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On May 23, the House Subcommittee on Innovation, Data and Commerce advanced out of committee the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), a draft piece of legislation to establish a federal data privacy standard in the United States. The legislation now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for markup. Several changes were made in the draft legislation during the markup process, but the section containing a groundbreaking set of private right of action remains unchanged.

In the Cybersecurity Law Report, colleagues Shruti Bhutani Arora and Christine Mastromonaco discuss the details of the APRA’s private right of action, the remedies available to individuals and the preemptive effect of the APRA.

Click here to read the full article.

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sports-NIL-1188462138-300x200Developments in the world of name, image and likeness (NIL) rights continue to occur at an extremely swift pace.

Within the last two weeks, Virginia amended its existing NIL laws to significantly strengthen student-athlete NIL rights, and the NCAA adopted new NIL rules designed to allow schools to support student-athlete NIL endeavors. The NCAA also relaxed the NIL disclosure requirement adopted in January and announced it had selected Teamworks Innovations to build and maintain its NIL database.

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Testing AI systems is essential for ensuring their effectiveness, reliability and safety in real-world applications. Companies can employ various mechanisms to rigorously evaluate their AI technologies.

In “Is Your AI Testing Tool a Breach of Contract Claim Waiting to Happen?”, colleagues Mia Rendar and Sam Reno explore how, as AI products grow in both popularity and technical complexity, and as robust testing tools become indispensable, the very utilization of such tools may unwittingly expose companies to legal risks.

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The potential of artificial intelligence to transform industries is well-established, but what exactly does that mean for a specific industry?

For Pratt’s Energy Law ReportRobert A. JamesAimee P. GhoshCara M. MacDonald and the Hon. Jerry McNerney take readers on a deeper dive exploring the opportunities, risks and regulations in the specific applications of artificial intelligence to renewable energy and to the electric power ecosystem into which renewables fit.

Read “Artificial Intelligence in Renewable Energy” now.

 

 

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Reflecting the growing concern with cybersecurity threats associated with Internet of Things (IoT) products, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules at its March 2024 meeting to implement a new Voluntary Cybersecurity Labeling Program. The new label— “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark”—will be affixed on wireless consumer IoT products that go through the voluntary review program to ensure that the products comply with baseline cybersecurity criteria established in the September 2022 NIST Report 8425.

In “FCC Announces Consumer IoT Cybersecurity Labeling Program,” Brian E. Finch, Glenn S. Richards and Lee G. Petro take a closer look at the new program.

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With millions of people already using artificial intelligence (AI) to perform a variety of personal tasks and companies integrating large language model (LLM) services for professional use, concerns over the frequency with which generative AI produces inaccurate content—and for users who may too readily assume that the content is factual—are mounting, along with multiple examples of AI hallucinations and other misstatements. Some are disastrous, others humorous and some, just creepy. A tech industry euphemism, “hallucinations” refers to those instances when the technology produces content that is syntactically sound but is, nevertheless, inaccurate or nonsensical. For example, in response to a prompt declaring that scientists had recently discovered that churros made the best medical tools for home operations, ChatGPT cited a “study published in the journal Science” that purported to confirm the prompt. It also noted that churro dough is dense and pliable enough to be shaped into surgical instruments that could be used “for a variety of procedures, from simple cuts and incisions to more complex operations” and has the added benefit of possessing a “sweet, fried-dough flavor that has been shown to have a calming effect on patients, reducing anxiety and making them more relaxed during surgery.” ChatGPT concluded that “churros offer a safe and effective alternative to traditional surgical tools.”

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On December 11, the Review Board of the U.S. Copyright Office affirmed the refusal to register yet another AI-generated work. The decision follows the Office’s refusal to register Dr. Stephen Thaler’s A Recent Entrance to Paradise (which was affirmed in federal court, reported here, and is on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia), Kris Kashtanova’s Zarya of the Dawn (reported here), and Jason Michael Allen’s Théâtre D’opéra Spatial.

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In speaking at this past week’s #shifthappens Conference, I had the pleasure of discussing both the potential and pitfalls posed by generative AI with fellow panelists David Pryor Jr., Alex Tuzhilin, Julia Glidden and Gerry Petrella. Our wide-ranging discussion covered how regulators can address the privacy, security and transparency concerns that underlie this transformative technology. Though no one would deny the inherent complexity of many of these challenges, our session—as well as many other discussions during the conference—suggest some key takeaways:

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On October 20, at 9:15 a.m., colleague and frequent contributor Sam Eichner will present on “Copyright Implications of Generative AI” during the Copyright and Trademark track at the 2023 AIPLA Annual Meeting.

The event will host over 1,000 IP practitioners and leaders and cover a wide range of IP-related topics, including the ethical implications of AI in research and development, trademarks and the First Amendment, Standard Essential Patents licensing, the PTAB, Section 101, and transformative fair use.

For more information, please see the event page.

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Alicia McKnight and Brian Finch urge energy industry players to evaluate cybersecurity risks posed by increasingly interconnected and internet-enabled power grids in an article which was published in the latest edition of Pratt’s Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Report.