Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), co-chairs of the House Bipartisan AI Task Force, introduced the American Leadership in AI Act on Monday, codifying more than 20 of the task force's recommendations from its December 2024 final report. The bill funds the Consortium for AI Safety InstituteCAISIThe Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the US government's AI testing body inside NIST at the Commerce Department. Formerly the US AI Safety Institute, it evaluates frontier models with developers on a voluntary basis and works with the UK's AI Security Institute. at $10 million, establishes the National AI Research Resource, creates an AI Workforce Research Hub, expands whistleblower protections and authorizes civil rights actions against deepfakesDeepfakeSynthetic audio, images or video that realistically depict a real person saying or doing something they did not. Non-consensual intimate deepfakes and election deepfakes are the two areas where states and Congress have actually passed laws. and fraud. The text declines to preemptPreemptionWhen federal law overrides state law on the same subject. In AI policy it refers to proposals, in Congress or by executive action, to block or freeze the growing patchwork of state AI laws in favor of a single national standard. state AI developer regulations, contrasting with Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie's SECURE Data Act and the Trump December executive order's preemption mandate. The bill is the first bipartisan AI omnibus introduced in the 119th Congress.
Read at Punchbowl News ↗
Microsoft and OpenAI announced Monday that they had revised the contract governing their partnership. The new terms drop the clause that allowed OpenAI to terminate Microsoft's access upon declaring artificial general intelligenceAGIArtificial general intelligence: an AI system that can do most economically valuable cognitive work at or above human level. There is no agreed test for it, which is why debates about when it will arrive, and what to do about it, are so contentious. and convert Microsoft's intellectual property license to a nonexclusive arrangement running through 2032. OpenAI may now serve its products across any cloud provider, with Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy saying ChatGPT models will be available on Amazon Bedrock within a few weeks alongside a new Stateful Runtime Environment for AI agentsAI agentAn AI system that carries out multi-step tasks on its own, such as browsing, writing code or making purchases, rather than answering a single prompt. Agents raise new questions about liability, security and oversight because they act rather than just advise.. Microsoft's revenue share from OpenAI continues at the same percentage but is now capped through 2030, while Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a share of its AI revenue. Microsoft retains right of first ship on Azure unless it cannot and chooses not to support a given capability.
Read at The Verge ↗ • Read at SiliconANGLE ↗
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers seated nine jurors Monday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., opening three weeks of testimony in Musk v. Altman starting today. Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft and asking the court to remove Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and restore OpenAI as a nonprofit. Witnesses are expected to include Musk, Altman, Brockman, former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former chief technology officer Mira Murati and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. The jury will deliver an advisory verdict to guide the judge on Musk's claims, which target OpenAI's October 2025 conversion from nonprofit to public benefit corporation.
Read at MIT Technology Review ↗ • Read at CNBC ↗
OpenAI announced Monday that ChatGPT Enterprise and the OpenAI API received FedRAMP Moderate authorization, allowing federal agencies to procure both under standard government cloud security terms. The authorization clears the procurement gate for most civilian agencies and arrives as Anthropic remains locked out of Pentagon contracts after the Department of Defense designated the company a supply chain risk over its refusal to license Claude for "all lawful purposes." OpenAI subsequently revised its own Pentagon language to bar deliberate tracking, surveillance or monitoring of U.S. persons.
Read at OpenAI ↗
More than 600 Google and Google DeepMind employees signed an open letter on Monday urging chief executive Sundar Pichai to refuse any classified workloads in ongoing Department of Defense negotiations over Gemini, The Hill reported. The letter follows the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year after Anthropic refused the "all lawful purposes" clause. Signatories include more than 20 directors, senior directors and vice presidents across Google, alongside a number of senior employees at Google DeepMind, with the letter saying rejection of classified workloads is the only way to prevent surveillance and weapons applications.
Read at The Hill ↗ • Read at Bloomberg ↗
The Department of Justice on Monday announced the extradition of Chinese national Xu Zewei, who arrived from Italy over the weekend and made his initial appearance in federal court in Houston, BleepingComputer reported. The indictment alleges Xu worked for Shanghai Powerock Network at the direction of the Ministry of State Security's Shanghai State Security Bureau and ties him to the Silk Typhoon (Hafnium) campaign that exploited Microsoft Exchange Server zero-days from late 2020 onward, compromising more than 12,700 U.S. organizations. The campaign also targeted COVID-19 research organizations, with prosecutors alleging the operators sought data on vaccines, treatments and testing. Xu pleaded not guilty on a nine-count indictment that includes wire fraud, computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft.
Read at BleepingComputer ↗
The Senate Armed Services Committee holds a closed hearing this morning to review the posture of U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Cyber Command in connection with the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program. The closed session is followed by an open session at 11 a.m. in SD-G50. The hearing falls within the same week the Pentagon's $1.5 trillion FY27 budget request lands on Capitol Hill. The request earmarks roughly $54 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the Pentagon's reorganized focal organization for autonomous and drone capabilities.
Read at Senate Armed Services ↗