New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels and Mayor Zohran Mamdani hold a press conference at the Brooklyn STEAM Center on September 2, 2026 in New York. Photo by: NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx

America’s Two Largest School Districts Impose AI Moratoriums

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in this photo illustration, as artificial intelligence tools continue to expand across consumer and business applications in Brussels, Belgium, on February 28, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via AP)

What ChatGPT’s DSA Designation Means for OpenAI and the EU

Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks before a dinner with President Donald Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

The Google Ad Tech Remedies Matter to You, Too

The Meta logo on a smartphone against a red background.

Without a Child Rights Framework, Meta’s $17.1bn Settlement Will Only Go So Far

Demonstrators take part in a protest against the deployment of an AI-assisted police surveillance system in Berlin on July 17, 2026. Photo by Andres Trujilo/ JNA PRESS(Sipa via AP Images)

Violent Anti-Tech Extremism Has Roots in History

Illustration of a laptop displaying the OpenAI logo on its screen. A hand holds a magnifying glass over the screen with blue lightning bolts emanating from it, symbolizing scrutiny or investigation. The image uses a halftone comic style with blue and black accents.

ChatGPT, Roblox Face Tough EU Rules. Implementation Is the Hard Part

Paper collage. A photograph of the Atomium in Brussels, cut into diagonal strips and reassembled over a grid of numbers.

Seeing More — Seeing Less by Anna Riepe & FARI / 

Can the EU AI Act’s Transparency Rules Strengthen Democratic Resilience?

﻿Germany’s Federal Chancellery building on a sunny day

Germany’s Federal Chancellery building on July 19, 2025 (Photo by Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto) 

What Germany's AI Security Institute Could Learn From Other Countries

This image is a section of the Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera, created between 1932 and 1933. Rivera, a renowned Mexican muralist, painted these panels inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. They are widely considered one of his greatest works and a landmark of 20th-century art.

The workers shown are laboring on automobile assembly lines, likely at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant.

Rivera celebrated the dignity and effort of industrial labor, portraying the workers with strength and unity.

The style is Social Realism, characterized by its focus on working-class subjects and its detailed, lifelike forms.

Photograph of a detail of a 1933 Diego Rivera fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Justin Hendrix/Tech Policy Press

A Labor Day Prescription for Preserving Fair Employment in the Digital Age

A large number of people take part in a gathering of boats and motorbikes in support of the people of Ceuta on 30 August 2026 in Ceuta (Spain). (Europa Press via AP)

A large number of people took part in a gathering of boats and motorbikes in support of the people of Ceuta on 30 August 2026 in Ceuta (Spain). (Europa Press via AP)

How Disinformation Fueled the Latest Ceuta Mass Crossing

Mechanical Turk is Closing. The Workers Who Built AI Are Still Here

Members of California's legal team leave court after a settlement was reached in a multi-state lawsuit accusing Meta of causing harm to children on social media outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and US Courthouse on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

August 2026 US Tech Policy Roundup

The Colorado State Capitol is framed by buildings along Sherman Street Friday, June 27, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

What 12 State ‘Companion Bot’ Laws Demand of AI Providers

A tic-tac-toe board with human faces as digital blocks, symbolizing how AI works on pre-existing, biased online data for information processing and decision-making.

Amritha R Warrier & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / tic tac toe / CC-BY 4.0

Germany's Draft Law on AI in Migration Raises Rights and Bias Concerns

A collage of circuit boards interwoven with aerial photographs of water treatment facilities, agricultural lands, industrial sites and mining machinery.

Privacy by Architecture Makes AI Compliance Work

A yellow school bus is seen in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on July 28, 2026. (Photo by Marcin Golba/NurPhoto)

In the US, Caution Rules on AI Ahead of K-12 School Year

A young child holds up a smart phone in front of their face using both hands.

This Week's Meta Settlement Will Reverberate Across the World for Years

This image is a collage with a colourful Japanese vintage landscape showing a mountain, hills, flowers and other plants and a small stream. There are 3 large black data servers placed in the bottom half of the image, with a cloud of black smoke emitting from them, partly obscuring the scenery.

Deborah Lupton, "Servers in a Landscape" / 

'Technology Freedom Cooperative' To Build Infrastructure for Human Rights and Justice Groups

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (C) ahead of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on protecting children from sexual exploitation online, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, USA, 31 January 2024. (Photo by Ritzau Scanpix/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Meta Owes the Rest of the World Its Teen Protections

A massive sculpture of Icarus lies in front of the Concordia Temple in the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, Sicily, on January 5, 2019. Shutterstock

A massive sculpture of Icarus lies in front of the Concordia Temple in the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, Sicily, on January 5, 2019. 

Make AI Companies Criminally Liable for Preventable Harm

When ChatGPT was released in the fall of 2022, the scale of the impact it could have on K-12 schools appeared obvious. Not only could the chatbot fulfill many class and homework assignments in response to simple prompts, but children and teens had the digital fluency to adopt the technology much faster than their teachers.

The New York City Department of Education was one of the first educational bodies in the United States to act on what many perceived as the threat OpenAI’s new product posed to schooling: in January 2023, it 

 to ChatGPT on district devices and networks. The nation’s largest school district made the decision shortly after the second largest, Los Angeles Unified School District, banned the chatbot in December 2022.

Other districts across the country soon followed suit, including 

The bans didn’t last though — by May of 2023, then NYC Public Schools Chancellor David Banks was ready to “

” the potential of ChatGPT, and in August of that year LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said his system was 

Yet this week, ahead of the start of the 2026-27 school year, these two districts are once again charting out a more restrictive approach to artificial intelligence than the 

 student-facing AI in all K-8th grade classes, while allowing a limited set of approved tools to be used for high schoolers, for the upcoming school year.

This new policy is significantly tighter than the guidelines the district had proposed in March, which instituted a stoplight system for judging AI risk that put almost all student use into the “yellow light” category, kicking use decisions to individual teachers. After intense 

, the district pushed pause on that policy with Chancellor Kamar Samuels 

 the draft “missed the mark.” The district also 

 the district was placing a one-year moratorium on generative AI use on its devices for all of its estimated 378,000 students in a move that caught even school district officials by surprise.

The district had passed restrictions on screen time for students earlier in the summer, but did not previously issue specific rules on AI.

The growing coalitions of parents, teachers, and students who have been pushing for more restrictive AI policies in schools in both cities celebrated this week’s announcements.

At the Los Angeles AI committee meeting where the ban was announced, parents with the advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens had to edit their prepared speeches in real time.

“ We are asking our local institut — no, we're thanking our local institution,” said Sandra Martinez Roe, 

 to LAist. "Thank you, LAUSD for setting an example and knowing that your obligation is to do so.”

The AI Moratorium (AIM) Coalition in NYC called the partial pause a “step in the right direction.” The coalition of organizations featuring teachers, students, and parents launched last fall has been pushing for a complete moratorium on classroom AI for two years.

“We have been overall very pleased with the steps that the mayor and the chancellor have taken around AI in schools with this new policy,” Kyle DeAngelis, a 3rd grade NYC public school teacher in Harlem and member of the AIM Coalition through a rank-and-file caucus of the United Federation of Teachers, told Tech Policy Press.

The coalition still has concerns with the policy they’d like to see addressed — including the creation of AI pilots in some schools, limited restrictions on staff use of AI, and a lack of metrics for evaluating tools — and hopes that a longer term policy is adopted through a democratic process that engages parents, teachers, and students alike.

That new policy should include more restrictions for high schoolers, says Martina Meijer, a fourth grade teacher and member of the same UFT caucus as DeAngelis.

“What we know about AI chatbots, what we know about teen mental health crises, what we know about the tendency of even adults to lean on these chatbots as a form of 

 makes it really dangerous to ignore the needs of teenagers at this time,” she told Tech Policy Press. “I would just underscore that it's really important that this policy also include high school students because they are extremely vulnerable.”

The nation’s two largest public school districts issuing such restrictions — albeit temporary and, in the case of New York, partial — on AI in classrooms is especially notable given that most school districts have previously shied away from forbidding use.

The news is also indicative of bubbling grassroots opposition to AI, which has manifested itself in widespread data center backlash but is also coming up in, for example, 

Both districts now have a year to develop longer-term policies on AI in education. Rolling back restrictions like they did with the short-lived ChatGPT bans will almost certainly be met with organized opposition.

“Over the last year, one of the things that has honestly really surprised me is just how quickly this particular movement has taken off,” DeAngelis said. “It’s reflective of what parents and teachers are seeing in their schools.”

 OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE), placing the chatbot under the Digital Services Act's (DSA) most stringent tier of obligations. This decision was long in the making – in fact, we explored different options for how the EC could do this in 

This designation could have far-reaching implications, both for frontier labs' products and for the EU's own rulebook. Many of the questions it raises will only be answered as the Commission's supervision unfolds over the coming months.

The decision confirms the DSA's technological neutrality, or at least its ability to bring new kinds of services, ones that didn't exist when it was drafted, within scope.

One of our arguments for treating ChatGPT as a VLOSE in 2023 rested on Article 3(j) DSA, which defines a search engine as a service that lets users search “in principle, all websites.” At the time, ChatGPT was about to launch a version with web access, giving it exactly that capability. Since then, the search function has been fully integrated into the product, can even be set as a browser’s default one, and both the Commission and OpenAI’s own DSA transparency 

 have treated ChatGPT as subject to the general obligations for online search engines since 2024. ChatGPT’s search function will now be subject to the DSA’s due diligence obligations: risk assessments, mitigation measures, independent audits, data access, and transparency reporting.

 are only a slice of ChatGPT's user base in the EU. Impressive as those numbers are, they aren't how most people actually experience ChatGPT. The chat interface that lets users interact with the model does not necessarily search the web, which makes ChatGPT what the Commission calls a "hybrid service.” The designation decision does not appear to separate out ChatGPT’s different functionalities, which is consistent with how other VLOP designations have worked: Snapchat, for instance, was designated for its social networking component, not its messaging service.

Whether the chat function will ever be designated in its own right, and if so how, remains to be seen. Under Article 34(1), OpenAI must assess risks stemming from the design or functioning of its service and its 

, and there is a case to be made that the chat function qualifies as such a “related system” in its own right.

But even if that argument doesn’t hold, Article 34 DSA still gives us the opportunity to look under the hood of ChatGPT more broadly. How a general-purpose AI model is designed and used, from training data to output ranking, directly affects the quality, inclusivity, and reliability of the information it puts in front of millions of users. Recital 84 DSA points specifically to algorithmic amplification and curation as a driver of systemic risk, which maps directly onto how ChatGPT selects, ranks, and cites sources. That lens will matter most for risks like negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, as well as public security, public health, minors, and mental well-being.

Media pluralism is expressly named as its own systemic risk category, under Article 34(1)(b). The risk assessment should therefore also cover how ChatGPT’s citation and sourcing behavior affects publisher visibility, a question that is not specific to OpenAI. 

 is already using its Article 40(4) vetted-researcher access to investigate whether Google’s AI Overviews are undermining media pluralism by displacing clicks to news sites.

That is another advantage of ChatGPT’s VLOSE designation: it brings OpenAI within the Article 40 data access framework, giving outside researchers the tools to run the same kind of investigation. Vetted researchers can request data under Article 40(4) for research that contributes to detecting and understanding systemic risks under Article 34(1), and to assessing the adequacy of OpenAI’s mitigation measures under Article 35. Article 40(12) goes further, giving non-vetted researchers, including those affiliated with nonprofits, a right to whatever data is publicly accessible on ChatGPT’s interface.

The timing is notable on another front too: the designation lands just weeks after OpenAI 

 that advertisers will be able to place ads within ChatGPT across Europe. OpenAI will now have to account for its advertising system in its risk assessment and publish an ad repository under Article 39.

These obligations will only start applying in January 2027, but it’s worth asking what comes next. The DMA does not treat generative AI as a core platform service, but it does regulate online search engines, and now that the Commission has designated ChatGPT as a very large online search engine under the DSA, a gatekeeper designation under the DMA no longer looks far-fetched, provided OpenAI meets the relevant qualitative and quantitative thresholds. That would be a heavier test than the one it has just passed.

Lisa Macpherson is policy director at Public Knowledge.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia issued 

 on remedies in the Google ad-tech antitrust case. I’m disappointed in the order, and you should be, too.

Yes, you, even if you’re not a policy wonk like me. In the fall of 2024, I wrote 

 explaining why, despite all its legal complexities, the Google ad tech case matters for everyone. Leveraging my own ringside seat to the development and evolution of digital advertising since the 1990’s, I made the case that “Google’s dominant control of the advertising technology market has hurt advertisers and publishers… but also consumers – by imposing on privacy, fueling disinformation, reducing the diversity of viewpoints online, increasing barriers to news, reducing innovation by brands, and increasing prices on goods and services.” Judge Leonie Brinkema’s remedies order means Google’s dominant control of the advertising technology market will continue – and so, likely, will its detrimental impacts.

Google is an illegal monopolist in advertising technology. That was Judge Brinkema’s decision in her 

 filed by the US Department of Justice and several states in 2023. The ruling confirmed that Google’s acquisitions and consolidation of the so-called ad tech stack – the layers of software that broker and execute advertising buys by advertisers from publishers – into its Ad Exchange (AdX) represented anti-competitive behavior, and that the consolidation allowed other anti-competitive behaviors like tying, self-preferencing, and price manipulation. To compensate for these effects, advertisers needed to pay more for ads (even while losing visibility to whether or where they ran), and publishers needed to build higher paywalls to sustain their business. We 

Judge Brinkema’s new ruling does not force Google to sell AdX, or make any structural changes, for that matter (note: the full decision remains under seal). Google will still own both its ad server and the exchange and the conflict of interest they entail. Instead, the decision changes how the exchange can operate its auctions. Assuming the actual remedies include robust enforcement mechanisms, the best it will do is reduce some of Google’s advantages in visibility, access, and leverage over publishers’ inventory or pricing.

 before it, how slow and uncertain litigation can be to solve for anti-competitive behaviors on the part of multi-trillion-dollar corporations operating in dynamic marketplaces. We need more than that. For example, the 

American Innovation and Choice Online Act

 (AICOA), reintroduced in the Senate this past June, would ban dominant platforms from engaging in anti-competitive behaviors like self-preferencing, tying, and using private data, and it would require interoperability and data portability across platforms. The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act (

, reintroduced in the Senate in 2025, is even more specifically aimed at the ad tech market; among other provisions, it prohibits dominant firms from owning more than one part of the ad-buying and selling process (such as owning both an ad exchange and a publisher tool). And we need a 

 to account for changes in the marketplace in the future.

, “We need to open up digital markets to bring about more competition and more choice if we want an advertising system that works for the rest of us.” This decision, based on what we know today, does little to ensure that.

Meta’s $17.1 billion settlement with a California court

, in recognition of its impact on the mental health of children, has ricocheted around the world and generated heated debate.

The case has led to much public comment about the power and (lack of) accountability of Big Tech, children and social media, mental health and addiction. Some are even 

 social media’s “Big Tobacco Moment.”

But almost nothing about the discourse and analysis addresses the settlement through the lens of child rights or the human rights responsibilities of companies. Yet, focusing on children’s rights to protections and on company responsibilities to protect children’s rights is key not only to understanding the significance of the case but to identifying what needs to be done — not just by Meta and not just in the United States — to protect child users of tech platforms and social media around the world.

Human and child rights serve as a universal standard for all peoples and nations and companies. They offer an internationally recognized standard for guiding company decision-making rather than more contested concepts of ethics, democratic values, safety, and responsibility, or settlements achieved in courts in different jurisdictions. 

 is the most ratified and universally recognized of all the human rights treaties; ironically, the United States is the only government not to have ratified it. And though it was adopted more than 30 years ago, long before the digital age, its commitment to children’s rights to health as well as the “development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being” makes it a very relevant standard.

The question of how companies should embed respect for human rights into their decision-making has evolved significantly over the last two decades. The 

United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

 (UNGPs) apply to companies across all industries and provide an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse human rights impacts caused, contributed by and linked to business activity. 

In the context of social media and technology platforms, the UNGPs establish normative standards that can and must guide company action about how they respect the rights of child users. And, in addition to defining company responsibilities, the UNGPs define the obligations of governments to set and enforce standards to ensure that companies live up to those responsibilities to protect children.

What does a business and human rights framing bring to the Meta settlement?

The framing has several important implications. Firstly, and absolutely fundamentally, children's rights are universal and transcend borders and nationalities. A child-rights framework provides a basis for asking what companies owe to children as rights-holders irrespective of where they live. Thus, while this settlement relates only to children in the US, companies' measures to protect children's rights must extend beyond the US to cover children around the world.

It is simply unconscionable that companies acknowledge the harms to children globally but only address them in one country. As Nighat Dad of the Meta Oversight Board 

, “The settlement Meta signed protects teenagers in participating US states. The exclusion of everywhere else is a choice. Meta can make a different one.”

Second, the implications should extend beyond Meta. The issues raised by the settlement and the recognition of the harms to children and other users must be recognized by all relevant companies. All social media companies should be affirming their recognition of their responsibilities through a human rights policy or statement that makes an explicit commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UNGPs.

And while Meta’s call on other tech companies to do more to protect child rights is fair, its 

 on conditioning 30% of the settlement on actions to be taken by YouTube and TikTok is, from a child rights perspective, unacceptable.

Companies cannot negotiate their human rights responsibilities on the basis of the conduct of their competitors. A company's responsibility to respect human rights does not become conditional on whether another company does the same.

Third, the settlement reminds us of the limitations of voluntary human rights commitments. Meta has had a 

 which includes an explicit commitment to the UNGPs and the Convention on the Rights of the Child since 2021. That commitment did not prevent the harms now being addressed through litigation and settlement. While voluntary due diligence is hugely important and something to be advocated for, it cannot replace the impact of regulatory frameworks and enforceable legal standards.

At the same time, the settlement reinforces the importance of human rights due diligence to prevent or mitigate risks and harms. Many of the commitments made by Meta to protect children’s health and rights are those that experts and advocates have long been calling for. But it’s vital that the proposed new design features undergo child rights due diligence before deployment to assess risks and prevent or mitigate possible harms. The UNGPs require companies to treat human rights due diligence not as a compliance check after a product or policy is launched, but as a process integrated into the earliest stages of planning and development to prevent harm from occurring. 

All the measures currently being proposed by Meta must be tested and assessed through the lens of child rights and the key principles set out by the 

: non-discrimination; best interests of the child; right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child as well as the evolving capacity of the child.

And, under the critical principle of “know and show”, companies must 

 to individuals or groups who may be impacted — in this case children and their parents — and other relevant stakeholders, including investors, what risks they have identified and what measures they are taking to address them. Information provided must be in a form appropriate to the company's human rights impacts, accessible to its intended audiences and contain enough information for people to evaluate the adequacy of the company's response.

Fifth, children must have a meaningful voice in the process. The UNGPs make it clear, in Principle 18, that human rights due diligence demands “meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups and other relevant stakeholders.”

It will be vital to ensure that child rights due diligence involves engagement with children and their parents and caregivers, especially those who are particularly vulnerable to harms, including those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ children, those belonging to racial and religious minorities and others, around the world.

In the last two years, many tech company trust and safety teams 

 as companies redirected much of their expenditure towards AI development and aligned themselves with the priorities of the Trump administration and its anti-rights and anti-regulatory posture.

As Irene Khan, former UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, pointed out in her 2025 report, 

Threats to Freedom of Expression Online in These Turbulent Times

, “most “Big Tech” companies based in the United States have aligned their policies and positions with that of its Government, rolling back their promises of safety online.”

If tech companies are to take their obligation to due diligence seriously, consultation with children and their families, transparency, and ongoing monitoring, staffing levels and expertise must be reassessed to ensure that the company has the capacity to implement its child rights responsibilities effectively.

Criticizing Big Tech is currently very fashionable and a la mode. And there are lots of good reasons to do so. But 

 that all the actions being proposed to regulate tech companies are legitimate through a human rights lens.

Meta’s settlement may, in time, come to be seen as a pragmatic and cynical compromise to protect long-term profits or a real opportunity to create lasting change for children. Much will depend on whether human rights lie at the heart of the response. Maintaining a 

 will be essential to ensure that tech companies are striving to enable children to exercise their rights as well as be protected from harms and risks.

The TikTok logo is displayed through a magnifying glass in this photo illustration in Ontario, Canada, on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Thomas Fuller/NurPhoto via AP)

Understanding Brazil’s $29.7 Million TikTok Fine Over Children’s Data

Flock Safety camera on Haverhill Drive near Phillips Avenue in Toledo, Ohio. (Photo by Stephen Zenner / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Unless Flock is Reined In, Mass Video Surveillance Will Grow Even More Pervasive

CEO of Meta Platforms Mark Zuckerberg attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference at the Sun Valley Lodge on July 9, 2026 in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Four States Take Meta to Trial in California, the Latest Front in Sprawling Multidistrict Fight

Cemetery for people on the move in Soufli, Evros, Greece. Photo by Petra Molnar.

The Racial Necrotechnics That Lead to Death By Design at Automated Borders

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