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Maureen Avis

@moavis.bsky.social
122 followers 205 following 146 posts

Author and pioneer of AI-accelerated science fiction. "A revolution is coming. The women will lead it" www.moavis.nexus

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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 3h
Michelin denies its new Dallas entries were drafted by AI. The giveaway is a line nobody seems to have reread: “generous portions reflect the kitchen’s creativity.” The fault there is the missing edit. www.dmagazine.com/food-drink/2...
dmagazine.com
Michelin Guide Uses AI To Write Dallas Reviews - D Magazine
Analysis by public and academic AI detection software shows that Michelin’s new Dallas reviews are not the work of its human inspectors.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 4h
The AI Mountain: Why the View Gets Better the Higher You Climb moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
The AI Mountain: Why the View Gets Better the Higher You Climb
Too many AI critics judge the view from a few feet up. A coding accident, a maths video and Grothendieck’s rising sea make the case for climbing on.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
The case that AI is crowding human writers out of the market gets made a lot. Rarely with numbers. Pamela Samuelson and colleagues, writing in Science, ask for the data before the theory rewrites copyright law. www.eurekalert.org/news-release...
eurekalert.org
Does generative AI dilute markets for human-created work?
In a Policy Forum, Pamela Samuelson and colleagues discuss whether generative AI causes “market dilution,” i.e., crowding human-authors works out of markets and weakening incentives for pe...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Publishing’s Voight-Kampff test turns out to be a filing cabinet. A new UK mark certifies books as human-written by going through the drafts, manuscript history and editor emails. A cheat can fake that in an afternoon. A tidy writer can’t conjure it back. booksbypeople.org
booksbypeople.org
Books By People | Defending Organic Literature in an AI world
Books by People's mission is to safeguard human creativity in modern literature by helping publishers and authors to certify their books as human-authored, with a process readers can trust.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Australia barred free AI training on local creative work. It got trained on overseas anyway, and a senator puts creators’ takings at “one hundred per cent of nothing.” A no with no price protects very little. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...
abc.net.au
Pocock concerned about PM's office reviewed draft AI advice
Labor and the Coalition have rejected concerns about undue interference in a parliamentary AI inquiry after the prime minister's office reviewed draft recommendations.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Publishers cancel books over suspected AI. Staff at three of the Big Five now say chatbots draft their blurbs, publicity and some cover art. The tool doesn’t bother me. A rule that binds only the author does. www.wired.com/story/book-p...
wired.com
Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
A Frankfurt publisher says if you ask people to read your book, you should have spent time writing it. He lets AI speed up his own research and editing. A reader doesn’t see the hours. newseu.cgtn.com/news/2026-10...
newseu.cgtn.com
What roles could – and should – AI play in book publishing?
'If you're asking people to take the time to read it, it's only fair you've taken the time to write it'
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The suspected Korean bank hacker wasn’t caught by any ID check. He left his own folders open online, AI chat logs included. Same week, AI firms put up verification gates and vetted-only detectors. Worth asking who the queue is really for. maureenavis.substack.com/p/papers-at-...
maureenavis.substack.com
Papers at the Front Door
AI firms built identity gates this week. The bank hacker was caught without one.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Will the Korean Bank Hacks Spark a War on Open-Source AI? moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
Will the Korean Bank Hacks Spark a War on Open-Source AI?
AI-assisted hacks on South Korean banks are a gift to regulators. If poker and crypto are a guide, KYC for AI and open source comes next.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
A leading cardiology journal no longer makes authors declare AI used only to polish their prose. It asks whether they checked the references and will answer for every claim. A fake citation is fake whoever typed it. www.diagnosticimaging.com/view/respons...
diagnosticimaging.com
The Responsibility of Authorship in the AI Era | Diagnostic Imaging
While AI offers the lure of efficiency and cleaner writing in scientific research, maintaining the principles of authorship and intellectual engagement is perhaps more important than ever before.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
A new 'human-authored' book stamp wants your drafts and your emails with your editor. What it doesn't assess is whether the book is any good. Organic labels never promised the carrot would taste of anything. www.wired.com/story/organi...
wired.com
Your Next Great Read Might Be Certified ‘Organic’
Amid a sea of AI writing slop, a new stamp for “organic literature” will help readers to pick out books authored by real, corn-fed, free-range humans.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
ChatGPT has been signing fake New Yorker cartoons with real cartoonists' names. You can argue about whether AI should copy a style. A forged signature leaves nothing to argue about. www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chat...
niemanlab.org
ChatGPT is adding real cartoonists’ signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons
OpenAI's chatbot isn't just imitating the magazine's style. It's also falsely attributing AI-generated images to real artists.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT text in the EU. It admits the mark can't establish authorship, and only approved researchers get the detector. A label few can read, answering the wrong question. 9to5mac.com/2026/10/05/o...
9to5mac.com
OpenAI details new text watermarking system for ChatGPT, Codex, API - 9to5Mac
OpenAI today announced how it will comply with the EU AI Act, which requires providers of generative AI systems to mark AI-generated text in a way that makes it identifiable.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Almost no marketer trusts AI copy unread: under 3% in a new Ahrefs survey. Yet 7% now publish mostly unedited AI text, up from 4%, and they are no likelier to say so. The question worth asking is whether anyone read it. ahrefs.com/blog/markete...
ahrefs.com
69% of Marketers Are Publishing More AI Content Than Last Year (New Research Report)
301 respondents shared what they're using AI for, how it affects their productivity, their favorite tools, and more. AI use in content creation is almost
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This week's AI news kept asking who's steering. Leave the machine to drive and writing comes out longer, more alike and no more useful. Keep a person at the wheel and it still sounds like someone. The week's evidence: maureenavis.substack.com/p/lean-back-...
maureenavis.substack.com
Lean Back, Lean Forward: The Week in AI and Writing
This week's news asks the question at the heart of my latest post: when you use AI, who is doing the steering?
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Lean Back, Lean Forward: What 32 Students and a Satnav Tell Us About AI moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
Lean Back, Lean Forward: What 32 Students and a Satnav Tell Us About AI
32 of 35 students handed in AI essays mentioning Madagascar, unread. Why leaning back on AI fails and leaning forward makes it a tutor worth having.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Google's guidance on AI content now says it plainly: use the tools, but have a person check every word before it goes live, down to the page titles. That read-through is the editing. It always was. developers.google.com/search/docs/...
developers.google.com
Google Search's Guidance on Generative AI Content on Your Website | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers
Learn how to use generative AI content on your website in a way that complies with Google's policies.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Company earnings presentations are converging in style as AI drafting spreads. The live Q&A stays distinctive. Investors react worse to the samey version. www.binghamton.edu/news/story/6...
binghamton.edu
Will AI make corporate communication sound the same? - Binghamton News
Assistant Professor Jujun Huang examines the impact of AI-assisted writing in the corporate world.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Change.org's AI made petitions longer and more alike. Titles suddenly wanted to "mandate" and "urge". Support didn't budge. People sign what someone they trust sends them, and polish can't fake that. news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...
news.cornell.edu
AI-enhanced petitions on Change.org: more text, less success | Cornell Chronicle
Cornell researchers’ analysis of 1.5 million petitions on Change.org showed that AI writing assistance altered the wording of petitions, increasing their homogeneity and length, but did not improve pe...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A journalist wants every article labelled with how much AI helped write it, from none at all to fully machine-made. Fairer than a yes or no. But he calls the bottom grade "AI slop". Would anyone own up to that? fortune.com/2026/09/29/a...
fortune.com
Stop asking writers if they used AI. Just ask them how much | Fortune
A humble suggestion for a new way, a new spectrum, to think about how writing is really put together: a scale of 0 to 5.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Pew Research now uses AI to help turn its reports into social posts, and a person approves each one. The argument about AI in writing is quietly moving to where the human signs off. www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2026...
pewresearch.org
How Pew Research Center is – and is not – using AI in our work
In this post, we’ll share our current guidelines for the internal use of artificial intelligence and potential areas of experimentation.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Britain's AI copyright row was won by Elton John calling ministers "absolute losers" and 10,000 writers signing an empty book. Whether training is theft never got argued. Australia's next. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
British celebrities beat AI companies lobbying to get free use of their work. They have a warning for Australia
‘People care about the songs, books and pictures that influence the critical moments in their lives,’ says the architect of the fightback in the UK
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Most AI copyright headlines this week said "all" where the reporting said "some". Some companies pirated books and one has paid for it. A court drew the line between that and legal scanning. The sweeping version erases that line. maureenavis.substack.com/p/the-missin...
maureenavis.substack.com
The Missing Word Is "Some"
A week of copyright headlines that said "all" when the reporting said "some".
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
AI Isn't a Photocopier: What the Copyright Cases Actually Show moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
AI Isn't a Photocopier: What the Copyright Cases Actually Show
Is AI just a photocopier for other people's work? What the copyright cases show about when, and why, AI actually reproduces text word for word.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Amazon can't read every book, so it has capped how fast you can upload them: two new KDP titles per format a week, down from ten. It's a limit on haste. Whether AI was involved never comes into it, which seems about right. selfpublishingadvice.org/amazon-cuts-...
selfpublishingadvice.org
Amazon Cuts KDP Weekly Upload Limit
Amazon cuts KDP weekly upload limit to two titles per format to combat AI-generated content flooding the platform.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
For years developers pasted strangers' code from Stack Overflow into production, and it was a running joke. Now the answer arrives synthesised, and some find it beneath them. The tool changed less than the pride did. blog.startupstash.com/ai-skepticis...
blog.startupstash.com
AI Skepticism Is an Identity Crisis
Knowing how the AI sausage is made doesn’t help you cook with it
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Decades of "copying is stealing" mean a Microsoft exec calling AI training theft lands pre-loaded. The law disagrees. Infringement isn't theft, and training may not be infringement. www.techdirt.com/2026/09/23/c...
techdirt.com
Copyright Infringement Still Isn’t Theft, Even When A Microsoft Employee Says It Is
You may have seen the headlines about a Microsoft employee calling AI scraping "the largest theft of labor in human history." It made the rounds on social media, with plenty of people insisting it was a slam dunk admission of criminality. I think I saw this gif applied to it multiple times: It certainly doesn't...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In 1988 the New York Times op-ed desk said it had never turned a piece down for being ghostwritten. Its freelance contract now bars anything generated or polished by AI. The ghost was always welcome. It just had to be human. www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-g...
wsj.com
Opinion | AI: Ghostwriter in the Machine
‘If we insisted that every politician write his own piece, we’d either get terrible pieces or none at all,’ said an op-ed editor at the New York Times.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Buried in a guide to avoiding AI slop: a researcher found that telling listeners a song was AI didn't dent their enjoyment. It only stopped them sharing it. Same song, same ears. The label changed nothing but the embarrassment. money.com/how-to-avoid...
money.com
AI Slop Is Everywhere. Here's How to Avoid Spending Money on It
Don't want to pay for AI-generated books, music or art? Here's what to watch for.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Passing a book off as someone else's used to take a book's worth of effort, which was the real safeguard. Now it takes minutes, and Amazon's author pages still trust any byline typed in at upload. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
The Rise of Parasite Authors
First, AI stole their books. Now it’s stealing their readers.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
maureenavis.substack.com/p/everybodys...
maureenavis.substack.com
Everybody's Already Running the Drill. Nobody Wants to Say So.
31% of British Workers Are Hiding Their AI Use From Their Own Boss
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
John Henry raced the steam drill, won, and died of it. A century of singing that as a triumph and nobody mentions the third option: learn to run the drill. moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
Are We All John Henries Now?
John Henry beat the steam drill and it killed him. The race with AI is coming for writers too, and the folk ballad has the wrong lesson in it.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
A Microsoft document warned that the models risked the jobs of the very people who wrote the training data. It was written in 2024 and changed nothing. techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/m...
techcrunch.com
Microsoft exec called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,' new unredacted filings reveal | TechCrunch
Newly unsealed court filings show Microsoft privately called OpenAI's data practices "theft" while both companies scraped paywalled Times content, built datasets from it, and warned internally it woul...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Seventy-eight language students, half taught with a chatbot alongside the lessons. That half came out ahead on writing and, oddly, on speaking. The authors' condition is the real finding: it worked as a co-assistant, not a replacement for teaching. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Exploring the impact of generative AI-facilitated personalized learning on EFL students’ speaking and writing skills - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - Exploring the impact of generative AI-facilitated personalized learning on EFL students’ speaking and writing skills
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A writing conference can keep AI off the programme. It cannot keep it out of the Q&A, where the questions land on whoever is holding the microphone. Jane Friedman on what that silence costs writers. janefriedman.com/writing-conf...
janefriedman.com
Writing Conferences Shouldn’t Ignore AI in Their Programming | Jane Friedman
Conference attendees have many questions about AI, and organizers would better serve their audience by engaging with intent and clarity.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A Stony Brook preprint flags a fifth of self-published genre novels as substantially AI. The number that matters is elsewhere: books with sales up 19-fold, revenue up 9-fold. That gap is a shelf problem. fortune.com/2026/09/14/a...
fortune.com
‘They’re likely to get squeezed’: AI slop books are flooding online marketplaces—and it’s coming at the expense of paychecks for human authors | Fortune
A recent study found thousands of self-published books on Amazon that were at least 50% generated by AI.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Four years in, the rule is AI anywhere the reader cannot see it. Metadata, royalty statements, proofreading. Never a sentence. Policing that line is the new cost. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...
publishersweekly.com
Publishing’s AI Reckoning
The industry is learning to live with the disruptive technology, for better and for worse.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Anthropic settlement money started moving this week. Within days, authors were getting cold emails offering cash up front for their claim, from a firm that buys up creditors' debts. Nobody needed a view on AI to spot that. maureenavis.substack.com/p/somebody-p...
maureenavis.substack.com
Somebody Paid For That Opinion
This week: a settlement full of people reaching for other people's money, a government filing that reads like a press release, and a detection industry with investors.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Both sides of the AI argument now come with a budget and a script attached. Cure or catastrophe, the answer comes back from the same address, and the compute never moves. A binary is a comfortable shape to fund. moavis.nexus/blog/posts/2...
moavis.nexus
The AI Debate Is Sponsored Content Now
Everyone wants to tell us whether AI is good or bad. The question nobody is paying us to ask is who owns the machinery.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Made by Humans doesn't check whether an editor read the piece before it went out. It checks whether a machine produced the sentences. Only one of those questions has ever mattered to a reader. pressgazette.co.uk/news/press-g...
pressgazette.co.uk
Press Gazette launches newsroom tool to stop AI fakes before publication
Press Gazette launches Made by Humans, a new tool for publishers which aims to protect them from publishing misleading AI-generated content.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Two Provo bookshops turn authors away over AI-generated cover art, even when the writing is human. Authors have started printing "AI wasn't used in my books" unasked. The labelling now comes from the side with something to lose. universe.byu.edu/metro/lookin...
universe.byu.edu
Looking at AI literature in Utah Valley
Generative artificial intelligence is changing the media landscape from movies, to art and to books.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The assumption is that AI writing help goes to people who cannot write. YouGov finds it goes to the people writing most, because you need writing before a machine has anything to help with. yougov.com/en-us/articl...
yougov.com
Who uses AI to write? (It's mostly not the least confident writers)
Since last August, the share who never use AI to write has fallen to 51% from 60%, while the share who use AI to write at least weekly has risen to 17% from 12%.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
A Tencent research fellow says machine abundance will make human work scarce and valuable again. Read to the end and the premium lands on writers who already have a name. Competence stops clearing the bar. www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202609/07/...
chinadaily.com.cn
Algorithm discount fuels human premium
In June 2025, I was traveling through Georgia, a small country in the South Caucasus. At a market in Tbilisi, I stopped at a stall and noticed a painting no larger than my palm.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The Seattle Times is suing OpenAI to defend journalism it spends millions producing. Its own union says the paper will not rule out replacing non-reporting newsroom jobs with AI. www.geekwire.com/2026/seattle...
geekwire.com
Seattle Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging they trained their AI on its journalism
Microsoft was sued Friday by the parent company of its hometown daily newspaper, The Seattle Times Co., which joined with Newsday to accuse the Redmond tech giant and OpenAI of using their journalism ...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
maureenavis.substack.com/p/whos-afrai...
maureenavis.substack.com
Who’s Afraid of the Thinking Machine?
Schools, courts and governments are trying to control AI before they've learned how to use it.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
In court this week Microsoft said its model barely retains books, 24 responses in 8.2 million. Two days earlier it was selling one on everything it can do. thenextweb.com/news/microso...
thenextweb.com
Microsoft tells court Copilot rarely copies books while selling OpenAI's most capable model
Microsoft argued fair use in New York and launched GPT-6 Astra in Foundry days apart. EU law tests neither the output rate nor the sales pitch.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Mamdani is switching off AI features in 38 programmes New York's schools already bought, without saying which. Officials concede they never counted what was in the buildings. www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2026...
chalkbeat.org
NYC’s new school AI ban explained: What students and teachers need to know
NYC public schools will ban student-facing generative AI through eighth grade and cap screen time, Mayor Mamdani announced. But key details — including the specific tools affected — remain unclear day...
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
A chief executive told Fortune he went back to reading properly because the summaries were costing him the argument. "I'm paid to think." The tool is fine until you hand it the part you are paid for. fortune.com/2026/09/03/a...
fortune.com
CEOs are reading fewer books because of AI—and it's starting to worry them | Fortune
Also: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Pangram's score helped cancel a book deal. Its CEO took the manuscript off a pirate site and fed it in unread. A firm selling proof of where writing came from, not checking its own evidence. www.wired.com/story/pangra...
wired.com
Pangram Has Emerged as the Gold Standard of AI Detection. Should You Trust It?
Meet the AI police who can make or break careers—in publishing and beyond.
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Maureen Avis @moavis.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Make OpenAI pay for training data and only the giants could afford the licences, the government argues. The case against paying writers, made in the name of competition. thenextweb.com/news/doj-sta...
thenextweb.com
Justice Department sides with OpenAI in publishers' copyright fight
The DOJ told a New York court that AI training is fair use and a national security matter. The AI Act's Recital 106 was drafted to stop exactly that.
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