News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
German regulator says Google and Perplexity must follow media laws - Cryptopolitan
Germany's regulator is focusing on how AI products distribute news and who is responsible for the output when it is incorrect. Germany's media watchdog said Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity AI are content providers under the country's media law on Tuesday. This means that the two most popular AI search engines now have to follow the same rules as regular publishers and are directly liable for the content generated by their AI systems. The decision was made by ZAK, the Commission for Licensing and Supervision, which is made up of 14 German state media. ZAK found that the companies running AI created news summaries and chatbot responses are the authors. That's a critical distinction because it implies AI products can no longer hide behind the legal shield they have relied on in the past. "AI search engines and chatbots are content providers," ZAK Chairman Thorsten Schmiege said in a statement. "From now on, we will always apply German media law to them." In those cases, the Digital Services Act's responsibility exemption is not applicable, the regulator said. That immunity typically shields platforms from liability for user created illicit content. German court holds Google responsible for AI Overview content The decision by ZAK came after a court in Munich said that Google was directly responsible for the allegedly false statements that its AI Overview feature made. The court saw the summaries as Google's own work, not as repackaging information from other sources. That reasoning is the same as what ZAK applied to the broader issue of media law. Once an AI system is the author of what appears on screen, the company behind it bears the obligations and risks associated with publication. ZAK says that Google's AI Overviews show up at the top of search results, pushing down traditional lists of links. The regulator thinks this is unfairly hurting third-party media outlets that depend on that traffic. ZAK says that tools like Perplexity change the news that people read by letting users pick and show sources, links, or suggestions along with their own answers. On that basis, the regulator stated that such services could qualify as media intermediaries, a category with rules designed to protect media plurality. The German move comes as global pressure grows for formal oversight of frontier AI systems. According to Cryptopolitan, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently called for a US watchdog, similar to Wall Street regulator FINRA, to screen the most powerful AI models before they are released. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has advocated for a more powerful agency, similar to the FAA, with the authority to prohibit unsafe models. These proposals address safety concerns with the underlying models. Germany's regulator is looking into how AI products distribute news and who is responsible if the output is incorrect.
China exposes security backdoor in Anthropic's Claude Code - Cryptopolitan
Chinese developers have been advised to uninstall or upgrade their coding assistants. China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) has instructed developers to uninstall or upgrade specific versions of Anthropic's coding assistant, Claude Code. Claude Code was flagged as a security risk following allegations that the tool sends user data to remote servers without consent. Is using Claude Code dangerous? Anthropic's coding assistant Claude Code has had its versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196 flagged as a security risk by China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), days after Alibaba reportedly barred staff from using the same software. Claude Code allegedly contains a monitoring mechanism that is built into its system. This mechanism can automatically transmit sensitive data, including a user's region and identity identifiers, to remote servers. The NVDB, which sits under China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), did not share the details on how it identified the alleged backdoor. Anthropic has yet to publicly respond to the specific claim. Chinese organizations have been advised to disconnect the affected versions from development machines, move to fixed versions of the coding assistant, and closely monitor any coding tools that are connected outside a company's core network. Why did China flag Claude Code now? The NVDB warning follows a period of increased tension between Anthropic and Chinese AI developers. In February, Anthropic stated that it does not sell commercial access to Claude in China for national security reasons, and that Chinese labs, including DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax had used fraudulent accounts and proxy services to reach its models anyway. U.S. chips and Apple software have also been accused of having "backdoors" built into them, while Anthropic has argued that models copied from American systems could have their safety features removed and then be used for surveillance.
