Thelonious ICYMI — Edition 10 — 11 June 2026
Welcome to the 10th edition of ICYMI — your weekly briefing on the developments shaping the AI legal and regulatory landscape, curated from Thelonious.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s inside this week:
- Jess Asato vs. xAI —UK Member of Parliament Jess Asato alleges that xAI’s Grok chatbot generated fake, sexualised images of her without her consent. The claim is brought under the Data Protection Act and for the tort of misuse of private information, and seeks damages alongside an injunction against further conduct. The choice of route matters. By framing this as a data protection and privacy claim rather than reaching for image-rights legislation that does not yet exist, Asato is litigating a frontier-AI output with the tools already on the statute book. The first time a sitting UK parliamentarian has taken an AI developer to court over its outputs. It will not be the last.
- The Great American Act — A comprehensive US bill proposes a regulatory framework for “frontier AI models,” mandating transparency, risk assessments, and third-party audits for the largest developers. It would establish a Center for AI Standards and Innovation to set guidelines and oversee compliance, and reaches into workforce impact, cybersecurity, R&D and — the clause to watch — federal preemption of state law. Still a bill, not law. But if the preemption provision survives, it would override the fast-growing patchwork of state AI statutes — which makes it the most consequential federal move yet..
- American Federation of Musicians vs. WMG & UMG — The American Federation of Musicians alleges that Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group breached their collective bargaining agreement by failing to share proceeds from settlements and licensing deals struck with AI companies Suno and Udio. The union argues that using members’ recordings to train AI amounts to a “new use” under the agreement — one that contractually entitles musicians to compensation. The “new use” theory reframes AI training as a contract question, not a copyright one — a route that sidesteps the fair-use battleground entirely. If it holds, the royalty fight moves from the courtroom to the bargaining table.
- New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act — A New York bill would require software crawlers — including AI agents — that access “covered news sources” to disclose their identity and purpose. It targets “stealth crawlers” that fail to do so, particularly where they cause harm or economic damage to the source. A state-level disclosure mandate aimed squarely at the scraping that feeds most AI training. Read it against the federal preemption clause above, and you can see the collision coming.
- Canada’s National New AI Strategy — Canada has published a national strategy to harness AI for economic and social benefit, built on six pillars: protecting citizens, building skills, driving adoption across the economy, establishing sovereign compute infrastructure, scaling domestic AI companies, and forming trusted international partnerships. “Sovereign compute” is the tell. The contest is quietly shifting from who regulates AI to who owns the hardware underneath it.