AI FOIA and Censorship Beat Has Requests by Inner City Press to States Like on Live Nation

AI FOIA and Censorship Beat Has Requests by Inner City Press to States Like on Live Nation by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 20 –  As the artificial intelligence legal beat ramps up in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, NDCA, Illinois, Florida and elsewhere, Inner City Press has submitted freedom of information requests to states, following up on its obtaining and appealing for records regarding Live Nation and Ticketmaster, including its SDNY FOIA lawsuit: Here's from the request filed with California's Attoney General Bonta: All records since January 1, 2024, reflecting the California AG's Consumer Protection Section's enforcement or oversight activity regarding artificial intelligence, including:     •  All records reflecting any California AG investigation or enforcement action under the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200), the False Advertising Law (Bus. & Prof. Code § 17500), or the Consumer Legal Remedies Act (Civ. Code § 1750) directed at AI companies or related to AI chatbot practices;  •  All records reflecting California's participation in any multistate AG coalition related to AI safety, deepfakes, AI data practices, or AI harm to minors, seniors, or vulnerable populations;  •  All records reflecting any California AG review of AI companies' compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, or any other California privacy or consumer protection statute; and  •  All records reflecting any California AG legal analysis of whether AI chatbot outputs that cause psychological, physical, or financial harm to consumers create liability under California law.     Category C: Consumer Complaints About AI Services     All records since January 1, 2023, reflecting consumer complaints received by the California AG's office or the California Department of Consumer Affairs from California residents regarding:     •  OpenAI's ChatGPT, including complaints about harm to minors or vulnerable users, mental health impacts, sycophancy, data privacy violations, deceptive outputs, and compulsive use;  •  Any AI chatbot or conversational AI service, including Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Meta AI, xAI Grok, Character.AI, Replika, or similar services;  •  AI-generated content used for fraud or consumer deception, including deepfake fraud and AI voice cloning scams; and  •  Any complaint in which a consumer identified AI chatbot outputs as contributing to financial loss, self-harm, suicidal ideation, or dangerous behavior.     For each category: (a) total complaints received; (b) number referred to other agencies; (c) number resulting in enforcement action; and (d) any aggregate trend analysis. Individual complaints may be produced with personal identifying information redacted under Gov. Code § 7928.000.     Category D: OpenAI's Non-Profit to For-Profit Conversion     All records since January 1, 2024, reflecting the California AG's review of OpenAI's conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit entity, including: all communications between the California AG and OpenAI or its counsel regarding the restructuring; all records of the commitments OpenAI made to the California AG in connection with the Statement of No Objection; all California AG analyses of whether the restructuring complied with California's charitable trust laws; and all records of any monitoring or follow-up on OpenAI's compliance with those commitments.     Category E: Internal AI Policy and Legal Analyses     All non-privileged records since January 1, 2024, reflecting the California AG's internal policy positions, legal analyses, or memoranda regarding: the application of California's Unfair Competition Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act to AI chatbot outputs; the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act's application to AI services; AI safety standards for minors and vulnerable adults; state authority to regulate AI; and any California AG position on proposed federal preemption of state AI regulation.     Category F: AI Data Centers — Consumer, Energy, and Community Impact Records     All records since January 1, 2024, reflecting consumer complaints received by, or enforcement activity undertaken by, the California AG's office relating to AI data centers located in or proposed for California, including:     â€¢  All consumer or community complaints regarding AI data center operations, including complaints about: excessive energy consumption and its effect on California utility rates and grid reliability; water consumption for cooling systems and its effect on California water supplies during drought conditions; noise, light, or other environmental impacts on neighboring communities; and representations made by data center operators to local governments, the California Public Utilities Commission, or the public about community benefits;  •  All records reflecting any California AG investigation or enforcement action related to data center operators' representations to local governments, the CPUC, or the California Energy Commission about energy costs, tax revenue, job creation, or community impact, including any inquiry into whether such representations constituted unfair or deceptive practices under the Unfair Competition Law;  •  All records reflecting any California AG communications with the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, or local governments regarding the impact of AI data center energy and water demand on California consumers, ratepayers, and water users;  •  All records reflecting any California AG review of data center operators' compliance with California environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), water use permits, or local zoning representations; and  •  All records reflecting any California AG communications with Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta, Oracle, Apple, or any other major AI data center operator regarding facility siting, energy contracts, water use, or community impact agreements in California.   Similar requests have been filed with the other states. Sample for Arizona on June 20, 2026: "The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has received your correspondence to Public Records, we will respond accordingly." Watch this site. And this:     This month New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger urged other media to "push your legislators.. to ensure A.I. companies bear legal responsibility for the defamatory content they generate."        Inner City Press is against the over-use of defamation law and lawsuits. And we thought the New York Times was too. But it seems the NYT wants there to be more defamation litigation, not less. Because defending such cases is a competitive advantage for them.        But what about independent journalists, for whom even winning a defamation case is time consuming, a threat to continued reporting? The New York Times, while positioning itself as if it is defending all media, and even speaking for all media, in fact is not.     There are many things that need to be guarded against with AI. But expanding defamation liability is not part of the solution. *** Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron. Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com Mail: Box 130222, Chinatown Station, NY NY 10013 Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.  Copyright 2006-2026 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com