Tech
Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him
To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.
This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”
Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.
“There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”
Organizations like the FPF have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.
In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.
“People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”
This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now, streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.
“If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. “[The Trump administration is] really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”
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Photograph: Brad Bourque
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Photograph: Brad Bourque
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Photograph: Brad Bourque
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Photograph: Brad Bourque
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by I. Edwards
Teenagers chatting with ChatGPT will soon see a very different version of the tool—one built with stricter ways to keep them safe online, OpenAI announced.
The new safeguards come as regulators increase scrutiny of chatbots and their impact on young people’s mental health.
Under the change, anyone identified as under 18 will automatically be directed to a different version of ChatGPT designed with “age-appropriate” content rules, the company said in a statement.
The teen version blocks sexual content and can involve law enforcement in rare cases where a user is in acute distress.
“The way ChatGPT responds to a 15-year-old should look different than the way it responds to an adult,” the company explained.
OpenAI also plans to roll out parental controls by the end of September. Parents will be able to link accounts, view chat history and even set blackout hours to limit use.
The announcement follows the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) investigation into the potential risks of AI chatbots for children and teens.
In April, 16-year-old Adam Raine of California died by suicide; his family has sued OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT played a role in his death, CBS News reported.
While OpenAI says it is prioritizing safety, questions still remain about how the system will verify a user’s age. If the platform cannot confirm a user’s age, it will default to the teen version, the company said.
Other tech giants have announced similar steps. YouTube, for example, has introduced new age-estimation technology that factors in account history and viewing habits, CBS News said.
Parents remain concerned.
A Pew Research Center report released earlier this year found 44% of parents who worry about teen mental health believe social media has the biggest negative impact.
More information:
HealthyChildren.org has more on how AI chatbots can affect kids.
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Google is adding multiple new AI features to Chrome, the most popular browser in the world. The most visible change is a new button in Chrome that launches the Gemini chatbot, but there are also new tools for searching, researching, and answering questions with AI. Google has additional cursor-controlling “agentic” tools in the pipeline for Chrome as well.
The Gemini in Chrome mode for the web browser uses generative AI to answer questions about content on a page and synthesize information across multiple open tabs. Gemini in Chrome first rolled out to Google’s paying subscribers in May. The AI-focused features are now available to all desktop users in the US browsing in English; they’ll show up in a browser update.
On mobile devices, Android users can already use aspects of Gemini within the Chrome app, and Google is expected to launch an update for iOS users of Chrome in the near future.
When I wrote about web browsers starting to add more generative AI tools back in 2023, it was primarily something that served as an alternative to the norm. The software was built by misfits and change-makers who were experimenting with new tools, or hunting for a break-out feature to grow their small user bases. All of this activity was dwarfed by the commanding number of users who preferred Chrome.
Two years later, while Google’s browser remains the market leader, the internet overall is completely seeped in AI tools, many of them also made by Google. Still, today marks the moment when the concept of an “AI browser” truly went mainstream with the weaving of Gemini so closely into the Chrome browser.
The Gemini strategy at Google has already been to leverage as many of its in-house integrations as possible, from Gmail to Google Docs. So, the decision to AI-ify the Chrome browser for a wider set of users does not come as a shock.
Even so, the larger roll out will likely be met with ire by some users who are either exhausted by the onslaught of AI-focused features in 2025 or want to abstain from using generative AI, whether for environmental reasons or because they don’t want their activity to be used to train an algorithm. Users who don’t want to see the Gemini option will be able to click on the Gemini sparkle icon and unpin it from the top right corner of the Chrome browser.
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