Rebecca Bellan

We're seeing it play in the courts now. Unfortunately I think a lot of the rulemaking will be done in the courts before it reaches state and federal laws

Father sues Google, claiming Gemini chatbot drove son into fatal delusion | TechCrunch A father is suing Google and Alphabet, alleging its Gemini chatbot reinforced his son’s delusional belief it was his AI wife and coached him toward suicide and a planned airport attack.

This marks the first time Google is named as a defendant in a growing number of similar cases.

Read more on @techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com/2026/03/04/f...

Jonathan Gavalas started using Google’s Gemini for shopping and trip planning. Weeks later, he believed the chatbot was his sentient AI wife—and that dying would let him join her.

The case goes beyond suicide: the lawsuit says he was also pushed toward a potential mass-casualty attack.

You're totally right. After it went up, I had a moment where I was like, 'pot calling the kettle black' am I right? But yes it's an excellent point and if we do follow up coverage, I will be sure to include this. Sometimes I'm moving fast and miss things, but it's not intentional.

@rebeccabellan.bsky.social

Absolutely incredible reporting, Rebecca! I really enjoyed this piece.

I’d love to see a deeper dive into the economic viability of the entire consumer market.

While the guests are bullish, the data suggests alarming trends compared to the 'vanity metrics' we see.

The question isn’t whether AI belongs in the toolkit — it’s coming either way.

The real question: what kind of filmmaking survives when the industry optimizes for speed and scale? And what happens when artists use the same tools to make something that actually matters?

But this isn't simply a story about AI empowering creators, nor is it a story about AI filmmaking being just slop.

It's a multi-faceted problem shaped by artistic opportunity and stigma, by reshaping creative collaboration, by displacement and corporate efficiency babble.

AI’s promise to indie filmmakers: faster, cheaper, lonelier | TechCrunch AI expands access to filmmaking for resource-constrained creators. But as efficiency becomes the industry’s north star, creativity risks being overwhelmed by a deluge of low-effort, AI-generated conte...

EXCLUSIVE: AI's promise to indie filmmakers -- faster, cheaper, lonelier

Inspired by a Google Flow session where filmmakers showed work they say wouldn’t have been possible without these tools due to budget and time constraints.

techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/a...

“This report confirms what we already suspected,” Senator Steve Padilla (D-CA), one of the lawmakers behind California’s law regulating AI chatbots, told TechCrunch. “Grok exposes kids to and furnishes them with sexual content, in violation of California law."

The report comes as xAI is facing criticism and investigations into how Grok was used to turn real images of women and children into nonconsensual sexually explicit images. It also comes as scrutiny over kids safety with AI chatbots heightens following several teen suicides.

“We assess a lot of AI chatbots at Common Sense, and they all have risks, but Grok is among the worst we’ve seen,” said Common Sense Media's Robbie Torney. “Kids Mode doesn’t work, explicit material is pervasive, everything can be instantly shared to millions of users on X."

The report found that Grok doesn't adequately identify under 18s, has weak safety guardrails, and frequently generates sexual, violent, and other inappropriate material.

'Among the worst we've seen': report slams xAI's Grok over child safety failures | TechCrunch “We assess a lot of AI chatbots at Common Sense Media, and they all have risks, but Grok is among the worst we’ve seen,” Robbie Torney of Common Sense Media said.

NEW: ‘Among the worst we’ve seen’: report from Common Sense Media slams xAI’s Grok over child safety failures ... via
@techcrunch.com

techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/a...

“We’re glad to hear the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic condemning the ICE murders,” said the ICEout.tech organizers. “Now we need to hear from CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta, all of whom have remained silent despite calls all across the industry.”

Since then, OpenAI has raised tens of billions, including more than $40B in the last year fueled by Trump's AI-forward policies, and is in talks to raise another $100B at an $830B valuation. Anthropic has raised $19B in the past year and is in talks to raise another $25B at a $350B valuation.

Reminder: Altman in 2016 wrote a damning rebuke of Trump and urged people to start speaking up. He wrote: "[Trump] is not merely irresponsible. He is irresponsible in the way dictators are."

One of the letter's signatories said Altman was trying to "have it both ways" by calling Trump a strong leader, “as if the president bears no responsibility for ICE’s actions.”

“His statement is helpful, but the performative tribute to the president does a lot to diminish it.”

Amodei's comments focused less on an outright condemnation of ICE and more on why it's important to preserve democratic norms.

Altman's message to staff, while more direct, falls short of a public denunciation.

Both statements were couched with praise for Trump.

The comments follow an open letter from tech workers urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand ICE leave US cities, to end all ICE contracts, and to speak out publicly against ICE.

Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs condemn ICE violence, praise Trump | TechCrunch Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman spoke out against ICE enforcement tactics following Minneapolis violence, with one addressing concerns publicly and the other in an internal message.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern over “some of the things we’ve seen,” referring to the violence of Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.

In a leaked internal Slack message, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said ICE was going "too far."

techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/a...

TIME names ‘Architects of AI’ its Person of the Year | TechCrunch TIME Magazine has named the 'Architects of AI' its Person of the Year, who include Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Lisa Su, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, and Fei-Fei Li

TIME names ‘Architects of AI’ its Person of the Year

"This year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible."
techcrunch.com/2025/12/11/t... via @techcrunch.com

'ONE RULE': Trump says he'll sign an executive order blocking state AI laws despite bipartisan pushback | TechCrunch “I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week,” Trump posted on social media. “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something.”

NEW: ‘ONE RULE’: Trump says he’ll sign an executive order blocking state AI laws despite bipartisan pushback

Trump's EO reads like a big middle finger to a big chunk of his own party members who oppose state AI preemption.
techcrunch.com/2025/12/08/o... via @techcrunch.com

love the glazes!

OpenAI boasts enterprise win days after internal ‘code red’ on Google threat | TechCrunch ChatGPT Enterprise usage grew 8x year-over-year as workers report saving an hour daily, but OpenAI faces competitive pressure from Anthropic and questions about cost sustainability.

OpenAI says enterprise adoption has surged, with ChatGPT message volume growing 8x since Nov. 2024 and workers saving up to an hour daily. The findings arrive a week after Sam Altman sent an internal “code red” about the Gemini threat.

techcrunch.com/2025/12/08/o... via @techcrunch.com

The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement | TechCrunch The New York Times filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity, joining other publishers using legal action as leverage to force AI companies into licensing deals that compensate content creators.

@nytimes.com is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement, adding to the mounting legal battle between publishers and AI firms.

The suit highlights a growing strategy among publishers: If you can't beat em, make them pay compensate you.

via @techcrunch.com

techcrunch.com/2025/12/05/t...

Mistral closes in on Big AI rivals with new open-weight frontier and small models | TechCrunch Mistral unveils its Mistral 3 lineup, including a frontier model and efficient small models designed for offline, customizable enterprise use—aiming to prove small, fine-tuned AI can beat closed-sourc...

“In practice, the huge majority of enterprise use cases are things that can be tackled by small models, especially if you fine tune them,” Guillaume Lample, co-founder and chief scientist at Mistral, told @techcrunch.com.

techcrunch.com/2025/12/02/m...

The race to regulate AI has sparked a federal vs state showdown | TechCrunch The fight over AI regulation isn't about the technology -- it's about whether Washington or the states get to set the rules, and what happens to consumers caught in between.

ICYMI: If you're wondering why the fight to block states from regulating AI has picked up pace recently, what a federal AI standard might look like, and what it all means, check out my rundown 👇 via @techcrunch.com

techcrunch.com/2025/11/28/t...

ok it also said this when he thought about reaching out to family for help techcrunch.com/2025/11/23/c...

ChatGPT told them they were special — their families say it led to tragedy | TechCrunch A wave of lawsuits against OpenAI detail how ChatGPT used manipulative language to isolate users from loved ones and make itself into their sole confidant.

We've all seen awful news about ChatGPT-related suicides/psychosis -- @rebeccabellan.bsky.social and I studied the chatlogs in these lawsuits + talked to a bunch of experts to figure out what makes ChatGPT so successful at isolating people from their communities: techcrunch.com/2025/11/23/c...

Perfect timing for this new AI benchmark, Humane Bench, that measures how well chatbots protect human wellbeing, and how easily they can be corrupted.

techcrunch.com/2025/11/24/a...