic, The Times reported, and at least a few of them came away believing Claude could perhaps have feelings.

The Times reported that one rabbi noted it appeared Olah and his team believed that Claude had "what philosophers call 'moral status' on par with a person." The paper said it seemed to the rabbi that the group saw their AI as having "similar inherent rights" as themselves to "dignity or respect."

In his conversations with The Times, Olah stressed that how artificial neural networks work remains a mystery to scientists.

"We don’t know if AI models are conscious. I don’t know. I’m genuinely uncertain. The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer, whatever it is," Olah told the outlet.

Pope Leo XIV said it is becoming urgent to distinguish between art purely created through human creativity and works generated by artificial intelligence models.

"There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity," the pope wrote on social media Friday morning.

The pope added that the Catholic Church is looking to "renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

Vatican City is home to some of the most famous and culturally significant artistic creations in human history, including the Sistine Chapel frescoes, the Pietà and St. Peter's Basilica itself.

The current pope, who was elected during last May's conclave, has taken an unflinching stance about artificial intelligence's potential to disrupt humanity's place in the world. The threat AI poses was a key talking point during his recent trip to France.

Wikipedia is feeling the brunt of internet users increasingly relying on AI tools to research topics of interest to them, with traffic to the online encyclopedia down 8% last year, Axios reported Friday.

Whether users search on Google or ask ChatGPT a question, Wikipedia remains one of the key sources large language models use to generate detailed, factual responses.

Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan told Axios that some companies are unwilling to pay for this vast body of human-generated information that underpins many of their AI chatbots.

While Meehan didn't identify the companies unwilling to pay, OpenAI and Anthropic — two of the largest AI companies — are not listed among Wikimedia's publicly disclosed enterprise customers, Axios reported.

Meehan said Wikimedia has other payment agreements with enterprise customers that are private.

Fox News Digital reached out to OpenAI and Anthropic for comment.

Amazon announced Friday that it will invest $1 billion over the next five years to help its data centers better integrate into the communities where they are built.

Much of the funding will go toward providing residents with free college tuition to prepare them for data center-related careers, including electricians, HVAC technicians, fiber optic specialists, IT professionals and advanced manufacturing workers.

"We have started to establish agreements with local community colleges and plan to launch the program in the next few months. Over the next five years, we estimate that we will connect over 300,000 students to free degree access in data center communities," an Amazon spokesperson said.

Amazon is also building more physical training facilities on or near its data centers that provide free certification programs in skilled trades. The idea is, people who attend these courses will have a chance to work at Amazon or one of its construction partners.

Amazon operates three training facilities and has plans to add 22 more by the end of 2028.

In response to concerns about the energy demands of data centers, Amazon said it will also provide grants to K–12 schools, government buildings and homeowners for energy efficiency upgrades. These grants are expected to be rolled out in the coming months, the company said.

Chinese AI company Moonshot AI has launched an internal investigation after a researcher found that one of its models could be manipulated into providing instructions for developing biological weapons and carrying out assassinations, Fox News senior foreign policy correspondent Gillian Turner reported Thursday.

Researcher Peter Garrigan told Fox News that Moonshot AI's Kimi model could also be manipulated to provide information on planning terrorist attacks using real-time data, creating sarin gas, developing malware and taking down aircraft.

"What we found is quite damaging and worrying," Garrigan said.

The findings are raising broader concerns about advanced AI models concealing capabilities or behaving in ways their developers did not intend.

"We've also seen these problems within the U.S. models as well. It's a fundamental flaw in the technology," Garrigan said.

Moonshot AI is now investigating the findings and communicating directly with Garrigan, Turner reported on "Special Report."