California consumers would never have consented to having their customer service calls recorded had they known Google could use their conversations to train its AI models, an attorney for the consumers argued Tuesday in urging a federal judge to let a wiretapping lawsuit against the company proceed.

Companies should expect to see a surge of opt-out requests when California’s new law requiring web browsers to offer built-in privacy settings takes effect in January, and it will be up to businesses, not the browsers, to ensure those opt-out requests are honored.

Washington lawmakers are poised to revisit comprehensive privacy legislation as artificial intelligence raises new questions about how companies collect and use personal information. Washington state Representative Shelley Kloba plans to revive her long-stalled consumer privacy legislation as lawmakers also turn their attention to new concerns involving AI, workplace surveillance and algorithmic decision-making.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said the state has fallen behind on consumer privacy protections despite its leadership in technology, but he doesn't expect lawmakers to introduce comprehensive privacy legislation next year. Speaking at a conference in Seattle, Brown also defended his office's measured enforcement approach under the state's sweeping My Health My Data Act.

New York City lawmakers grilled Meta, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI over catastrophic AI risks, and said the companies failed to give clear answers on safety, oversight and accountability.

A new analysis from Privado AI projects more than $1.4 billion in website and app tracking class-action settlements this year, as federal wiretap claims outpace CIPA in prevalence and healthcare companies account for nearly two-thirds of settlements.

As federal AI legislation makes only limited progress, state governors are increasingly moving on their own while continuing to push Congress for a national framework.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a package of laws aimed at making data centers shoulder more of the electricity, water and infrastructure costs created by the artificial intelligence boom, as the Trump administration pushes to accelerate AI infrastructure development.

Meta Platforms is placing a major bet on its foray into personal AI agents, hoping people will trust Muse to autonomously manage the most intimate details of their personal lives. No company may be better positioned than Meta to build an AI agent that can become deeply embedded in users’ lives. Yet few companies also carry as much baggage over how they've handled personal data.

A Facebook employee warned senior colleagues in the run-up to the 2020 election that the company could catch only a fraction of the hate, violence and misinformation on its platform and urged it to “pause all recommendations” — a sweeping step the company did not take, a New Mexico jury heard Thursday in the state’s case against Facebook for allegedly misleading users about its privacy practices and its zero-tolerance approach to hate speech on the social media site.

A privacy researcher told a New Mexico jury that Facebook spent at least $100 million investigating third-party apps after Cambridge Analytica but still failed to determine the full extent of data misuse, while a former employee testified that internal efforts to improve Facebook's investigative approach went nowhere.

Tracking the webpages consumers visit doesn't amount to intercepting the contents of their communications under California’s wiretapping law, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Facebook knew that harmful, toxic and misleading content disproportionately drove engagement, a University of Pittsburgh professor of disinformation studies said Friday as the state of New Mexico continued its effort to portray the Cambridge Analytica scandal as part of a broader pattern of Facebook misleading users about how its platform operated.

A Texas district court judge has become the first in the country to find that a social media company violated a state consumer-protection law.

As the State of New Mexico opened its Cambridge Analytica trial against Facebook in a Santa Fe courtroom Wednesday, a lawyer for the state urged jurors to "follow the money."

From Seoul to Singapore and London to Brussels, Meta Platforms’ landmark settlement with 51 US jurisdictions in August has reverberated globally, prompting calls for similar child-protection requirements elsewhere. The agreement raises the question of how regulators elsewhere will respond after years of investigating addictive features and considering stricter rules to prevent physical and mental harm to young people.

California’s child online-safety push is entering a more mature phase, as lawmakers use lessons from years of litigation and earlier legislation to tighten age-assurance rules, revive privacy protections, regulate addictive design features and raise the stakes for platforms accused of harming children.

Meta Platforms has quietly turned its $17 billion US youth safety settlement into a vehicle for wiping away years of lingering state risk over Cambridge Analytica.

The record $17.1 billion settlement US states reached with Meta Platforms is designed to reach far beyond the company itself, with state attorneys general seeking to use the deal as a blueprint for imposing similar youth-safety restrictions on TikTok, Snap and YouTube. But the structure could also benefit Meta by pushing its rivals into the same regulatory regime while leaving its core recommendation business largely intact.

US state attorneys general said Wednesday that the coalition they built in their addictive-design cases against Meta Platforms, and the states' strong performance in the first federal bellwether trial that began last week in Oakland, California, was what allowed the states to reach a record $17.1 billion settlement. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said Meta knew the states "have them dead to rights."