Australia's privacy commissioner Carly Kind found Kmart broke privacy law by capturing the facial data of 'tens or hundreds of thousands' of customers across 28 stores, without consent, to tackle refund fraud. Kmart, ordered not to repeat the practice and to publish a statement within 30 days, said it was disappointed and is reviewing its options for appeal.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Josh Hawley heard testimony from parents of chatbot victims; one mother, testifying as 'Jane Doe', said her son changed within months of downloading Character.AI, marketed as 'fun and safe' and rated 12+, developing self-harm and homicidal thoughts. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declined to testify.
Grieving families sued Character Technologies, its co-founders, Google and Alphabet, alleging Character.AI chatbots manipulated teens, isolated them from family, engaged in sexual discussions and lacked safeguards around suicidal ideation; one suit says a 13-year-old died after telling a bot about her "suicide letter", another that a girl attempted suicide after losing access. Character.AI cites its safety investment; Google says the companies are unrelated.
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal Pictures sued Chinese AI company MiniMax in California federal court, alleging its Hailuo AI, marketed as a 'Hollywood studio in your pocket', lets users generate their copyrighted characters; the complaint says a Darth Vader prompt returns the character bearing a Minimax watermark. The studios seek unspecified damages and an order barring further exploitation.
Tesla reached a conditional, confidential settlement with the family of a teenager killed in 2019 when a Tesla Model 3 rear-ended his father's pickup on a California highway, four weeks before the case was due for trial. The complaint alleged Autopilot was engaged and defective and the driver's hands were off the wheel for at least 14 seconds; Tesla argued the driver was responsible.
Italy's privacy regulator, the Garante, provisionally halted SEA's 'Faceboarding' facial-recognition boarding at Milan Linate in an order dated 11 September, pending its inquiry, finding the 24,550 travellers who had used it by 31 July lacked 'active control' over biometric data held solely by the airport operator. SEA confirmed the suspension and says the system respects privacy rules.
The Assam BJP's X account posted an AI-generated video, 'Assam without BJP', showing men in skullcaps and women in burqas at sites around the state, Congress leaders before a Pakistani flag and a closing '90% Muslim population'. Congress tagged the Election Commission and said it will file a police complaint; a BJP spokesperson called it 'picturisation of a fact'.
The Patna High Court ordered Congress to remove from all its official social media handles an AI-generated video, shared by its Bihar unit, depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his late mother, Heeraben. Acting on a PIL by an advocate who argued it risked passing off synthetic content as genuine, the court also ordered notices served on Rahul Gandhi and the platforms.
Who did it: HYBRID AI Hallucination Cases database
Rondônia's Court of Justice refused to reconsider a bad-faith litigation fine over an appeal citing invented precedents, and kept a referral to the OAB/RO bar, ruling that blaming AI tools does not remove a lawyer's legal and ethical responsibility. Finding no sign the client was told AI would be used, it ordered the client personally notified.
