COMPUTE! The AI industry, overheard · Est. 2026
Fortnightly
Issue №4 · June 30, 2026

Trial & Error.

The Litigation Special. Congress is still clearing its throat; the courts are already ruling. Three waves, one docket.

Read the collectible edition — as printed ↗
  1. the lede

    All Rise.

    You probably typed something into ChatGPT this year you assumed was gone. A 2 a.m. question. A draft you'd never send. A chat you deleted. It isn't gone — and nobody voted for that.

  2. features

    They Read Everything.

    Here is the plot twist nobody put on a banner: the AI labs mostly won the copyright fight. The reading was legal. The shoplifting was not.

  3. features

    The Algorithm Said No.

    You didn't get the job — a model screened the application out before a human ever saw the name. So who is the defendant: the company that didn't hire, or the software that didn't let anyone try?

  4. features

    Is a Chatbot a Product?

    Two families went to court. Their cases ask the same question, and it is not an abstract one. A court may decide that a conversation is a thing a company sells — and owes you for.

  5. pseuds corner

    "I am not prepared to hold that Character A.I.'s output is speech."

    Judge Anne Conway, declining to dismiss Garcia v. Character Technologies · 21 May 2025

  6. pseuds corner

    "A separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions."

    Air Canada, arguing its website chatbot was not the airline's responsibility · the tribunal disagreed · Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024

  7. pseuds corner

    "We have not decided on timing yet."

    the present-perfect filer, still filing · OpenAI, on a different document · for old times' sake

  8. frontier circular

    The Frontier Circular · №4

    A palace gazette of trivial movements, recorded with the gravity they deserve.

  9. awards

    The Jackass Trophy · №4

    Numbered honours for service to the discourse. The mythology compounds.

  10. service

    The Defendant Leaderboard

    Ranked, like the Class of '15 — but by lawsuits, not lab-hops · n=5

  11. money

    It Started at $650.88.

    The first domino of the AI legal era wasn't a billion-dollar headline. It was a chatbot at Air Canada giving a man the wrong bereavement-fare rule. A tribunal made the airline pay him $650.88. Two years later, here is the tab.

  12. features

    The Law, Catching Up.

    Three cases nobody's covering, the docket to watch, and what Compute! actually thinks.

  13. the web

    Who's Suing Who · №4

    Everybody v. everybody. Every case below is on the record. Pull out, pin up, follow the writ.