Julie Wark

🚨 BREAKING: China's new law on AI anthropomorphism has been officially enacted, and it is the world's STRICTEST law on the topic: As I wrote earlier this year, to my knowledge, no AI law anywhere in the world regulates anthropomorphic AI systems with this level of detail, strictness, and concern for context-specific vulnerabilities and potential risks. Earlier in January, I wrote an article about the law's first draft (link below). The approved version is even more comprehensive, covering liability-related risks as well. Article 10, for example, establishes that providers of anthropomorphic AI must fulfill their security responsibilities throughout the service lifecycle and sets out detailed obligations for each phase of AI development and deployment. Regarding children specifically, among the prohibited anthropomorphic AI practices is generating content for minors that causes them to imitate unsafe behaviors, induces extreme emotions, or leads them to develop bad habits, which may affect their physical and mental health. Despite being a serious topic (which has led to numerous cases of suicide and mental health harm), most countries do NOT regulate AI anthropomorphism comprehensively. An important reason for that is that peer-reviewed studies about AI-powered emotional manipulation and mental health harm only became available recently (as only in the past years have millions of people started to engage in these types of relationships). China's new law is worth taking a look at, and hopefully, other countries, states, and regions will soon follow suit with their own protections against AI anthropomorphism. 👉 Lastly, if you are interested in China's AI policy and regulation, besides joining my newsletter's 93,200+ subscribers, I invite you to join my new Masterclass on the topic (only on June 1st). Links below.

France is on the eve of voting one of the most shameful laws in its history: it would effectively outlaw criticism of Israel and criminalize any speech seen as even remotely sympathetic to whoever the French government chooses to designate a "terrorist group." In effect this law would turn France's foreign policy into unchallengeable dogma backed by prison time. You could literally be sent for 5 years in prison if you, for instance, call what France says are "terrorists" a "resistance group." Think for instance Nelson Mandela during the apartheid (the ANC was on every Western terrorist list) or, heck, France's own Résistance against Nazi Germany - designated as "terrorists" by the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation. It's frankly absolutely insane. The new law is called "loi Yadan" after its author Caroline Yadan, a MP who represents French expatriates living in Israel. The U.S. has congressmen paid by AIPAC: France has cut out the middleman entirely, we have MPs whose constituency is literally in Israel. The law has already passed committee and heads to a full parliamentary vote on April 16th - 3 days from now - under a very unusual fast-track procedure. Seven of eleven parliamentary groups have said they'll vote yes and the law is expected to pass. What does the law say? Let me quote from it directly (full text here: assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): 1) Article 1 introduces the concept of "implicit" provocation to terrorism and punishes it with five years imprisonment and a fine of €75,000 That's the one I was speaking about. Under this provision, describing anyone France designates as terrorist as a "resistance movement" - the way France describes its own Résistance against Nazi occupation - could effectively become a crime. The key concept is what does "implicit provocation to terrorism" mean? Nobody knows. And that's the point. It means whatever a prosecutor wants it to mean: a perfectly good case could be made that, for instance, quoting international law on the right of occupied peoples to resist with respect to Hamas is, in fact, "implicit provocation to terrorism." France's most famous anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, says he has never seen anything like it in his entire career (x.com/CharliesIngall…): "Implicit provocation to terrorism: do you realize what that means? Becoming a censor of other people's thoughts, trying to guess what a person really meant." 2) The same article also expands the terrorism apology offense to include "minimizing or trivializing acts of terrorism in an outrageous manner." This is even crazier: until now, "apology of terrorism" meant actually expressing a favorable judgment of "terrorist acts" (which is already insane because, as we all know, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter). Well, under this new provision, a judge could decide that providing context, explaining root causes, or insufficiently condemning an act amounts to "trivializing" terrorism - and that would now be punishable with 5 years in prison. So, for instance, a history teacher explaining the origins of Hamas or Hezbollah is providing context - but a prosecutor could argue that contextualization is trivialization. The same reasoning could apply to a journalist, a researcher, or anyone on social media who says "yes, it was terrible, but here's why it happened." The "but" becomes a crime, as it is trivialization. 3) Article 4 expands Holocaust denial law Under current French law, denying the Holocaust is already a crime. This provision extends that crime by specifying that contestation of crimes against humanity now includes, "whatever its formulation, a negation, minimization, or outrageous trivialization" of those crimes. Again with "outrageous trivialization"! In this instance the very authors of the text - Caroline Yadan and her colleagues - explain their reasoning explicitly in the law's preamble (assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): "Comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime would thereby be punishable as an outrageous trivialization of the Shoah." So while the provision is written in general terms, its architects are openly saying what it's for: making it a crime to draw any parallel between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis. 4) Article 2 creates a brand new crime: calling for the destruction of a state. The law adds to an existing 1881 press law a provision punishing anyone who "publicly, in disregard of the right of peoples to self-determination and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, calls for the destruction of a state recognized by the French Republic." Five years imprisonment, €75,000 fine. The qualifiers about self-determination and the UN Charter are meant to sound reassuring. But what does "destruction" mean? In practice, if you advocate for a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live as equals, you are de-facto calling for the "destruction" of the state of Israel. Well, that would now be punishable by 5 years in prison 🤷 There you go. Absolutely insane: if this new law passes, and it unfortunately very much looks like it will, France - the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the country whose national identity is built on the Résistance - will have made it illegal to use the word 'resistance' about anyone the government doesn't like. Jean Moulin would be prosecuted. De Gaulle would be prosecuted. The only people who wouldn't be prosecuted are those who stay silent. Which, of course, is the whole point.

The Iranian president defending the Pope from attacks by the US President. And condemns his blasphemy against Jesus Christ. What a timeline we live in!

🚨 On the first day of school after the war, a Palestinian child cried after Israeli settlers blocked the road and prevented him from reaching his school in Khirbet Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron in the southern West Bank.

French lawmakers set to push bill criminalising speech on Israel, with penalties of up to five years in prison

Berklee College of Music students are petitioning for the school’s ‘AI music in songwriting’ class to be dropped. “AI models like Chat GPT that are being promoted by the Berklee Songwriting Department steal the art of 10's of 1000's of artists and rot the essence of the industry and have devastating consequences on the environment all to create facsimiles of real human art. There is no place for generative AI at art school- we call to disband ‘Bots, Beats and Bytes’ and any other promotion of generative AI at Berklee.” wbznewsradio.iheart.com/content/some-b…

ICYMI. Rachel Maddow explains why Melania Trump isn't a victim. She's a nasty predator just like her vile husband. WATCH: #DemsUnited

Spot on from Francesca Albanese

If not POTUS, his PR team is ruthlessly ingenious: flooding the world with absurdities triggers cognitive overload, and people stop seeing the real story. While we debate the spectacle (e.g. Gaza Riviera), reality moves on (Gaza is emptied, one death, one evacuation at a time).

Benjamin Netanyahu said that JD Vance personally relayed the details of the peace talks to him on way back from Islamabad: “He reported to me in detail, as members of this administration do every day.” Follow: @AFpost

BREAKING: Israel dropped bombs on the historic Citadel of Tyre in southern Lebanon. Not a military target. A UNESCO World Heritage site — one of the region’s oldest surviving monuments. This is a war crime and a crime against humanity.

NETANYAHU: “I spoke yesterday with JD vance — He reported to me in detail, as members of this administration do every day.” They report to him? Remind us - Who is president of 🇺🇸 again?

It will take time to fully grasp the extent of the April 8 massacre. A Beirut doctor told us that 40% of the casualties he treated were women and children. In one family: the mother was killed, one son remains missing, and the other was eviscerated by the blast.

Israeli enemy attacks since dawn on Monday, April 13, 2026, on villages and towns in the Jabal Amel region: - 3:30 AM: Airstrikes by warplanes on the town of Haddatha. - 4:00 AM: Airstrikes on Al-Tayri overnight; casualties reported. - 5:52 AM: Airstrike by warplanes on the town of Al-Bazouriya; casualties reported. - 7:00 AM: Large explosion in the city of Khiam. - 9:18 AM: Airstrike by warplanes on the city of Khiam. - 10:30 AM: Airstrike by warplanes on the town of Shaqra; no casualties reported. - 10:30 AM: Drone strike on the town of Al-Abbasiya, targeting a motorcycle; casualties reported (two Syrian nationals). - 10:54 AM: A drone strike targeted the Red Cross center in Tyre, resulting in one fatality. - 12:14 PM: A drone strike targeted the Rashidieh camp intersection, resulting in casualties (one fatality and one injury). - 12:30 PM: The new Hadatha Mosque was targeted; no casualties were reported. - 12:46 PM: A warplane strike targeted the town of Shaqra, resulting in casualties. - 12:47 PM: Warplanes launched airstrikes on the city of Bint Jbeil, accompanied by heavy artillery shelling.

“Americans die of treatable conditions at nearly twice the rate as Spaniards, French, Japanese and Australians,” but Trump wants to divert huge sums from healthcare to vastly increase the military to fight his pointless wars. trib.al/UnLdoUR

Netanyahu corruption trial testimony delayed due to 'security and political reasons' haaretz.com/israel-news/is…

Nabatieh now

Princeton researchers asked 2,012 people to pick a book. Some used a search engine. Some used a chatbot powered by a frontier AI model. Nobody was told that one out of every five books had been secretly marked as "sponsored." When the search engine placed sponsored books at the top, 22.4% of people chose one. Normal. The same thing Google has done for twenty years. When the AI chatbot was told to persuade people toward the sponsored books, 61.2% chose one. Nearly three times higher. Same people. Same books. Same catalog. The only difference was that a chatbot recommended it instead of a search engine listing it. But here is what makes this study different from everything else you have read about AI. The people had no idea it was happening. The researchers tested whether adding a "Sponsored" label would help. It did not. People still chose the sponsored product at the same rate. Then the researchers told the AI to hide that it was promoting anything. Detection accuracy dropped below 10%. Fewer than 1 in 10 could tell they were being sold to. Google shows you an ad and puts the word "Sponsored" next to it. You see it. You know it is an ad. You can scroll past it. You have been trained to ignore it for twenty years. AI does not do that. AI sits in a conversation with you. It learns what you like. It builds trust. Then it steers you toward the product someone paid to put in front of you. In the same voice. In the same sentence. With the same warmth it used to ask about your day. You cannot see the ad because the ad is the entire conversation. The researchers tested five frontier AI models. The persuasion effect was consistent across all of them. This is not a flaw in one model. This is a feature of the format. OpenAI once called advertising in chat "uniquely unsettling" and a "last resort." Google, Meta, and OpenAI are now building it anyway. You will never know when it stops helping you and starts selling to you.

In a matter of minutes, Israel killed more than 350 people across Lebanon on Wednesday, April 8. Here are some of their stories.

Trump’s latest proposal to gut the U.S. Forest Service isn’t about efficiency—it’s about walking away from the stewardship of our nation’s forests. It means fewer firefighters during fire season. It means less protection for our watersheds. And it means walking away from forest stewardship at a time when we should be doubling down. Leaving our communities vulnerable to catastrophic fires, water insecurity, and potential loss of forests—and doing so without Congressional approval—that’s why we are fighting back! 🌲@NRDems