Big Tech

Hawley Calls on Congress to Protect Americans’ Work Products & Images from Big Tech’s Data Grab During A.I. Hearing

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, co-chaired a hearing, calling on Congress to protect Americans' creative work from being harvested by powerful A.I. companies without fair pay. "What are we going to do practically to make sure that normal people—whether they are journalists, whether they're bloggers, whether it's just the working mom at home—what they can do to protect their work product,...

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Hawley’s Renewed Push for TikTok Ban Blocked on Senate Floor Despite Spike in Pro-Hamas Content

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor and again called for unanimous consent on his bill, the No TikTok on United States Devices Act, which would prohibit TikTok from operating in the United States and ban commercial activity with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The renewed push to ban the app comes amid the increase in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas content on the platform. "TikTok has become a haven for antisemitic content, a...

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Hawley Questions Facebook Whistleblower on Big Tech’s Rampant Child Exploitation Problems

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) heard testimony from Meta Whistleblower Arturo Béjar, the former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook. The hearing took place in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, where Senator Hawley serves as Ranking Member. During his opening remarks, Senator Hawley called out Big Tech for their extensive lobbying efforts to kill any legislation attempting to regulate the industry. "Big...

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Hawley Renews Effort to Ban TikTok Following Rise in Pro-Hamas Content

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) Chairwoman Janet Yellen. He urged her to conclude CFIUS’ review of TikTok and to ban all ByteDance-controlled apps currently available to U.S. users, especially given the increase in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas content on the platform. "TikTok—and its parent company ByteDance—are threats to American national security," wrote...

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Hawley, Klobuchar, Coons, Collins Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Ban the Use of Materially Deceptive AI-Generated Content in Elections

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) – Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law – joined Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to introduce the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, a bipartisan bill to ban the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate materially deceptive content falsely depicting federal candidates in political ads to influence federal elections. “We must...

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Hawley, Blumenthal Hold Hearing On Principles For Regulating Artificial Intelligence

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ranking Member and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, held a hearing on the guiding principles for regulating artificial intelligence (A.I.) moving forward. Senator Hawley questioned leaders in the A.I. space—including Dario Amodei, Cofounder and CEO of Anthropic, Yoshua Bengio, Professor at the Université de Montréal, and Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at...

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Hawley, Blumenthal Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Protect Consumers and Deny AI Companies Section 230 Immunity

Today U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) – the Ranking Member and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, respectively – introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act. This new bipartisan legislation would clarify that Section 230 immunity will not apply to claims based on generative AI, ensuring consumers have the tools they need to protect themselves from harmful content produced by the...

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Hawley and Blumenthal Demand Answers from Meta, Warn of Misuse After ‘Leak’ of Meta’s AI Model

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ranking Member and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, wrote a new letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seeking information about the “leak” of its Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMA) program. While Meta originally only purported to release the program to approved researchers within the AI community, the company’s vetting and safeguards appear to have been minimal and the full model...

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Hawley Co-Chairs A.I. Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing, Raises Concerns about Election Integrity and Company Liability

Today in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on oversight of artificial intelligence (A.I.), U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ranking Member of the subcommittee, questioned leaders in the A.I. space, including Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI. "Will we strike that balance between technological innovation and our ethical and moral responsibility to humanity, to liberty, to the freedom of this country? I hope that today's hearing will take...

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Hawley Strikes Deal with Durbin to Advance CSAM Bill, Joins as Cosponsor

Today during a Senate Judiciary Committee Markup, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) reached an agreement with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to advance the STOP CSAM Act, legislation sponsored by Senator Durbin that cracks down on the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. With Senator Durbin’s support, the Committee adopted Senator Hawley’s amendment empowering victims to bring civil suits against platforms for knowingly hosting CSAM to...

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