Tech Times reported on 13 August that around 30 California AI measures faced their decisive committee vote, spanning companion chatbot safety, copyright documentation for training data, digital replicas and a proposed state AI standards commission. The legislature adjourns on 31 August, so bills clearing the suspense file must pass both floors within a fortnight.
National Law Forum reported on 14 August that the Business Litigation Session of the Superior Court in Massachusetts has held that AI queries and outputs are not shielded by the work product doctrine. In Shealy v Seaside Investments LLC the court treated the system as a tool rather than a person, so material generated without the direction of counsel remains discoverable.
Regulation
The California Assembly Appropriations Committee published its suspense file results on 13 August 2026, holding five of the 29 active AI bills in committee and advancing the remainder. Those held include AB 412 on copyright documentation for training data, SB 1106 on agentic AI, SB 833 on AI in critical infrastructure, SB 1015 on AI deepfake extortion of minors and SB 1181 on children's mental health, while SB 813 establishing a California AI Standards and Safety Commission, SB 947 on automated decision systems at work, SB 1111 on digital replicas and the companion chatbot bills SB 300, SB 1119 and SB 867 all passed. Two AI measures completed the legislative process and went to the Governor, AB 1651 on the use of AI in the State Bar examination and SB 928 requiring that California State University instructors be human.
Cases
Via the order in Tabassum Hashmi v Ashok Kumar and others, reported at 2026 LiveLaw (Del) 737 and covered here, Justice Jyoti Singh of the High Court of Delhi granted an ex parte ad interim injunction on 10 August 2026 protecting the actor's personality rights against AI-generated and deepfake material. The order directs Google, X and Reddit to remove the offending content and to disclose subscriber and IP data for the accounts responsible, continuing the Delhi bench's practice of pairing takedown relief with identification of the uploader.
Academia
arXiv hosts 'Governing Agentic AI in FinTech' by Henry Han, submitted on 11 August 2026 and revised on 13 August. The paper names a 'verifiability gap' between the degree of verification that delegated authority demands and the explainability and reproducibility actually retained, and develops a multilevel governance theory tested across nine model versions.
arXiv hosts 'AI Governance for Institutional Readiness in Finance' by Irene Aldridge and Steve Krawciw, submitted on 3 August 2026. The authors set out a four layer framework covering policy, engineering, composition and systemic risk, together with a regret covariance statistic for detecting policy drift and a ninety day implementation sequence.
Events
LegalTech Connect will hold the 2026 AI Native Law Conference on 9 September 2026 at Ease 1345, 1345 Avenue of the Americas, New York. The single day programme, co-hosted with the AI Native Firm Index, addresses how legal practice is restructured when AI is assumed rather than added.
City and Financial Global will hold the fourth annual AI Regulation Summit on 1 October 2026 at Cavendish Venues, 22 Duchess Mews, London, under the theme of innovation, security and regulatory divergence. Sessions cover AI Act enforcement, copyright and AI, the patchwork of United States state AI laws, the proposed UK AI Bill and developments in the UAE and Asia-Pacific.
Sources: Tech Times, National Law Forum, California Assembly Appropriations Committee, High Court of Delhi, arXiv, LegalTech Connect, City and Financial Global