BOSTON (AP) — Fans of the hugely popular video game series Grand Theft Auto will have to wait a little longer to play the latest version.

In a post on X Friday, Rockstar Games said it delayed the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI until May 26, 2026. It apologized for the delay of a game, the release of which has been talked about for several years. It didn’t provide any specifics on why the release date has been pushed back from fall of this year.

“With every game we have released, the goal has been to try and exceed your expectations and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception,” the company said in a statement. “We hope you understand we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”

Shares of Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, fell Friday by nearly 7%.

Strauss Zelnick, the chairman and CEO for Take-Two Interactive Software, stood by Rockstar in a statement and said it supports the company taking additional time to realize their creative vision. He said it still expects a “groundbreaking, blockbuster entertainment experience that exceeds audience expectations.”

“While we take the movement of our titles seriously and appreciate the vast and deep global anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI, we remain steadfast in our commitment to excellence,” Zelnick said in a statement. “As we continue to release our phenomenal pipeline, we expect to deliver a multi-year period of growth in our business and enhanced value for our shareholders.”

Fans of the game reacted to the delay with disappointment but also a shrug — since it has been suggested the game would be released in 2024 and then this year.

On a Reddit discussion forum dedicated to the game, several fans noted they had seen this before and wouldn’t be surprised if the release was delayed again. Others took a more optimistic tone, saying an exact release date means it will actually happen this time around.

One of the last times the game garnered this much buzz was in 2023, when a trailer for the game was leaked online. At the time, Rockstar released the first look of the sixth game 15 hours earlier than planned, citing the leak.

That 90-second trailer gave fans a taste of what comes next for the game. The trailer suggested the next installment would be set in the Miami-inspired Vice City and star a female protagonist, a first for the franchise, named Lucia.

It is unclear whether the delay means any, or all, of these details will remain part of Grand Theft Auto VI.

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — Sachi Schmidt-Hori has never played Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but facing an onslaught of online harassment from its fans, she quickly developed her own gameplay style: confronting hate with kindness.

Schmidt-Hori, an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at Dartmouth College, worked as a narrative consultant on the latest installment in the popular Ubisoft video game franchise. The game launched March 20, but the vitriol directed at Schmidt-Hori began in May 2024 with the release of a promotional trailer.

“Once I realized that I was by myself — nobody was defending me — I just decided to do what I knew would work,” she said. “It’s very difficult to hate someone up close.”

Ancient history sparks modern-day harassment

Set in 16th century Japan, the game features Naoe, a Japanese female assassin, and Yasuke, a Black African samurai. Furor erupted over the latter, with gamers criticizing his inclusion as “wokeness” run amok.

They quickly zeroed in Schmidt-Hori, attacking her in online forums, posting bogus reviews of her scholarly work and flooding her inbox with profanity. Many drew attention to her academic research into gender and sexuality. Some tracked down her husband’s name and ridiculed him, too.

“Imagine that! Professional #WOKE SJW confirms fake history for Ubisoft,” one Reddit user said, using an acronym for “social justice warrior.” Another user called her a “sexual degenerate who hate humanity because no man want her.”

Learning Yasuke was based on a real person did little to assuage critics. Asian men in particular argued Schmidt-Hori was trying to erase them, even though her role involved researching historical customs and reviewing scripts, not creating characters.

“I became the face of this backlash,” she said. “People wanted to look for who to yell at, and I was kind of there.”

Ubisoft told her to ignore the harassment, as did her friends. Instead, she drew inspiration from the late civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis.

“I decided to cause ‘good trouble,’” she said. “I refused to ignore.”

Turning the tables on the trolls

Schmidt-Hori began replying to some of the angry emails, asking the senders why they were mad at her and inviting them to speak face-to-face via Zoom. She wrote to an influencer who opposes diversity, equity and inclusion principles and had written about her, asking him if he intended to inspire the death threats she was getting.

“If somebody said to your wife what people are saying to me, you wouldn’t like it, would you?” she asked.

The writer didn’t reply, but he did take down the negative article about Schmidt-Hori. Others apologized.

“It truly destroyed me knowing that you had to suffer and cancel your class and received hate from horrible people,” one man wrote. “I feel somehow that you are part of my family, and I regret it. I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart.”

Anik Talukder, a 28-year-old south Asian man living in the United Kingdom, said he apologized at least 10 times to Schmidt-Hori after accepting her Zoom invitation to discuss his Reddit post about her.

On May 16, feeling surprised and disappointed about Yasuke as a protagonist, he posted a screenshot that included photos of Schmidt-Hori, her professional biography from the Dartmouth website and a description of a book she wrote.

“I felt like maybe they were doing too much of like racial inclusion and changing things,” he said in an interview. “An Asian male could have been the role model for so many people.”

Though he didn’t criticize Schmidt-Hori directly, others responded negatively and the image was picked up and shared in other forums.

He was shocked the professor reached out to him and hesitant to speak to her at first. But they ended up having a thoughtful conversation about the lack of Asian representation in Western media and have stayed in touch ever since.

“I learned a massive lesson,” he said. “I shouldn’t have made this person a target for no reason whatsoever.”

Ubisoft defends choices and commends its consultant

Ubisoft officials declined to be interviewed about the criticism of the game or the harassment Schmidt-Hori faced. In a statement, the company said it carefully researches historical settings and collaborates with internal and expert witnesses, but the games remain works of fiction and artistic liberties are taken.

“We do not condone harassment or bullying in any form,” the company said. “We are committed to creating a supportive and collaborative environment and we’re constantly learning how we can improve this process. We commend and appreciate Sachi Schmidt-Hori for addressing these topics directly and are grateful for her approach and expertise.”

Unlike the professor at Dartmouth, in Hanover, New Hampshire, most people who become the target of online hate end up retreating to protect themselves, said Kate Mays, an assistant professor of public communication at the University of Vermont.

Online forums allow people to post anonymously without seeing how their words are received and algorithms boost more aggressive content, she said, creating a “perfect storm” for people to become hateful.

“The intervention that she did was pretty brilliant in terms of sort of stopping that toxic train in its tracks and putting another spin on how people are engaging with her,” Mays said. “She’s sort of breaking the spell of that online disinhibition community involvement and forcing people to address her as a human and an individual.”

____

Associated Press video journalist Amanda Swinhart contributed to this report from Burlington, Vermont.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in President Xi Jinping’s government: Come work with us.

America’s premier spy agency released two on social media Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted to YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day.

The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost both the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted U.S. officials with its own espionage operations.

The videos are “aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to The Associated Press. He said China “is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically.”

“Our agency must continue responding to this threat with urgency, creativity, and grit, and these videos are just one of the ways we are doing this,” Ratcliffe said.

The more than 2-minute-long videos are of cinematic quality and feature scenes of Communist Party insiders, luxury automobiles and glittering skyscrapers as narrators share their growing disillusionment with the system they have served.

In one video, a man described as an honest party member speaks of his unease about the power struggles among his peers, and what it might mean for his family’s safety. As the pace of the music picks up, he says, “I’ve done nothing wrong, I can’t go on living in fear!”

The man is then seen using his smartphone to contact the CIA, and the video ends with the agency’s seal.

Links below the video offer instructions on contacting the agency securely, along with a warning cautioning potential informants about fake accounts that might impersonate the CIA.

The videos are the agency’s latest attempt to make it easier and safer for potential informants to share information.

Last fall, the CIA posted online instructions in Korean, Mandarin and Farsi detailing steps that potential informants can take to contact U.S. intelligence officials without putting themselves in danger.

The similar instructions in Russian three years ago.

A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the videos.

___

Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia on Thursday became the eighth state to see its law requiring parental consent for children to use social media challenged in court.

NetChoice, a technology industry trade group, in Atlanta to overturn the law, which is scheduled to take effect on July 1.

Similar laws have been overturned by federal judges in Arkansas and Ohio and temporarily blocked in Utah. Litigation is pending against laws in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

The fight pits a growing movement that social media use is harmful to children and teens against constitutional protections for free speech. While the laws in Georgia and other states require parental consent, Australia, a country without constitutional free speech protections, has banned social media for children younger than 16 altogether.

Some in the U.S. Congress have also proposed parental consent for minors.

“Georgia’s SB 351 unconstitutionally blocks access to protected online speech and forces Georgians to surrender their private information just to use everyday digital services,” Paul Taske, NetChoice associate director of litigation, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “That’s unconstitutional, as several other states have now been told by courts. We’re fighting to keep online communication safe and free in the Peach State.”

The suit asks U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to declare the law unconstitutional because it violates First Amendment rights to free speech and 14th Amendment rights to due process.

Georgia officials said they will defend the measure.

“It’s a shame that the industry would rather file a lawsuit than partner with us to protect children from online predators,” said Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican running for governor in 2026.

NetChoice spokesperson Krista Chavez said the group is not challenging a separate section of the Georgia law that requires age verification for users of online pornography sites. A number of states have made laws aimed at pornography, and a challenge to Texas’ law is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Georgia’s law says social media services must use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1.

Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social media companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children, a provision that Thursday’s lawsuit also argues is illegal.

To comply with federal regulations, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up for their platforms. “Parents have many existing tools they can choose from to regulate whether and how their minor children use the internet,” the lawsuit states.

But children have been shown to easily evade the bans. Up to aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.

BOSTON (AP) — Tariffs weren’t on the agenda of this week’s Robotics Summit, where thousands of tech industry workers mingled with humanoid and other robot varieties and talked about how to build and sell a new generation of increasingly autonomous machines.

Not on the official agenda, at least.

“Jump up to the microphones,” said keynote speaker Aaron Saunders, chief technology officer of Boston Dynamics, inviting a standing-room-only crowd to ask him questions. “And I’m the CTO, so don’t ask me about tariffs.”

The crowd laughed and complied. But as they streamed onto the show floor at Boston’s convention center, greeted by a remote-controlled humanoid made by Chinese company Unitree, it was hard to ignore the shadow of President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs and retaliatory measures from Trump’s biggest target, China.

Tariffs are the “No. 1 topic that we’re discussing in the hallways and at the water cooler with people that I’ve known for a long time,” said event organizer Steve Crowe, chair of the annual Robotics Summit & Expo. “I think it’s definitely top of mind, because there’s so much uncertainty about what is going to come.”

That concern is rooted in a robot’s complex anatomy of motors and actuators to move their limbs, computers to power their artificial intelligence, and sensing devices to help them react to their surroundings. Sensors, semiconductors, batteries and rare earth magnets are among the array of components most sensitive to global trade disputes.

Tesla CEO and billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk warned investors last week that China’s countermeasures restricting shipments of rare earth magnets will delay Tesla’s development of its Optimus humanoid robots.

At the summit on Wednesday and Thursday, some humanoid makers were looking at a potential bright side to the geopolitical shifts as American businesses look harder for domestic supplies of parts and the development of U.S.-based robots that can automate factories and warehouses.

“It’s added some inconveniences to our own supply chain. But it’s also opened up opportunities,” said Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer at Oregon-based Agility Robotics, in an interview. The company is starting to deploy its humanoid robot, called Digit, at a U.S. plant run by German manufacturer Schaeffler, a maker of ball bearings and other components key to the auto industry.

Al Makke, a director of engineering for Schaeffler’s chassis systems, said tariffs could push many companies toward onshoring production of a variety of items in the U.S.

“And if that does happen, then local companies have to deal with high labor costs and a shortage of labor and so automation gets pushed further,” Makke said. “And one of those faces of automation is humanoids.”

Most of the big industrial robots employed in the U.S. are used to help make cars, and are imported from countries such as Japan, Germany or South Korea.

Automakers in the U.S. installed 9.6% more robots in their plants than a year before, according to new data from the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group.

For now, humanoids are still a niche but one that invites intense curiosity, in part thanks to popular science fiction. Saunders, of Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics, presented an update Wednesday on the development of its Atlas humanoid robot but didn’t bring a physical prototype, instead showing off a more familiar pack of its four-legged Spot robots contained in a pen on the show floor.

The sole humanoid at the conference was Unitree’s G1. Marketed for $16,000 and remote-controlled by an employee standing nearby, the robot fluidly shook hands, waved back at people and walked around the show floor, but it won’t be moving totes or working in a factory anytime soon.

Its main customers outside China are academic researchers and some social media influencers, and Trump’s current tariffs totaling 145% on China would up raise its cost to American buyers to roughly $40,000, said Tony Yang, a Unitree vice president of business development who manages its North American sales. Nevertheless, Unitree’s strategy to rapidly develop its hardware and software is a long-term one.

“It’s still a very narrow market, but I think there’s still a huge potential market on the industry side, like for manufacturing and factory and even home use,” Yang said.

At a full pickleball court on the show floor, some conference attendees took a break to grab a racket and swing at balls tossed by a wheeled robot. Asked to describe what’s inside the Tennibot robot, its maker also had tariffs on the mind.

“Injection molded parts, rivets, screws, nuts, wheels, motors, batteries,” said Haitham Eletrabi, co-founder and CEO of Tennibot, based in Auburn, Alabama. “The supply chain gets very complex. We get parts from all over the world. Tariffs are adding a lot of uncertainty.”

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AP video journalist Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative activist Robby Starbuck has filed a defamation lawsuit against Meta alleging that the social media giant’s artificial intelligence chatbot spread false statements about him, including that he participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Starbuck, known for targeting corporate DEI programs, said he discovered the claims made by Meta’s AI in August 2024, when he was going after “woke DEI” policies at motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson.

“One dealership was unhappy with me and they posted a screenshot from Meta’s AI in an effort to attack me,” he said in a post on X. “This screenshot was filled with lies. I couldn’t believe it was real so I checked myself. It was even worse when I checked.”

Since then, he said he has “faced a steady stream of false accusations that are deeply damaging to my character and the safety of my family.”

The political commentator said he was in Tennessee during the Jan. 6 riot. The suit, filed in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday, seeks more than $5 million in damages.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Meta said that “as part of our continuous effort to improve our models, we have already released updates and will continue to do so.”

Starbuck’s lawsuit joins the ranks of several other similar cases in which people have sued AI platforms over information provided by chatbots. In 2023, a conservative radio host in Georgia filed a defamation suit against OpenAI alleging ChatGPT provided false information by saying he defrauded and embezzled funds from the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-rights group.

When Starbuck discovered the claims made by Meta’s AI, he tried to alert the company about the error and enlist its help to address the problem. The complaint said Starbuck contacted Meta’s managing executives and legal counsel, and even asked its AI about what should be done to address the allegedly false outputs.

According to the lawsuit, he then asked Meta to “retract the false information, investigate the cause of the error, implement safeguards and quality control processes to prevent similar harm in the future, and communicate transparently with all Meta AI users about what would be done.”

The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or “take meaningful responsibility for its conduct.”

“Instead, it allowed its AI to spread false information about Mr. Starbuck for months after being put on notice of the falsity, at which time it ‘fixed’ the problem by wiping Mr. Starbuck’s name from its written responses altogether,” the suit said.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, responded to a video Starbuck posted to X outlining the lawsuit and called the situation “unacceptable.”

“This is clearly not how our AI should operate,” Kaplan said on X. “We’re sorry for the results it shared about you and that the fix we put in place didn’t address the underlying problem.”

Kaplan said he is working with Meta’s product team to “understand how this happened and explore potential solutions.”

Starbuck said that in addition to falsely saying he participated in the the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meta AI also falsely claimed he engaged in Holocaust denial, and said he pleaded guilty to a crime despite never having been “arrested or charged with a single crime in his life.”

Meta later “blacklisted” Starbuck’s name, he said, adding that the move did not solve the problem because Meta includes his name in news stories, which allows users to then ask for more information about him.

“While I’m the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta’s AI could flip votes that decide the election,” Starbuck said on X. “You could be the next target too.”

Artificial intelligence “agents” are supposed to be more than chatbots. The tech industry has spent months pitching AI personal assistants that know what you want and can do real work on your behalf.

So far, they’re not doing much.

Visa hopes to change that by giving them your credit card. Set a budget and some preferences and these AI agents — successors to ChatGPT and its chatbot peers — could find and buy you a sweater, weekly groceries or an airplane ticket.

“We think this could be really important,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, in an interview. “Transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself.”

Visa announced Wednesday it is partnering with a group of leading AI chatbot developers — among them U.S. companies Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI and Perplexity, and France’s Mistral — to connect their AI systems to Visa’s payments network. Visa is also working with IBM, online payment company Stripe and phone-maker Samsung on the initiative. Pilot projects begin Wednesday, ahead of more widespread usage expected next year.

The San Francisco payment processing company is betting that what seems futuristic now could become a convenient alternative to our most mundane shopping tasks in the near future. It has spent the past six months working with AI developers to address technical obstacles that must be overcome before the average consumer is going to use it.

For emerging AI companies, Visa’s backing could also boost their chances of competing with tech giants Amazon and Google, which dominate digital commerce and are developing their own AI agents.

The tech industry is already full of demonstrations of the capabilities of what it calls agentic AI, though few are yet found in the real world. Most are still refashioned versions of large language models — the generative AI technology behind chatbots that can write emails, summarize documents or help people code. Trained on huge troves of data, they can scour the internet and bring back recommendations for things to buy, but they have a harder time going beyond that.

“The early incarnations of agent-based commerce are starting to do a really good job on the shopping and discovery dimension of the problem, but they are having tremendous trouble on payments,” Forestell said. “You get to this point where the agents literally just turn it back around and say, ‘OK, you go buy it.’

Visa sees itself as having a key role in giving AI agents easier and trusted access to the cash they need to make purchases.

“The payments problem is not something the AI platforms can solve by themselves,” Forestell said. “That’s why we started working with them.”

The new AI initiative comes nearly a year after Visa revealed major changes to how credit and debit cards will operate in the U.S., making physical cards and their 16-digit numbers increasingly irrelevant.

Many consumers are already getting used to digital payment systems such as Apply Pay that turn their phones into a credit card. A similar process of vetting someone’s digital credentials would authorize AI agents to work on a customer’s behalf, in a way Forestell says must assure buyers, banks and merchants that the transactions are legitimate and that Visa will handle disputes.

Forestell said that doesn’t mean AI agents will take over the entire shopping experience, but it might be useful for errands that either bore some people — like groceries, home improvement items or even Christmas lists — or are too complicated, like travel bookings. In those situations, some people might want an agent that “just powers through it and automatically goes and does stuff for us,” Forestell said.

Other shopping experiences, such as for luxury goods, are a form of entertainment and many customers still want to immerse themselves in the choices and comparisons, Forestell said. In that case, he envisions AI agents still offering assistance but staying in the background.

And what about credit card debt? The credit card balances of American consumers hit $1.21 trillion at the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve of New York.

Forestell says consumers will give their AI agents clear spending limits and conditions that should give them confidence that the human is still in control. At first, the AI agents are likely to come back to buyers to make sure they are OK with a specific airplane ticket. Over time, those agents might get more autonomy to “go spend up to $1,500 on any airline to get me from A to B,” he said.

Part of what is attracting some AI developers to the Visa partnership is that, with a customer’s consent, an AI agent can also tap into a lot of data about past credit card purchases.

“Visa has the ability for a user to consent to share streams of their transaction history with us,” said Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer. “When we generate a recommendation — say you’re asking, ‘What are the best laptops?’ — we would know what are other transactions you’ve made and the revealed preferences from that.”

Perplexity’s chatbot can already book hotels and make other purchases, but it’s still in the early stages of AI commerce, Shevelenko says. The San Francisco startup has also, along with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, told a federal court it would consider buying Google’s internet browser, Chrome, if the U.S. forces a breakup of the tech giant in a pending antitrust case.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A group of high school students in upstate New York are being threatened with charges of kidnapping if they don’t turn themselves into authorities over a lacrosse team hazing prank in which participants are accused of staging an armed abduction of younger players.

Prosecutors allege members of the lacrosse program at Westhill High School in suburban Syracuse planned a team trip to McDonald’s that ended with one player being tied up, blindfolded and put into a trunk, Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said.

The alleged victim was led to believe he would be abandoned in a remote area, but was returned to his home without being physically harmed.

“I cannot adequately express to this community the level of stupidity and lack of judgment involved in this case,” Fitzpatrick told reporters Tuesday evening.

Fitzpatrick said a person driving five younger players on the team pretended to get lost, pulled over in a place where other participants in the prank lay in wait, armed with at least one knife and a weapon that appeared to be a gun.

That’s when the students launched the fake abduction. While the student wasn’t hurt physically, “emotionally, that’s going to be long term,” Fitzpatrick said.

“This is not lighting a bag on fire on Halloween and sticking it in your driveway, this is criminal activity,” he said, adding that it could have led to a fatal shooting if police had come across the scene and saw “a kid with a hood over his head being abducted at gunpoint.”

The events were captured on video, and Fitzpatrick said that the local sheriffs office identified 11 people they believe participated either directly or indirectly. in the ruse. He’s offering those people — some of whom are 18 — until Thursday to turn themselves in and face lower-level charges that would not result in jail time.

Those who don’t turn themselves in would face felony charges.

“Don’t come crying to me two weeks from now and say, ‘You charged my little baby with kidnapping.’ Yeah, that’s right. Most of my prosecutors can win cases that are on videotape,” said Fitzpatrick.

Messages seeking comment were left for Westhill School District Superintendent Steve Dunham.

In a statement provided to earlier this week, he said: “Our top priority is always the physical safety, mental health and well-being of our students” and that “any behavior that negatively affects any of these aspects for other students will be addressed promptly and appropriately according to our Code of Conduct.”

Congress has overwhelmingly approved bipartisan legislation to enact stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery, sometimes called “revenge porn.” Known as the Take It Down Act, the bill is now headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

The measure was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and later gained the support of First Lady Melania Trump. Critics of the bill, which addresses both real and artificial intelligence-generated imagery, say the language is too broad and could lead to censorship and First Amendment issues.

What is the Take It Down Act?

The bill makes it illegal to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-created “deepfakes.” It also requires websites and social media companies to remove such material within 48 hours of notice from a victim. The platforms must also take steps to delete duplicate content. Many states have already banned the dissemination of sexually explicit deepfakes or revenge porn, but the Take It Down Act is a rare example of federal regulators imposing on internet companies.

Who supports it?

The Take It Down Act has garnered strong bipartisan support and has been championed by Melania Trump, who lobbied on Capitol Hill in March saying it was “heartbreaking” to see what teenagers, especially girls, go through after they are victimized by people who spread such content. President Trump is expected to sign it into law.

Cruz said the measure was inspired by Elliston Berry and her mother, who visited his office after Snapchat refused for nearly a year to remove an AI-generated “deepfake” of the then 14-year-old.

Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, supports the legislation.

“Having an intimate image – real or AI-generated – shared without consent can be devastating and Meta developed and backs many efforts to help prevent it,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said last month.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech industry-supported think tank, said in a statement Monday that the bill’s passage “is an important step forward that will help people pursue justice when they are victims of non-consensual intimate imagery, including deepfake images generated using AI.”

“We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” Klobuchar said in a statement after the bill’s passage late Monday. “These images can ruin lives and reputations, but now that our bipartisan legislation is becoming law, victims will be able to have this material removed from social media platforms and law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable.”

What are the censorship concerns?

Free speech advocates and digital rights groups say the bill is too broad and could lead to the censorship of legitimate images including legal pornography and LGBTQ content, as well as government critics.

“While the bill is meant to address a serious problem, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy,” said the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. “Lawmakers should be strengthening and enforcing existing legal protections for victims, rather than inventing new takedown regimes that are ripe for abuse.”

The takedown provision in the bill “applies to a much broader category of content — potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content” than the narrower definitions of non-consensual intimate imagery found elsewhere in the text, EFF said.

“The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Services will rely on automated filters, which are infamously blunt tools,” EFF said. “They frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting. The law’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove speech within 48 hours, rarely enough time to verify whether the speech is actually illegal.”

As a result, the group said online companies, especially smaller ones that lack the resources to wade through a lot of content, “will likely choose to avoid the onerous legal risk by simply depublishing the speech rather than even attempting to verify it.”

The measure, EFF said, also pressures platforms to “actively monitor speech, including speech that is presently encrypted” to address liability threats.

The , a nonprofit that helps victims of online crimes and abuse, said it has “serious reservations” about the bill. It called its takedown provision unconstitutionally vague, unconstitutionally overbroad, and lacking adequate safeguards against misuse.”

For instance, the group said, platforms could be obligated to remove a journalist’s photographs of a topless protest on a public street, photos of a subway flasher distributed by law enforcement to locate the perpetrator, commercially produced sexually explicit content or sexually explicit material that is consensual but falsely reported as being nonconsensual.

There’s a new pour from Starbucks: Its first 3D printed store in the U.S.

The Seattle-based coffee giant with more than 17,000 locations nationwide has never had a store quite like the one opening this week in the Texas city of Brownsville, along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a computer-controlled robotic arm did much of the work by pouring one layer of concrete atop another.

The location — which is drive-thru only — is set to open Friday and makes Starbucks one of the nation’s few big retailers that have tinkered with 3D printing for commercial construction. Builders have mostly used the technology in residential construction as they look to innovate to tackle an affordable housing crisis.

Starbucks isn’t saying whether more stores like it are on the horizon or why the company chose Brownsville, which has about 190,000 residents and at least four other locations in the area. At first glance, the compact rectangular building with the Starbucks logo looks like any other, but a close look reveals ridged walls that resemble stacked tubes.

Construction experts say the store is an example of an industry figuring out ways to use the technology.

“It’s early days yet,” said James Rose, director of the Institute for Smart Structures at the University of Tennessee. “I’m happy to see people doing all of these different things with it, and I think at some point we’ll figure out what its best use is. But right now I think you’re going to see lots of experimentation, and I think that’s a good thing.”

The shop is on a busy thoroughfare where Faviola Maldonado was among those who watched the construction gradually take shape.

“It was just different,” said Maldonado, who operated a jewelry store next door before recently moving. “It was super high technology.”

Starbucks confirmed this is its first 3D printed store in the U.S. but declined an interview request.

Andrew McCoy, associate director of research and innovation at the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech, called the new store “leading edge.”

In general, construction using 3D technology still costs more than traditional wood framing, McCoy said. But, he said, it helps address a labor shortage and can be a way to get something built faster. He expects it will eventually become more cost competitive.

“You are starting to see the technology is getting faster, smaller,” McCoy said. “It’s getting easier to use.”

BALTIMORE (AP) — A former high school athletics director accused of using artificial intelligence to create a racist and antisemitic deepfake of a Maryland principal has been sentenced to four months in jail as part of a plea deal for disrupting school operations.

Dazhon Darien, 32, accepted the deal Monday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, records show. He entered an Alford plea to the single misdemeanor charge, which means he acknowledged the evidence against him without directly admitting guilt. His original charges included theft, stalking and retaliating against a witness.

According to police and prosecutors, Darien used AI software to generate a fake recording of former Pikesville High School principal Eric Eiswert’s voice expressing frustration with Black students and their test-taking abilities. The recording, which was disseminated throughout the school community and shared widely on social media last January, also purported to capture the principal disparaging Jewish people, authorities said.

Not long before the recording surfaced, Eiswert had informed Darien that his contract wouldn’t be renewed the following semester because of concerns over poor job performance, according to court documents. The concerns included allegations that Darien paid his roommate $1,900 in school funds under the pretense of coaching the girls’ soccer team, police said.

Experts who analyzed the recording concluded it was AI-generated.

Despite receiving a relatively short sentence, Darien could remain incarcerated longer as he faces a separate federal case in which he’s accused of sexual exploitation of children and possession of child sexual abuse material. Authorities said they discovered evidence of those crimes while searching Darien’s phone and other devices.

While fake recordings of political figures and celebrities have surfaced in recent years as the technology becomes more widespread, officials have said the case is among the first examples of AI being used to embarrass someone for personal gain.

The subset of artificial intelligence known as generative AI can create hyperrealistic images, videos and audio clips. As it becomes cheaper and easier to use, anyone with an internet connection can access its capabilities. Even a short recording of someone’s voice allows users to generate cloned speech from a script.

Other examples of AI-generated audio include robocalls impersonating former President Joe Biden that tried to dissuade Democrats from voting in last year’s New Hampshire primary election. People have also cloned the voices of purportedly kidnapped children over the phone to get ransom money from parents, experts say.

In response, many states have enacted laws in recent years targeting the use of AI, especially targeting media intended to influence election results and digitally created or altered child sexual abuse imagery.

During this year’s legislative session, Maryland lawmakers considered a bill that would have prohibited the use of AI to falsely impersonate people. Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger advocated in favor of the law change, but it ultimately didn’t pass.

Darien’s bogus audio sent shockwaves through the suburban Pikesville community as angry phone calls inundated the school and hate-filled messages accumulated on social media. Authorities said police were sent to patrol Eiswert’s home in response to threats.

Eiswert, who is now principal of another Baltimore County school, said from the beginning that he believed the recording was fake. He has since filed a lawsuit against the school district, alleging Darien never should have been hired in the first place.

Darien joined the district in spring 2023, when he started teaching social studies at a different high school, according to the lawsuit. He was later promoted to Pikesville athletic director.

Eiswert’s complaint cites reporting from The Baltimore Banner that revealed a host of false claims on Darien’s job application, including multiple degrees he hadn’t obtained. Florida education officials also denied Darien a teaching certificate in 2016 based on “test of document fraud” and flagged his name in a national database, the Banner found. Eiswert argues Baltimore County school officials failed to properly vet his application materials and investigate his background.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The trial of a former Michigan police officer charged with second-degree murder in the killing of a 26-year-old Black man is set to begin in Grand Rapids, three years after the case sparked weeks of protest and national outrage.

Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese immigrant who sought refuge with his family in the U.S. to flee violence in his home country, was fatally shot by former officer Christopher Schurr, who is white.

Lyoya was shot in the back of the head while facedown on the ground following a traffic stop. Schurr’s attorneys argue he acted in self-defense.

Opening statements in the trial begin Monday in downtown Grand Rapids and the trial is expected to last at least a week.

Here is what to know.

What happened?

Schurr pulled over a vehicle driven by Lyoya over improper license plates on a rainy morning April 4, 2022, in a Grand Rapids residential neighborhood.

Body camera footage and dash camera footage shows Lyoya run from Schurr after the officer asks for his driver’s license. Schurr tackles Lyoya and a struggle ensues as Schurr attempts to shoot his Taser at Lyoya.

Schurr’s body camera footage appears to show Lyoya reaching for the officer’s Taser. The body camera footage goes out before the shooting.

A passenger of the vehicle recorded a video. The cellphone footage shows the officer tell Lyoya to let go of the Taser multiple times.

While Lyoya is facedown on the ground and Schurr is on top of him, the officer takes out his firearm and shoots Lyoya in the back of the head.

Who was Patrick Lyoya?

Lyoya’s family has said he came to the U.S. to get away from prolonged civil unrest involving several rebel groups vying for control of territories in the mineral-rich eastern Congo. He was raising two children in Grand Rapids, a city of around 200,000 people located about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

After fleeing violence back home, Lyoya ultimately joined a list of names of Black immigrants who sought better lives in the U.S. only to suffer abuse or death at the hands of law enforcement.

Before him, there was Botham Jean, Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima, all men whose cases increased awareness around the global impact of systemic racism in policing.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader who eulogized Lyoya at his 2022 funeral, noted then that Lyoya was killed on April 4, the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lyoya came to America in search of a better life and “ran into an America that we know too well,” Sharpton said.

Lyoya’s killing prompted weeks of protest in the west Michigan city and calls to reform the police department.

Who is Christopher Schurr?

Schurr, now 34, was fired by the police department shortly after he was charged with one count of second-degree murder in June 2022.

He had worked for the department for seven years.

Schurr has said he acted in self-defense while prosecutors say the use of lethal force was unnecessary and excessive. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

How significant is the Taser?

The role of the Taser is likely to play a significant role in Schurr’s defense. Prosecutors have argued the Taser already had been deployed and therefore did not pose a threat to Schurr.

Tasers are generally considered non-lethal by police but the narrative often flips when handled by someone who is not law enforcement, said Ian Adams, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina.

Whether Schurr gave proper warning of his use of lethal force also will likely be of note to the jury, Adams said.

“In the video, you can hear the officer say, ‘Drop the taser,’ which is a command,” Adams said. “But whether or not it’s a warning that an officer is about to use lethal force is going to be contested.”

“This is a highly salient case in U.S. policing right now,” Adams said.

Charles Joe Key, who has testified as a consulting witness in police use of force in a different Michigan case, said the Taser can still cause pain and could have incapacitated Schurr even after it had been discharged. Key expected the physical struggle the two engaged in will likely be another factor of Schurr’s defense.

“Given the officer’s continued attempts to have the person quit, let go of the Taser, etcetera, then it would be a reasonable analysis by the officer that the person would continue to fight,” Key said.

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Associated Press writer Fernanda Figueroa in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities released more videos Friday related to their investigation of the deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, including images of agents returning to the couple’s Santa Fe home days after they were found to look for more evidence.

The bodies of Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, were discovered Feb. 26 after maintenance and security workers called police.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office has been releasing redacted records on a rolling basis since a recent court order allowing them to be made public as long as any images of the dead couple are obscured. More are expected.

The latest release includes over three hours of police body camera video and builds what has already been made public, including a lengthy investigative report, photos and hours of body camera and security video showing the initial police response.

The new videos show authorities interviewing workers and returning to the home to search for more evidence early on in the investigation before they knew how Hackman and Arakawa died.

One hourlong video shows detectives searching the home in early March for Arakawa’s laptop and any other clues. Representatives of Arakawa’s family let them inside the house and led them to the bathroom where her body was found.

In another video a man who does pest control on the property tells officers that he has not seen Hackman in at least a month, but that it is normal to not see or talk to the couple during his monthly visits.

The last time he saw Hackman, he says, they waved to each other but did not speak.

“He was looking frail,” the worker says. “He was bent over with a cane. His hair was sort of wild.”

Authorities say Arakawa died of the rare hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rodent-borne disease that can cause a range of symptoms including flu-like illness, headaches, dizziness and severe respiratory distress. Hackman is believed to have died about a week later of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

One of the couple’s three dogs also was found dead in a crate near Arakawa’s body, while two other dogs were found alive. A state veterinary lab attributed the dog’s death to dehydration and starvation.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s environmental agency won’t say if a group of hackers stole data in a cyberattack that was first announced earlier this month.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on Friday declined to confirm or deny reports that ransomware group Rhysida was behind the cyberattack and stole department data, including sensitive employee information, .

The department said in a news release Friday that the claims referenced in recent media coverage were part of its investigation.

Department spokesperson Lauren Wirtis declined to comment on whether Rhysida had contacted the department or asked for a ransom, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

The department said it had not “engaged” in ransom discussions “with any entity claiming to have information stolen from DEQ for sale.” It added that it would provide more details when it has verified information.

The department, which regulates air, water and land quality, first announced the cyberattack roughly two weeks ago. Services, including vehicle smog inspections and agency emails, were interrupted.

Most servers are back online and hundreds of staff are now working on laptops, Wirtis said in an email Friday. The department had said last week that most employees didn’t have laptops and were working from their phones.

Potentially impacted servers and all employee computers have to be rebuilt in order to ensure no infected files remain, the department said.

Multiple cyberattacks have been attributed to Rhysida in recent years, including ones last year targeting the operator of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Ohio’s capital city of Columbus.

NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors at Sean “Diddy” Combs ‘ upcoming federal sex trafficking trial can show jurors video of the hip-hop mogul hitting and kicking one of his accusers in a Los Angeles hotel hallway, a judge ruled at a hearing Friday.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian said Combs’ lawyers failed to convince him that the explosive security camera footage should be excluded. Its relevance to the case outweighs any potential prejudice to the 55-year-old defendant, the judge said.

Subramanian ruled on the video as he set ground rules for the May 5 trial in New York City.

Combs sat between his lawyers in a yellow jail suit, his formerly jet black hair now almost fully gray because dye isn’t allowed at the Brooklyn federal lockup where he’s been held since his arrest last September.

Prosecutors disclosed that Combs was offered a plea deal, which he rejected.

The video shows Combs — wearing only a white towel — punching, shoving and dragging his former protege and girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie, and throwing a vase in her direction on March 5, 2016, at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles’ Century City district.

The video wasn’t public until CNN obtained and aired it in May 2024. The network turned the footage over to prosecutors in response to a subpoena.

Prosecutors say it’s “critical to the case.”

Combs’ indictment alleges he tried to bribe a hotel security staffer to stay mum about the video. Cassie, in a since-settled November 2023 lawsuit alleging years of abuse, claimed he paid $50,000 for the footage.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, did.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges alleging he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

Federal prosecutors allege the Bad Boy Records founder used his “power and prestige” as a music star to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “freak offs.”

Earlier this month, prosecutors obtained a new indictment that added two charges to Combs’ case and accused him of using force, fraud or coercion to compel a woman to engage in commercial sex acts from at least 2021 to 2024.

Prosecutors say they expect four accusers to testify against Combs.

They contend the assault on Cassie depicted in the 2016 video happened during a “freak off.” Combs’ lawyers have argued that the footage was nothing more than a “glimpse into a complex but decade-long consensual relationship.”

Combs apologized after CNN aired the footage, saying in a that he was “truly sorry” and that his actions were “inexcusable.”

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Combs said, adding that he “was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

In seeking to exclude the video from the trial, Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo argued that the footage was “deceptive and not in accordance with the actions that took place.”

Agnifilo said certain portions of the video were sped up by as much as 50% or taken out of order, making it a “misleading piece of evidence.”

Prosecutors told Subramanian that they were working with Combs’ lawyers to come up with a suitable version that can be shown by jurors. They said that includes having a video expert review the footage and slow down the clips to reflect the speed at which the event shown actually transpired.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 kicked off shortly after the clock struck midnight Thursday. But chaos soon ensued amid high demand.

Scores of consumers hoping to be among the first to own Nintendo’s latest gaming console — which is set to officially launch June 5 — jumped online to try and snag a preorder. And while some lucky buyers found success, many others ran into frustrating delays or saw the product’s early listings appear to quickly sell out at participating retailers like Target, Walmart and Best Buy in the wee hours of the night.

Among the headaches, social media users shared painfully-long wait times, screenshots of error messages and carts that suddenly appeared empty — or, in some cases, received confirmation emails that were soon followed by notices about the orders being canceled.

Nintendo acknowledged the “very high demand” in about those interested in purchasing the Switch 2 from its own My Nintendo Store. The company said it would be “working diligently to fulfill orders as product becomes available,” but noted that delivery by June 5 was not guaranteed — urging those who want to increase their chances of getting the Switch 2 at the launch date to visit a participating retailer.

Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for further information about Thursday’s preorder demand.

GameStop also begun accepting preorders for the Switch 2 Thursday — hours following the late night launches at other retailers. Online preorders from GameStop went live at , but its listing appeared to be unavailable within minutes.

“We’re seeing overwhelming demand for Switch 2, which is causing some site issues,” GameStop Help on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET. But the company added that its previously-announced in-store preorders “are open and running smoothly.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what that capacity GameStop and other retailers had for Switch 2 preorders. The Associated Press reached out to GameStop — as well as Target, Walmart and Best Buy — for comments Thursday.

The sizeable (and speedy) demand for Nintendo’s Switch 2 isn’t surprising. The new gaming console has been marketed as bigger and better than its predecessor of eight years past — with highly-anticipated features including an interactive chat, larger screen and new games.

Still, the Switch 2’s rollout arrives at an uncertain time for much of the industry due to new tariffs implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump and responding retaliation from targeted countries, notably China. Economists have warned that the steeper levies will result in higher prices on a range of consumer goods relying on a global supply chain today, including electronics.

The Switch 2’s baseline launch price is $449.99 — significantly higher than the original Switch’s $299 price tag. While new bells and whistles may account for a sizeable portion of that hike, experts have previously noted that the new import taxes are also a contributor.

And U.S. preorders for the Switch 2 were already delayed earlier this month — ahead of Trump’s steepest levies, most of which have now been postponed, going into effect.

Preorders were originally slated to go live on April 9, an update from Nintendo notes, but were pushed back to “assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.” Nintendo later that some Switch 2 accessories would see price adjustments — but maintained that its previously-announced baseline price for the console would remain the same.

Super Mario creator Nintendo Co. is banking on the Switch 2 to revive demand for its gaming consoles, with its older predecessor recently losing momentum. In February, the Kyoto, Japan-based company said it expected to sell 11 million Switch consoles for its full fiscal year ending in March, lower than its initial projection of 12.5 million.

Nintendo reported profit of 237 billion yen ($1.5 billion) for the first nine months of its latest fiscal year, down 42% from the same period the year prior.

Ashley Dayer’s dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue discoveries in bird conservation started when she was an early-career professor with an infant in her arms and a shoestring laboratory budget.

Competition is intense for NSF grants, a key source of funding for science research at U.S. universities. It took three failed applications and years of preliminary research before the agency awarded her one.

Then came a Monday email informing Dayer that President Donald Trump’s administration was cutting off funding, apparently because the project investigating the role of bird feeders touched on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I was shocked and saddened,” said Dayer, a professor at Virginia Tech’s department of fish and wildlife conservation. “We were just at the peak of being able to get our findings together and do all of our analysis. There’s a lot of feelings of grief.”

Hundreds of other university researchers had their National Science Foundation funding abruptly canceled Friday to comply with Trump’s directives to end support of research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of misinformation. It’s the latest front in Trump’s anti-DEI campaign that has also gone after university administrations, medical research and the private sector.

More than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska’s Arctic region. One computer scientist was studying how artificial intelligence tools could mitigate bias in medical information, and others were trying to help people detect AI-generated deepfakes. A number of terminated grants sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering.

NSF, founded in 1950, has a $9 billion budget that can be a lifeline for resource-strapped professors and the younger researchers they recruit to their teams. It has shifted priorities over time but it is highly unusual to terminate so many midstream grants.

Some scientists saw the cuts coming, after Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year flagged thousands of NSF-funded projects he says reflected a “woke DEI” or Marxist agenda, including some but not all of the projects cut Friday.

Still, Dayer said she was “incredibly surprised” that her bird project was axed. A collaboration with other institutions, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it tapped into Project Feedwatch, a website and app for sharing bird observations.

Dayer’s team had collected data from more 20,000 Americans on their birdwatching habits, fielding insights on how outdoor feeders were affecting wildlife, but also people’s mental well-being.

The only mention of the word “diversity” in the grant award is about bird populations, not people. But the project explicitly sought to engage more disabled people and people of color. That fit with NSF’s longtime requirement that funded projects must have a broad impact.

“We thought, if anything, maybe we’d be told not to do that broader impacts work and to remove that from our project,” Dayer said. “We had no expectation that the entire grant would be unfunded.”

NSF and DOGE say they were “wasteful DEI grants”

On the day the grants were terminated, Sethuraman Panchanathan, the NSF’s director since 2020, said on the agency’s website that it still supported “research on broadening participation” but those efforts “should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.”

The NSF declined to share the total number of canceled grants, but Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, posted on X that NSF had canceled “402 wasteful DEI grants” amounting to $233 million. It didn’t say how much of that had already been spent. Grants typically last for several years.

Caren Cooper, a North Carolina State University professor of forestry and natural resources, said she expected her work would be targeted after it made Cruz’s list. Her grant project also sought to include people of color and people with disabilities in participatory science projects, in collaboration with the Audubon Society and with the aim of engaging those who have historically been excluded from natural spaces and birdwatching groups.

One doctoral student had left her job and moved her family to North Carolina to work with Cooper on a stipend the grant helped to fund.

“We’ve been trying to make contingency plans,” Cooper said. “Nonetheless, it’s an illegal thing. It’s violating the terms and conditions of the award. And it really harms our students.”

Cutting misinformation work

Along with eliminating DEI research, NSF said it will no longer “support research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.”

Several researchers said they weren’t sure why their funding was terminated, other than that their abstracts included terms like “censorship” or “misinformation.”

“The lack of transparency around this process is deeply concerning,” said Eric Wustrow, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder whose grant aims to study and combat internet censorship in countries like China and Iran. “Did they just Ctrl+f for certain words, ignoring context?”

NSF said on its website that “there is not a list of words” to avoid, but that misinformation research is no longer aligned with NSF’s priorities.

Wustrow said his research supports free speech and access to information around the world, and he plans to appeal the decision to terminate the funding. Meanwhile, he’s looking at potentially working for free this summer without a grant to fund his salary.

Even for those who did intend to address misinformation, the cuts seemed to miss the point.

Casey Fiesler, of the University of Colorado Boulder, had a project focused on dispelling AI misconceptions and improving AI literacy — also a priority of Trump’s education department. Cornell University’s Drew Margolin said his work set out to help people find ways to combat social media harassment, hate speech and misinformation without the help of content moderators or government regulators.

“The irony is it’s like a free speech way of addressing speech,” Margolin said.

Are more cuts coming?

The NSF declined to say if more cuts are coming. The terminated funding mirrors earlier cuts to medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health.

A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH earlier this month, arguing that those cuts were illegal and threatened medical cures.

The cuts at NSF so far are a tiny portion of all of the agency’s grants, amounting to 387 projects, said Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard University’s school of public health who is helping to track the cuts to help researchers advocate for themselves. Some received termination letters even though their projects had already ended.

“It is very chaotic, which is very consistent with what is happening at NIH,” Delaney said. “And it’s really unclear if this is everything that’s going to get terminated or if it’s just the opening salvo.”

Dayer is still figuring out what to do about the loss of funding for the bird feeder project, which cuts off part of summer funding for four professors at three universities and their respective student teams. She’s particularly worried about what it means for the next generation of American scientists, including those still deciding their career path.

“It’s just this outright attack on science right now,” Dayer said. “It’s going to have lasting impacts for American people and for science and knowledge in our country. I’m also just afraid that people aren’t going to go into the field of science.”

—�Ĕ

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered sharper scrutiny of America’s colleges and the accreditors that oversee them, part of his escalating campaign to end what he calls ” wokeness ” and diversity efforts in education.

In a series of executive actions signed Wednesday, Trump targeted universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda. One order called for harder enforcement of a federal law requiring colleges to disclose their financial ties with foreign sources, while another called for a shakeup of the accrediting bodies that decide whether colleges can accept federal financial aid awarded to students.

Colleges’ financial ties with foreign sources have long been a concern among Republicans, especially ties with China and other countries with adversarial relationships with the U.S. It became a priority during Trump’s first term and reemerged last week as the White House grasped for leverage in its escalating battle with Harvard University.

The White House said it needed to take action because Harvard and other colleges have routinely violated a federal disclosure law, which has been unevenly enforced since it was passed in the 1980s. Known as Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the law requires colleges to disclose foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more.

In the executive order, Trump calls on the Education Department and the attorney general to step up enforcement of the law and take action against colleges that violate it, including a cutoff of federal money.

The Trump administration intends to “end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions” and protect against “foreign exploitation,” the order said.

It was applauded by Republicans, including Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He accused China of exploiting academic ties to steal research and “indoctrinate students.”

Another order aims at accrediting bodies that set standards colleges must meet to accept federal financial aid from students. Trump campaigned on a promise to overhaul the industry, saying it was “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.”

Often overlooked as an obscure branch of college oversight, accreditors play an important role in shaping colleges in many aspects, with standards that apply all the way from colleges’ governing boards to classroom curriculum.

Trump’s executive order is the opening salvo in what could be a lengthy battle to overhaul the accrediting industry. Chief among his priorities is to strip accreditors of diversity, equity and inclusion requirements imposed on colleges. Some accreditors have already dropped or stopped enforcing such standards amid Trump’s DEI crackdown.

Trump’s order calls on the government to suspend or terminate accreditors that discriminate in the name of DEI. Instead, it calls on accreditors to focus more squarely on the student outcomes of colleges and programs they oversee.

The president wants to make it easier for new accreditors to compete with the 19 that are now authorized to work on behalf of the federal government. As it stands, new accreditors looking to be recognized by the government must undergo an arduous process that traditionally takes years. Trump’s order said it should be “transparent, efficient, and not unduly burdensome.”

“Instead of pushing schools to adopt a divisive DEI ideology, accreditors should be focused on helping schools improve graduation rates and graduates’ performance in the labor market,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s for working with philanthropies, a of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The State Bar of California has disclosed that some multiple-choice questions in a problem-plagued bar exam were developed with the aid of artificial intelligence.

The legal licensing body said in a Monday that it will ask the to adjust test scores for those who took its February bar exam.

“The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined,” Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at the University of California, Irvine, Law School, the Los Angeles Times. “I’m almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable.”

In February, the new exam led to complaints after many test-takers were unable to complete their bar exams. The online testing platforms repeatedly crashed before some applicants even started. Others struggled to finish and save essays, experienced screen lags and error messages and could not copy and paste text, the Times earlier.

According to a recent by the State Bar, 100 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions were made by Kaplan and 48 were drawn from a first-year law students exam. A smaller subset of 23 scored questions were made by ACS Ventures, the State Bar’s psychometrician, and developed with artificial intelligence.

“We have confidence in the validity of the (multiple-choice questions) to accurately and fairly assess the legal competence of test-takers,” Leah Wilson, the State Bar’s executive director, told the newspaper in a statement.

Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, told the newspaper, “It’s a staggering admission.”

“The State Bar has admitted they employed a company to have a non-lawyer use AI to draft questions that were given on the actual bar exam,” she said. “They then paid that same company to assess and ultimately approve of the questions on the exam, including the questions the company authored.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The H-1B visa has long been a highly coveted employment visa for foreign citizens with specialized skills to live and work in the U.S., and recent requests from the Trump administration have put greater attention on the program.

The requests for more information from people applying for or renewing H-1B visas come amid heightened tensions over immigration as President Donald Trump seeks to make good on his vow of mass deportations of people in the country illegally.

Much of Trump’s agenda has been focused on arresting people in the country illegally or reversing Biden-era temporary deportation protections. There has been less attention on employment-based visas or other parts of the legal immigration system — though more than 1,000 international students have had their visas or legal status revoked.

The requests for information come as the H-1B visa program is already a source of division within Trump’s Republican Party.

Here’s a look at what the H-1B visa program is, what critics and supporters say about it, and how the administration’s recent questions have raised concerns.

What is an H-1B visa?

The H-1B was created as part of the 1990 Immigration Act.

It is a type of nonimmigrant visa, meaning it allows for a temporary stay in the U.S. and is not intended for people who want to immigrate permanently. Some eventually do, but only after transitioning to different immigration statuses.

An H-1B allows employers to hire foreign workers who have specialized skills and a bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

Who uses H-1B visas?

The visa is most commonly associated with the tech industry. About 60% or more of the H-1B visas approved every year since 2012 have been for computer-related jobs,

But health care facilities, financial institutions, universities and just about any other employer looking to address workforce shortages can and do apply for H-1B visas.

The number of new visas issued annually has been capped at 65,000, plus an additional 20,000 for people with a master’s degree or higher. Some employers, such as universities and nonprofits, are exempt from the limits.

People from India are by far the biggest users of these visas, according to Pew. The organization said that since 2010, the majority of approvals every year have gone to people born in India.

What makes the H-1B program controversial?

The idea behind the H-1B visa is that it allows employers to hire from abroad for jobs that they haven’t been able to fill in the U.S.

Proponents say the visa is a critical tool for hard-to-fill positions. But critics on both sides of the aisle have said that it undercuts U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated. And earlier this year, Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, wrote a scathing saying the program’s real purpose was to “replace American workers with lower-paid workers from abroad who often live as indentured servants.”

The debate over the future of H-1B visas is especially pronounced within the GOP.

On one side are wealthy members of the tech world who support the visas to help bring in more highly skilled workers. On the other side are people of Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his immigration policies and say these visas allow employers to pay foreigners lower wages than if they hired Americans.

The issue played out in a very public spat late last year after Trump tapped Sriram Krishnan, who favors bringing in more skilled immigrants into the U.S., as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy.

What’s going on with reports of unusual letters over H-1B visas?

In recent days, some immigration lawyers have reported receiving unusual requests about clients applying for or renewing H-1B visas or other types of employment-related visas.

Kevin Miner, a partner at global immigration law firm Fragomen, said dozens of members from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, or AILA, received the requests in letters over roughly the last two weeks.

He cited two versions: One says the immigration service has identified “adverse information” related to the visa applicant, and they must schedule an appointment to collect biometrics for the case to proceed.

The second, he said, just says that biometrics are needed without any mention of “adverse information.” Miner said these requests have generally been asked of people applying for or renewing an H-1B visa or an I-140, which is an employee-sponsored green card.

Miner pointed to two things that make these requests unusual: Generally, biometrics aren’t required for these types of visas and, usually, when the government wants more information, its requests are specific.

“It’s usually a back-and-forth process,” said Miner, who chairs a policy and benefits committee for the nonpartisan AILA. “This is different.”

Miner also said that if the government is going to add additional steps to the process, officials would usually go through the notice-and-comment period, which alerts lawyers and applicants of approaching changes.

“That’s not something that they’ve done here,” Miner said.

A spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, said in an emailed statement that they are increasing screening and vetting of all foreign citizens filing for immigration benefits as part of the Trump administration’s “commitment to restoring integrity to our immigration system” and said those efforts had “lapsed” under the previous administration.

“Collecting beneficiary information and biometric data is a necessary part of USCIS’s efforts to promote national security and public safety and to mitigate fraud by conducting screening and vetting in all immigration programs and the agency is proud to be returning to this important work,” agency spokesman Matthew Tragesser said.

What is happening with immigration policy?

The Trump administration has promised mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally, tried to strip hundreds of thousands of people of their deportation protections and is revoking visas of international students.

More than 1,000 international students have had their visas or legal status revoked since early April, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records.

The revocations often come with little notice to either students or their schools, and are being initiated by the government, a departure from past precedent — university officials have largely made administrative updates to the database when a student graduated or fell out of good academic standing.

Miner said people are concerned that similar actions might follow for those on employment-related visas.

“There’s just so much unknown,” he said.

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Associated Press reporter Annie Ma contributed to this report.