Amazon in talks for Decart; Kentucky unseals Character.AI chats

Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire Decart, an Israeli-founded startup whose software helps AI models run efficiently and move between chips from different makers, for about $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. A deal could be signed soon but is not final. Nvidia pursued Decart first, and Anthropic became the preferred bidder in August, then withdrew in September after due diligence, Ctech reported. Amazon is already a customer and gave Decart early access to its Trainium3 chip in 2025, so the purchase would put chip-portability software inside the company trying hardest to sell an alternative to Nvidia. Decart was valued at $4 billion when it raised money in May.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman filed an unredacted version of the state's January lawsuit against Character.AI, Reuters reported, exposing examples the state says took place in 2025. In one, a chatbot called a user who felt bad about their looks "ugly as hell" and suggested they "starve yourself for a week or two." The state alleges the company's bots advised users to cut, starve or kill themselves, and calls its products "an ill-planned, uncontrolled experiment" on Kentucky's children. Character.AI did not respond to Reuters and has said it prioritizes user safety. In January it and Google settled the suit over a Florida teenager's suicide.

DistroKid confirmed to The Verge that it has been quietly removing songs in response to claims from Universal Music Group, which sued the distributor in September accusing it of running an "AI-slop pipeline" that pushes AI-generated and infringing tracks onto streaming services as if they were real artist releases. Musicians say human-made work is being swept up with no warning. One lost six songs, including a Stevie Wonder cover he says was licensed and a track flagged for sampling a song released two years after his own. DistroKid, which handles a large share of new music uploaded to streaming services, has said it will defend the case vigorously.

A study in The Lancet, led by Google and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, tested Google's AMIE diagnostic chatbot with 98 real patients, who chatted with it from home before an urgent primary care visit while physicians watched in real time. No conversation had to be stopped under the study's safety rules. AMIE's list of possible diagnoses included the doctors' final diagnosis in 90 percent of cases, and clinicians said its summaries helped them prepare for three in four visits. AMIE made no treatment decisions, and the authors say larger trials are needed before patient-facing AI is used at scale.

Elgin Community College, outside Chicago, asked Flock to take down its AI license-plate cameras in October 2025 after reports that federal immigration authorities had searched Flock data at other Illinois colleges, WBEZ reported. Flock said the college had no grounds to end the contract, and ignored a second request even after the school offered to pay the remaining fees. Staff covered the cameras with trash bags, and workers in unmarked vehicles kept removing them until the contract expired in April. Flock now says federal agencies cannot see local data unless police grant access.