AI news, 15 July: OpenAI proposes to give Washington a stake in itself

OpenAI floats a government stake. According to CNBC, Sam Altman has pitched the Trump administration on handing the US government roughly a 5 percent stake in OpenAI, worth about $42.6 billion at the company's recent $852 billion valuation. Altman reportedly took the idea directly to President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and has floated a broader plan in which every major US AI company would set aside 5 percent of its equity for a public fund modeled on Alaska's oil-wealth dividend program. The proposal is still just that, a proposal, but it signals how closely government and the AI industry's finances may become intertwined.

Publishers sue Google over Gemini's training data. Publishers Hachette, Elsevier and Cengage, together with author Scott Turow, have filed a copyright lawsuit against Google in federal court in New York, according to the industry newsletter AI Weekly. The suit alleges Google scraped millions of copyrighted books and journal articles, including from pirated sources, to train its Gemini models without permission. It is only an allegation at this stage, but it adds to a growing pile of lawsuits testing whether training AI on copyrighted text requires consent.

Apple sues OpenAI over alleged stolen secrets. Apple has filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and several former Apple employees of misappropriating confidential product designs, engineering documents and supplier information tied to unreleased hardware, according to the newsletter Daily AI News. The claims are unproven, but the case highlights growing friction between the two companies just as both race to build new kinds of AI-powered devices.

Regulators start treating AI cloud giants as a financial risk. The European Central Bank has given banks until 31 October to demonstrate they could survive a shock caused by failing AI systems, according to AI Weekly, while UK regulators have placed Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle under the kind of oversight normally reserved for institutions whose collapse could destabilise the financial system. The move reflects growing official concern that banks and markets now depend heavily on a handful of AI and cloud providers.

OpenAI's first gadget may be a screenless speaker. Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that OpenAI's first consumer hardware product will be a movable, screen-free smart speaker designed to act as an AI companion in the home. OpenAI has not officially confirmed the device or a launch date, but the report suggests the company wants to move its AI assistant beyond phone and computer screens and into everyday physical spaces.