AI This Week

Reddit filed a lawsuit in New York, accusing four companies of harvesting its content for AI training. The complaint names Perplexity AI, SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy. Reddit says the firms dodged its ban on bots by pulling Reddit text from Google results, then selling data to OpenAI and Meta. It seeks damages and a permanent injunction. The case lands amid a broader fight over data scraping. Reddit recently sued Anthropic over repeated visits after saying it stopped. LinkedIn sued ProAPIs for using robotic accounts. Legal hurdles loom: the defendants sit outside New York, and X lost a similar case last year. Oxylabs responded, “no company should claim ownership of public data that does not belong to them.”

Snapchat has introduced its AI-powered “Imagine Lens” to U.S. users for free, marking a shift from its previous availability limited to premium subscribers. The Lens allows people to create custom images by typing prompts, enabling transformations like turning a selfie into a painting or imagining fantastical visuals. The feature leverages generative AI technology, aligning with industry trends that see social platforms integrating AI tools into user experiences. Snapchat now aims to balance creativity and accessibility by offering limited free use to non-paying members. While promoting seamless visual content creation remains key, the move may also enhance competition with other tech giants increasingly investing in consumer-focused AI tools. Positioned within Snapchat’s Lens Carousel, this rollout demonstrates the platform’s broader AI ambitions.

OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Atlas, an artificial intelligence-powered web browser built around its popular chatbot. Reuters reports that this launch directly challenges Google Chrome’s dominance in the browser market. Atlas offers AI features like content summarization and task automation, potentially accelerating the shift towards AI-driven search. The browser allows users to open a ChatGPT sidebar in any window and includes an “agent mode” for paid users, enabling ChatGPT to interact with websites on their behalf. Atlas is currently available globally on Apple’s macOS, with versions for other platforms coming soon

A new investigation probes whether artificial intelligence chatbots respond differently based on the language used. By asking varied questions in multiple languages — English, French, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Spanish — the study tested platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek. While responses in different languages showed subtle nuances, AI models exhibited consistent center-left, secular values regardless of linguistic context. For example, AIs unanimously rejected cultural biases favoring sons over daughters or violence in relationships, emphasizing egalitarian views. However, platforms like DeepSeek demonstrated unexpected shifts in tone for politically sensitive topics when switching languages. This raises questions about training data biases and the cultural imprints of large language models.

The Wikimedia Foundation warns of a sharp decline in human visitors to Wikipedia, driven by the growing use of generative AI chatbots and summary-driven search engines. These technologies utilize Wikipedia’s vast content without directing users to the website, challenging its sustainability. The Foundation argues this trend not only reduces visitor engagement but also threatens content development and funding from donations. Wikipedia remains a key resource for AI training and search engines, yet this reliance siphons traffic away from the site. Illustrating the problem, human pageviews on Wikipedia dropped roughly 8% compared to the same period last year. Efforts are being intensified to ensure responsible reuse of the platform’s content.