Grokipedia Appears to Have Completely Broken

 Grokipedia Appears to Have Completely Broken and Nobody Noticed

"As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months."

By Victor Tangermann

Published Aug 6, 2026 1:54 PM EDT
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We certainly wouldn’t blame you for having completely forgotten that last year, Elon Musk tried to reinvent Wikipedia because he thought it was too woke.

In October, his AI startup xAI launched Grokipedia, named after its AI chatbot. The encyclopedia stole human-written and edited pages from Wikipedia wholesale and ran them through a large language model, which also fielded user-submitted edits, to better reflect Musk’s contorted worldviews.

The site was hardly an exemplary of objectivity. It was quickly found to heavily cite an infamous neo-Nazi forum as a source of information, desperately tried to paint Tesla’s Cybertruck as a successful and desirable electric pickup truck, and validated Musk’s favorite conspiracy theories. But it was a major cultural moment, garnering countless stories in the media and discussions on podcasts over Musk’s attempt to control the spread of information.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the desperate attempt to twist the largest online encyclopedia in human history into an extension of an almost-trillionaire’s bigoted mind appears to have ground to a screeching halt — and, damningly, barely anybody seems to have noticed.

According to a new investigation by Lawfare, Grokipedia appears to have entirely stopped updating itself sometime earlier this year. Reviewing suggested edits from humans has also ground to a halt.

“As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months,” Lawfare concluded of the site, which is now owned by SpaceX since it merged with Musk’s AI efforts.

Worse yet, the site’s edit log appears to have broken completely as well, making it impossible to track which user-suggested changes were “accepted” or “rejected” by the AI.

By January, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism had already observed that xAI’s Grok was making more edits to its own articles than acting on human-suggested ones, suggesting a bottoming out of interest for the project.

Since then, it has turned into a ghost town, a completely redundant and misinformation-filled copy of Wikipedia, which remains one of the last bastions of human-edited and verified sources of information on the internet.

Even when Lawfare submitted an “uncomplicated factual update” about SpaceX having launched its IPO in June — an irrefutable fact that any allegedly “open source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge” should probably include — the Grokipedia entry remained stagnant.

Even pages that are purportedly drawing millions of views aren’t updating. The most recent approved update Lawfare could locate — to the entry about OpenAI’s ChatGPT — dates back to April 24.

As of today, Lawfare found that that there are 13,002 suggestions that “sit unresolved, trapped ‘in review.'”

“Altogether, what we found was that the ‘live’ change feed is gone, past decisions were retroactively reverted without explanation, new decisions are not being issued, and article text appears frozen (and, in some cases, outdated),” the publication concluded. “We do not know whether xAI is preparing a major revision or has altogether abandoned active development of the project.”

It’s a precarious situation. Despite having been abandoned, Similarweb data suggests Grokipedia received over six million visits in June alone. Hundreds of thousands of sites are also still citing Musk’s encyclopedia, which could spread misinformation even further.

Futurism has reached out to SpaceX for an update on the project, but considering the reputation of Musk’s companies and their refusal to interact with the media, we’re not holding our breath for a response.

More on Grokipedia: Elon Musk Is Not Beating the Allegations: Grokipedia Cites a Hardcore Nazi Website 42 Times



Victor Tangermann
Senior Editor


I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

TCL built a 22-speaker soundbar for turning living rooms into movie theaters

TCL built a 22-speaker soundbar for turning living rooms into movie theaters, but it’s skipping the US
Here's everything inside TCL's new flagship Q95K soundbar, from its Bang & Olufsen tuning to its 360-degree sound tech.
By Shikhar Mehrotra Published July 27, 2026 11:45 AM

TCL

I’ve used enough soundbars to know most “360-degree audio” claims are marketing fluff dressed up as innovation. TCL’s new flagship might actually have the hardware to back that claim up for once.

The Q95K is TCL’s new flagship soundbar. It’s built around an 11.1.4 channel Hi-Fi architecture and tuned in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. To me, it sounds like a serious attempt to compete with premium home theater setups.TCL
So what’s actually inside this thing?

The system spreads 1420W of peak power across 22 independent speaker units. The exceptional output is split between a main bar handling seven horizontal channels, two overhead channels, and a subwoofer channel, along with wireless surround speakers covering rear, rear-side, and rear-overhead audio.

This is the kind of speaker layout that doesn’t only make things louder, but also excels at creating a convincing sense of sound moving around you, especially while watching movies.

A three-way acoustic design covers a wide 30Hz to 20kHz frequency range while still keeping distortion under 1%. The device uses neodymium magnets and aluminum diaphragms for clarity in the mids and highs.

Bass comes from a dual-engine subwoofer with opposing 7-inch drivers designed to cancel out cabinet resonance, while 12 separate amplifier chips drive individual speakers to cut down on crosstalk. These additions address the biggest problems with high-powered soundbars: muddy bass and messy audio separation.TCL
What about the rest of the lineup, and can you buy it yet?

TCL’s 360-degree sound field tech leans on software, adapting via the TCL app regardless of your wall layout. Connectivity covers HDMI 2.1 with eARC, Wi-Fi 6, and AirPlay 2, and the floating base design works for both desktop and wall-mounted setups.

TCL also launched two smaller siblings: the Q85K (16 units, 1180W) and Q75K (14 units, 580W). Unfortunately, none of the soundbars are available in the United States right now. The company already sells its flagship TVs and other audio products in the region.

All three are currently China-only, priced at 7,999 yuan (~$1,181), 5,999 yuan (~$886), and 4,699 yuan (~$694) respectively, with no confirmed global release yet.



Shikhar Mehrotra
News Writer
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For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…

German rail network to ban alcohol from 5,400 train stations by October, with some exemptions

German rail network to ban alcohol from 5,400 train stations by October, with some exemptions


Copyright Photo by Nicole Herrero on Unsplash
By Mike Starling & AP
Published on 24/07/2026 - 12:17 GMT+2•Updated 14:22
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German rail network to ban alcohol from 5,400 train stations by October, with some exemptions

Germany's national railway operator Deutsche Bahn will introduce a ban on alcohol at all 5,400 stations by 15 October. There will be exemptions, however, including for station bars and restaurants.


Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway operator, has announced that it will ban alcohol consumption at all stations on its network in an effort to improve security and cleanliness for employees and passengers.


The ban will be introduced in a phased approach at all 5,400 stations by 15 October, though there will be exemptions, including for station bars and restaurants.

Bans have already been introduced at 30 stations, among them in Cologne, Hamburg and Munich. Berlin's central and Gesundbrunnen stations will follow on 1 September, along with some others, before the measure is expanded nationwide.

“We have observed too often that violence increases where too much alcohol flows,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla said in a statement.

She pointed to a “brutal and senseless attack" last week in which an intoxicated passenger is alleged to have beaten and kicked a member of security staff during a ticket check. The employee fell out of the moving train's door and was injured.

People who flout the ban will be kicked out of stations and multiple offenders could be given a permanent ban from the premises.

Deutsche Bahn said in-station caterers will be exempted from the ban and people will still be allowed to carry closed bottles and cans of alcohol in their luggage or shopping bags. The ban won't apply on board trains. Alcoholic drinks are sold in dining cars on many long-distance trains.

The European Union’s most populous country has a railway network totalling some 33,400 kilometres in length, used by an average 50,000 trains per day. Deutsche Bahn's infrastructure division says that makes it Europe’s biggest network.

Mom Who Travels For Work Builds AI Clone of Herself to Keep Her Teenage Son Company

Mom Who Travels For Work Builds AI Clone of Herself to Keep Her Teenage Son Company

Futurism · an hour ago
by Frank Landymore · Artificial Intelligence


AI-obsessed moms and dads are using the tech for parenting in bizarre and downright dystopian ways that’ll bring out your inner luddite.

In a new Business Insider piece, a cognitive neuroscientist named Sarah Baldeo described how she spent the past year traveling for work. Her solution to stay present for her 15-year-old son while she was away: building a custom AI clone of herself.

Baldeo says she programmed the chatbot with her personality by uploading screenshots of texts between her and her son, as well as documents outlining her values and family rules. She encouraged her son to ask the AI advice — which he did.

Being a teenager, the son used the chatbot in some creative ways. One of the questions he asked the AI was how to convince his flesh and blood mom to let him hang out at a coffee shop in Chicago, producing the kind of platitudinal spiel we’ve come to expect from the tech. (“Your mom very much values new experiences,” it began.)

“My instinctual reaction after the fact was, ‘oh my gosh, I was manipulated by my own reasoning,'” Baldeo told BI. “I reflected on it and I thought, that’s a really clever way to use it, because that’s not how I built it.”

Parents have been experimenting with using AI to make their lives a little easier since the tech went mainstream, but it now feels like it’s gaining more momentum than before.

Some of the biggest advocates have been tech leaders. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently recommended that parents could connect their family calendars to ChatGPT and use the AI to create podcasts that could talk to kids about their day and interests while riding in the car to school. He previously said that he couldn’t imagine “figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,” admitting that he heavily relies on the AI to help him be a father.

AI companies are capitalizing on this niche. BI spoke to a couple who are interested in using an AI wearable called Omi that constantly listens in on your daily life (the father is pushing for it, while the mother is skeptical). One custom feature it supports called Parent Whisperer records and summarizes conversations that parents have with their child, according to BI, and can supposedly alert parents when their child might be feeling upset by listening to the tone of their voice.

Meta, meanwhile, is working on an AI app called “StoryKit” that automatically generates and reads personalized bedtime stories for children. Numerous online services already let parents generate AI children’s stories that they can insert their offspring into.

The social network for moms app Peanut is also taking note of this trend. President of Peanut Michelle Battersby said her team noticed that moms were asking community members if they agreed with the parenting advice they got from an AI, instead of solely trusting the AI’s advice. Its takeaway from this was perhaps counterintuitive: Peanut added an AI tool that would search the Peanut community for answers and regurgitate them back to the uncertain, inquiring parent.

“We don’t see moms using AI to make parenting more efficient,” she told BI. “We see them coming to AI to help them navigate uncertainty.”

Of course, perhaps these parents should be worried about the long-term cognitive and social effects for both parent and child of constantly talking to and relying on AI chatbots.

More on AI: Homeschool Parents Are Planning Lessons With ChatGPT

The post Mom Who Travels For Work Builds AI Clone of Herself to Keep Her Teenage Son Company appeared first on Futurism.

Someone just got the first shot of anti-aging meds

 Someone just got the first shot of anti-aging meds

Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

Push your mid-life crisis a few decades, you might be here awhile. Life Biosciences, a Boston-based longevity company, just started the first FDA-approved human clinical trial to turn back time on old cells. The trial is arguably the biggest tangible step yet for the longevity industry, which has historically failed to deliver on many of its life-extending promises. How it works: Scientists injected their ER-100 drug into the eye of a patient suffering from glaucoma, attempting to rejuvenate cells in the optic nerve and restore sight. Life Biosciences is hoping to use this technology, known as cellular reprogramming, on other organs like the liver (and maybe someday the brain). Don’t expect a pill to take you back to 21 any time soon. This trial is still in its beginning stages, and cellular reprogramming led to cancerous cells forming in some early research in mice. Plus, the company’s co-founder, Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, has a history of overhyping his longevity treatments. Big picture: The long road to anti-aging isn’t stopping billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman, or Big Pharma companies like Eli Lilly and Merck, from dumping cash into other longevity startups.

Musk Leaves Room For a Potential SpaceX-Tesla Merger

 Musk Leaves Room For a Potential SpaceX-Tesla Merger

First came xAI-SpaceX. Now brace yourselves for SpaceXAI-Tesla.
BY ECE YILDIRIMPUBLISHED JULY 22, 2026, 11:39 PM ET

READING TIME 2 MINUTES

Elon Musk © FotoField / Shutterstock
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Elon Musk has a lot of companies, and lately his hobby has been mergers.

Earlier this year, the billionaire’s space company SpaceX acquired his artificial intelligence company xAI (now SpaceXAI) in a $1.25 trillion deal. The joint entity, known just as SpaceX, went public in a record $75 billion IPO earlier this summer (though its stock has been trending down since).


On the heels of that financial success, people are largely expecting Musk to further capitalize on that hype and merge his electric vehicle company Tesla with SpaceX. The two companies already work together on a lot, including the integration of SpaceXAI’s Grok chatbot into Tesla’s vehicles and a giant join-venture chip factory in Texas called the Terafab.

When asked about it by analysts in Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday, Musk avoided answering the question.

“Well, I mean, as you can tell from all the many collaborations on so many fronts with SpaceX, there’s more and more overlap, especially with the Terafab, that’s really going to be a gigantic project,” Musk answered. “But obviously, you know, we can’t talk about combining companies, that kind of thing, on earnings calls.”

Then Musk went on what sounded like a sales pitch for how he thinks SpaceX can further Tesla’s mission. He said SpaceX’s Starlink can ensure better and more expansive connectivity for Tesla’s autonomous vehicles like the Cybercab, even in any “Bermuda triangles with lack of cellular connectivity,” and promised the merits of integrating SpaceXAI’s Grok into Tesla’s Optimus robots, a plan that he debuted earlier this year in a project called “Digital Optimus.”

Following Musk’s answer, analysts seem to have upped their bets that a merger is indeed on the horizon.

“Going into the call, I thought there was an 80% chance the two companies come together in the next few years,” investment company Deepwater’s co-founder and managing partner Gene Munster said in a post on X. “I’m raising that to 90%.”

This latest earnings report left investors with more questions than answers. The company’s stock was down after the report dropped, as the company’s increasing expenses poured into AI have started to weigh on its financials. Even though revenue came above expectations, the company’s earnings per share (a metric that shows how much profit a company makes per share of its stock) was down way below market expectations.

Tesla is expecting to spend more than $25 billion this year, largely due to AI. That financial commitment helped drive the company’s free cash flow negative this past quarter.

“This is a massive capex year, but I’m confident that all the things that we’re investing in will yield incredible returns,” Musk said at the call, in an effort to justify the numbers.

Musk said he specifically asked his team to spend money “as fast as we can without it being too wasteful,” because aiming for “extremely high efficiency” spending would allegedly only slow down the amount of innovation and production that the company has been aiming for.

“We’re bringing an incredible amount of construction and production growth in so many different arenas simultaneously,” Musk claimed. “I think probably this is the fastest industrial scale up since World War II in America.”

13 executives who left OpenAI in 2026

13 executives who left OpenAI in 2026
By Katherine Li , Lauren Edmonds ,and Brent D. Griffiths

OpenAI continues to undergo significant leadership shake-ups, with multiple senior executives departing in 2026. Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
Aug 26, 2026, 7:22 AM GMT-7





OpenAI's revolving door is still spinning.

The ChatGPT maker has lost a string of senior leaders in 2026, including former operating chief Brad Lightcap, applications CEO Fidji Simo, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser, and executives overseeing marketing, enterprise products, science, safety, and ethics. Some left to start new ventures, while some stepped back for health reasons.

The departures follow another year of turnover in 2025, when OpenAI lost its chief people and communications officers, a top researcher who went on to launch an AI-science startup, and at least seven researchers recruited by Meta.

Here are the prominent OpenAI leaders who have headed for the exits in 2026.


Denise Dresser
Denise Dresser is leaving her role as OpenAI's chief revenue officer. Bloomberg/Getty Images


OpenAI announced in August that its chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, is leaving the company. Dresser began the position in December 2025.

"Denise will leave OpenAI to pursue other opportunities following a transition period, during which she will work closely with the business team to support our customers," the company wrote in a blog post.

Dali Rajic will take over the role.

Brad Lightcap
Leigh Vogel/Getty Images The Hill & Valley Forum


Brad Lightcap, who worked at OpenAI since 2018, announced his departure on X in August. Lightcap told his followers that he's leaving the startup "to start something new."

"Over the last few months, I've been focused on the next horizon and what would stand in the way of mission success. I believe there are a few important new things the world will need to get right as we enter this next period," Lightcap said on X. "I'll have more to share soon, but I believe in OpenAI more than ever and am excited to help you all advance the mission from a different vantage point."

Lightcap began his tenure at OpenAI as chief financial officer before transitioning to chief operating officer in 2022. In April, OpenAI said Lightcap moved to a role focused on special projects.

Fidji Simo
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images


In July, Fidji Simo announced she would step down from her role as OpenAI's CEO of applications and transition to a part-time advisor role. Simo, who was diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, in 2019, initially took medical leave in April.

"Over the last seven years, I've spent countless hours in doctors' offices, dealing with symptoms, treatments, insurance, uncertainty, and all the invisible work that comes with being a patient," Simo wrote on X in July. "Like millions of others living with chronic illness, I've experienced firsthand how difficult healthcare can be to navigate, even when you have every possible advantage."

Simo became the CEO of applications in May 2025.

Kevin Weil
Bloomberg/Getty Images


Kevin Weil announced his departure on X in April.

"It's been a mind-expanding two years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science," he said.

Weil first joined OpenAI in 2024 as its chief product officer. He later served as vice president of OpenAI for Science, an initiative to build an AI-powered platform to accelerate scientific discovery, starting in October 2025.

Currently, Weil heads an AI science startup that sought a valuation of at least $750 million.

Bill Peebles


Bill Peebles worked as a research scientist at OpenAI for three years before leaving the company in April 2026. Peebles served as the head of Sora, an AI model that uses text prompts to create videos.

"While the original Sora ignited a huge amount of investment in video across the industry, it took the next generation of models with Sora 2 for the broader public to understand the transformation happening," Peeble said on X. "I'm proud of all the sleepless nights before and after the launch this team endured in order to deploy the technology in a responsible way and help steer societal norms."

The video generation AI model first became available to users in December 2024. Nine months later, OpenAI released an updated model — Sora 2 — and an app meant to rival social media sites.

Although the app drummed up major hype, its momentum quickly faded.

OpenAI shut down Sora and its app this April.

Srinivas Narayanan


Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI's chief technology officer for business applications, announced in April that he was leaving after three years.

"Leading the b2b engineering team has been an enormous privilege," Narayanan wrote on LinkedIn. "With the recent/upcoming product launches, this felt like the right time to step back."

Narayanan said he planned to spend time with his parents in India before deciding what to do next. He joined OpenAI as vice president of engineering and led teams working on ChatGPT and the company's enterprise products.

Kate Rouch


Kate Rouch stepped down as OpenAI's chief marketing officer in April to focus on her recovery from breast cancer.

Rouch joined OpenAI in December 2024 after more than a decade at Meta, where she served as global head of brand and product marketing. She took medical leave in 2025 while undergoing treatment, then returned to OpenAI.

OpenAI previously said Rouch could eventually return in a more narrowly defined position when her health allowed, and that the company was searching for a new chief marketing officer.

Barret Zoph


Barret Zoph left OpenAI in June, about five months after returning to lead its enterprise AI sales efforts.

Zoph initially departed OpenAI in September 2024 and cofounded Thinking Machines Lab with former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati. He returned to OpenAI in January 2026 after leaving the rival startup.

OpenAI did not disclose why Zoph left.

Chloé Bakalar


Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI's head of ethics, left the company in July, less than a year after joining.

Bakalar joined OpenAI in August 2025 after spending about six years working on responsible AI at Meta. At OpenAI, she examined questions surrounding model behavior, human relationships with AI, and whether advanced systems could warrant moral consideration.

Johannes Heidecke
Johannes Heidecke (right). Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images


Johannes Heidecke, who led OpenAI's safety systems team, left the company in July amid a reorganization of its safety operations.

Heidecke joined OpenAI in 2021 and took charge of safety systems in 2024. His team evaluated models for potentially dangerous capabilities and developed safeguards intended to prevent harmful behavior.

Following his departure, OpenAI placed its safety teams under Mia Glaese, its vice president of research and safety.

Joshua Achiam
Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images


Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, left the company in July after nearly nine years.

Achiam previously led OpenAI's mission alignment team, which was tasked with helping the company uphold its founding goal of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits humanity. OpenAI disbanded that team in early 2026 and moved Achiam into the chief futurist role.

Caitlin Kalinowski


Caitlin Kalinowski, who led OpenAI's robotics and consumer hardware team, resigned in March over concerns about the company's agreement with the Pentagon.

"Surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got," Kalinowski wrote on LinkedIn. She later said her objection was primarily about governance and that the agreement had been announced before its safeguards were fully defined.

Kalinowski joined OpenAI in November 2024 after leading Meta's augmented-reality hardware efforts, including its Orion glasses project. OpenAI said its Pentagon agreement prohibited domestic surveillance and the use of autonomous weapons.

Kaylin Voss


Kaylin Voss, vice president of sales in the Americas, resigned a week after Dresser left the company.

The news was first reported by The Information.

Before joining OpenAI, Voss worked at Salesforce, where she served as chief revenue officer of Slack and later as executive vice president, Agentforce and Datacloud, according to her LinkedIn.

Chris Malone


Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, left the company in August, according to The Wall Street Journal. Data centers are crucial to OpenAI's infrastructure. They allow the company to power AI models. Malone's exit comes at a time when AI data centers are deeply unpopular with Americans.

Malone took on the role in March 2025 after working at Meta and Google.

"We recently reorganized our infrastructure organization to support the scale and pace of our work," an OpenAI spokesperson told the outlet. "We have a strong, deeply experienced data center team in place, with clear leadership and the technical expertise to execute our plans."

Computer science enrollment fell for the first time in 20 years

Computer science enrollment fell for the first time in 20 years after ChatGPT's rise, a Stanford economist says


Thibault Spirlet
Tue, July 21, 2026 at 6:09 AM PDT 3 min read


A Stanford economist says computer science enrollment fell for the first time in roughly two decades.


Jacob Light's study links the slowdown to AI's rise, but stops short of saying ChatGPT caused it.


National data also show computer science enrollment fell in 2025 after years of rapid growth.

The explosive rise of ChatGPT may coincide with a turning point for one of America's fastest-growing college subjects.


Computer science enrollment declined during the 2025-26 academic year for the first time in roughly two decades, according to new research by Jacob Light, an economist at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

While the study doesn't estimate the size of the drop, separate National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed undergraduate enrollment in Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services at four-year colleges fell 8.1% year over year in the fall of 2025.

The timing overlaps with the rapid adoption of generative AI, but Light cautioned that the data does not show artificial intelligence caused the decline.

Using a dataset covering more than 50 million course sections offered since 1996 across 1,019 US colleges and universities, Light tracked long-term enrollment patterns alongside the growing capabilities of large language models.

"The most notable recent development is the flattening and reversal in the Computer Science enrollment share trend," Light wrote. "In 2025-26, Computer Science enrollment share declined for the first time in roughly two decades, interrupting a period of sustained and unusually rapid growth."

'Descriptive' rather than 'causal' effect of AI

Computer science had enjoyed years of booming popularity as demand for software engineers and other tech workers surged.

The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in computer and information sciences more than doubled over the past decade, rising from about 56,000 in 2014 to about 122,000 in 2024, according to data from the National Science Foundation's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

But the arrival of AI assistants capable of writing code, debugging programs, and completing technical assignments has sparked debate about whether the field's value proposition is changing.

Light said several explanations could account for the enrollment drop.

"The decline could reflect changes in the education production function as generative AI alters how students complete coursework, changes in students' expectations about the returns to Computer Science skills, responses to labor market conditions that themselves partly reflect AI adoption, broader weakness in the technology labor market unrelated to AI, or other contemporaneous shifts in student demand," he wrote.
Story Continues

Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement pays Harry Potter publisher $19M

  

Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement pays Harry Potter publisher $19M

Anthropic has reached a $1.5 billion copyright settlement with thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to train its Claude AI chatbots, with Bloomsbury Publishing set to receive roughly $19 million of that total. The London-based publisher, home to J.K. Rowling, Sarah J. Maas, and Susanna Clarke, had 14,087 titles listed in the settlement at a proposed compensation of about $3,000 per title. After attorney fees and other expenses are deducted, that sum will be split between Bloomsbury and the affected authors, with payments expected to begin arriving in instalments as early as the second half of this fiscal year.

The case, which began when novelist Andrea Bartz and two other authors filed suit in 2024, has been described by the authors' lead lawyer as the largest known copyright recovery in history. A US district judge approved the deal on Monday, calling it meaningful relief for those affected. About 91 percent of the 482,000 works covered in the lawsuit have been claimed by rights holders, a figure Anthropic itself highlighted as a sign of broad acceptance.

The settlement is the first major resolution to emerge from the dozens of AI copyright lawsuits working their way through US courts on behalf of authors and news organizations, making it a significant marker for how the industry might reckon with its use of protected creative work going forward.

Read More →

French Polynesia objects to an American seabed mining plan made without its input

French Polynesia objects to an American seabed mining plan made without its input

Grist · a day ago
by Anita Hofschneider · Indigenous Affairs

The government of French Polynesia plans to challenge an American startup’s proposal to explore the waters just beyond its maritime borders for seabed mining.

“We were approached, but we were not consulted,” Moetai Brotherson, the territory’s president, told Grist. “We are not remaining passive while industrial activities are proposed immediately next to ecosystems that French Polynesia has chosen to protect.”

As Grist reported last week, a Bay Area investor wants the Trump administration’s approval to explore seabed mining in international waters entirely surrounded by the maritime borders of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia. The company, American Deep Sea Minerals, has a permit application pending before U.S. regulators and hopes to extract minerals essential to the production of batteries and military technologies. It is one of at least a dozen applications under consideration as President Trump races to make the United States a leader in critical mineral mining.

Negotiators from dozens of countries are meeting this month in Jamaica at the headquarters of the International Seabed Authority, where they are debating the minutiae of a regulatory framework that’s been in progress for more than a decade. Last year, the Trump administration invited companies to apply for permits to mine the high seas directly through the U.S. rather than wait for the adoption of those rules. That has prompted global outrage from countries who say it flouts international law.

“The deep seabed belongs to no single country and no corporation; it belongs to all of us,” Letitia Carvalho, the secretary-general of the regulatory body, said in Jamaica last week. “If we lose sight of this, we risk repeating on the ocean floor the same injustices and destruction we still strive to remedy on land.”

French Polynesia doesn’t have a seat at the authority because it remains a French territory whose Indigenous people haven’t been granted political self-determination. And until recently, when environmental nonprofit organizations extended their observer status to Indigenous advocates, the voices of French Polynesians were largely left out of the discussion. Still, Brotherson said he prefers the international regulatory process to recent U.S. actions.

“This case therefore goes beyond one company or one licence application,” Brotherson said. It raises a fundamental question, he said, about whether an individual country can unilaterally authorize a new industry in international waters, particularly those adjacent to Pacific island nations and protected marine areas.

According to Brotherson, American Deep Sea Minerals sent a brief introductory email to a government representative; the government replied asking for more information. “No response was received,” he said. “Thus, no consultation has taken place regarding this proposal, and the government has not been provided with sufficient information to assess the project or its potential environmental implications.” Under international law, Indigenous peoples have the right to free, prior and informed consent — and to withhold such consent — regarding development and extractive projects on their ancestral territories.

Graham Goulet, the CEO of American Metals, told Grist the company intended to consult the governments of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia “as the exploration program develops.” Those discussions will, he said, occur under U.S. oversight and in accordance with the intentions outlined in its application. The filing notes that it intends to create a benefit sharing agreement with Pacific nations and plans to avoid interfering with fishing.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency overseeing seabed licenses in international waters, is still considering Goulet’s application. It is available for public comment online until August 3.
Read Next

Indigenous concerns surface as Trump calls for seabed mining in Alaskan waters
Anita Hofschneider

The environmental implications of seabed mining have long concerned French Polynesia, which banned the practice in 2022, followed quickly by France in 2023. Indigenous peoples with longstanding connections to the ocean, such as for traditional navigation, account for 80 percent of the territory’s population. Studies show extraction could harm fisheries, and Indigenous Pasifika leaders from across the region have raised cultural concerns about the significance of disturbing the sea floor.

“As if climate change wasn’t enough, the spectre of deep-sea mining threatens to strip-mine the ocean floor, our sacred place of creation,” said Hinano Murphy, an Indigenous cultural expert from Moorea and Tahiti in a TEDxTalk last year.

Last September, Brotherson added further prohibitions on seabed mining within Tainui Atea, a marine protected area that encompasses nearly all of the islands’ exclusive waters. The preserve sustains 21 species of sharks, 176 species of coral, and more than 1,000 species of fish, according to the United Nations. One survey found more than 92 percent of French Polynesians support Tainui Atea because it honors their traditional cultural practices.

“French Polynesia’s position is therefore not only a political statement. The protection of deep-sea ecosystems is now embedded in our domestic regulatory framework,” Brotherson said.

The waters that American Deep Sea Minerals is eyeing, known as Eastern High Seas Pocket 3, are also a popular tuna fishing spot, as well as a potential conservation area.

In January, the United Nations High Seas Treaty, an international law intended to protect marine ecosystems, took effect, allowing nations to create conservation areas in international waters for the first time. French Polynesia wants to use the law to protect the Eastern High Seas Pocket 3. Doing so could set an important precedent for how effective the treaty is, and how protected the world’s oceans will be in the future, Brotherson said.

If American Deep Sea Minerals’ application proceeds, French Polynesia wants a say in what happens and a thorough environmental review. Recently, U.S. regulators fast tracked the approval process for deep-sea mining applications by halving the number of environmental reviews required for commercial permits. “We expect the interests of neighboring Pacific countries and territories to be fully taken into account through prior notification, meaningful consultation, and a comprehensive, independent and participatory environmental impact assessment,” Brotherson said.

As part of a U.S. application, American Deep Sea Minerals will need to conduct scientific studies of the area and create an environmental impact assessment. Brotherson said that his government supports independent scientific research conducted on deep-sea ecosystems.

“However, we do not regard this particular application as neutral scientific research,” he said. Although the company says it does not yet intend to apply for a commercial license, its application shows that it intends to conduct the research necessary to apply for one, as well as a mining test. “It is therefore part of a pathway towards potential commercial mining,” Brotherson said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline French Polynesia objects to an American seabed mining plan made without its input on Jul 21, 2026.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a breath of fresh air for smartphone lovers

 

Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a breath of fresh air for smartphone lovers

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrives as one of the most dramatic physical reinventions the foldable category has seen in years, and the headline figure tells the story immediately: this phone weighs just 201 grams, making it lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro at 204 grams, and that iPhone has only one screen. Even folded shut, the Fold 8 measures just 9.7mm thick, less than a millimeter more than Apple's flagship. The result is a book-style foldable that finally earns the word pocketable without any asterisks.

The design ambition goes beyond the scale. When unfolded, the Fold 8 opens to a 7.6-inch flexible display running at a 4:3 aspect ratio, a meaningful departure from the tall, square-ish proportions that have plagued foldables with persistent letterboxing. Films, games, and books spread across the panel naturally, without the black bars or forced stretching that have frustrated foldable owners for years. The cover display, meanwhile, sits at just 5.5 inches with a 10:16 aspect ratio, giving it a compact, almost deliberately restrained footprint that makes dopamine-driven vertical content feel less immersive, a side effect that turns out to feel more like a feature. Inside, Qualcomm's top-tier processor drives both 120Hz displays, 45W wired charging keeps the battery topped up, and a pair of 50-megapixel rear cameras handle photography duties.

At $1,899, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is not an easy purchase to justify on price alone, and buyers chasing camera firepower may find the Ultra sibling's 200-megapixel hardware worth the extra $200. A full review is on the way.

Read More →

A Canadian payment giant is being sold to U.S. private equity. Is your digital privacy at risk? | No thank you

A Canadian payment giant is being sold to U.S. private equity. Is your digital privacy at risk? | CBC News

A Canadian payment giant is being sold to U.S. private equity. Is your digital privacy at risk?
Moneris handles roughly 1 in 3 payment transactions across Canada


Brock Wilson · CBC News · Posted: Aug 14, 2026 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago


Listen to this article
Estimated 6 minutes

Moneris payment terminals, like this one seen in 2018, are used widely across Canada. The company is being sold to a U.S. private equity firm, pending regulatory approval. (Anis Heydari/CBC)

A payment processing company responsible for approximately one in three payment transactions across Canada will soon be owned by an American private equity firm.

The Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal announced earlier this week they would be selling jointly owned Moneris, one of Canada's largest commerce solutions providers, to Francisco Partners for $2 billion.

So far, it's been positive for both RBC and BMO, with the companies' shares jumping after the deal's announcement. RBC expects to gain about $475 million from the sale after tax, and BMO $600 million.


However, some industry analysts are raising concerns the move could have negative repercussions for Canada's digital sovereignty amid the country's ongoing trade war with the U.S.
Wide-reaching implications

Broadly speaking, digital sovereignty refers to the power of a country, or individual, to retain control over its own digital assets.

In September, AI Minister Evan Solomon said that Canada needs to create a sovereign digital economy that is "free from coercion."
WATCH | Solomon spoke in September about why the government is acting:




'The moment is here' to modernize Canada's privacy laws: AI minister
June 15|
Duration1:29Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act will help keep Canadians safe in the digital age. 'I think it's a common-sense approach to what Canadians and what average folks want from their digital media,' Solomon said on Monday about the new bill. 'They want some control over their personal information.'

That same month, dozens of experts and academics penned an open letter urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to swiftly "defend Canada's digital sovereignty" and protect the country from the whims of the Trump administration.

It's a sentiment Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, shares.

"Canadians should be concerned because this is their information," she said.

"We're now going to have what has been a Canadian data-processing company that has access to everybody's purchasing habits ... available to other governments."

Thousands of businesses in Canada use Moneris. The processor services more than 325,000 points of commerce and processes more than five billion transactions every year, according to a press release from the company.

Polsky said the deal means Canadians' data could be available, not only to foreign governments, but foreign law enforcement agencies.

She gave an example of U.S. border agents potentially checking an individual's transaction history before allowing them to enter the country.


"Will you be stopped at the border because your purchase records indicate that you bought something with THC?" she said, referring to a chemical compound found in cannabis, which remains illegal in the U.S. under federal jurisdiction.

"It's possible these days, much more possible than ever before."
Transaction data as leverage?

That the deal is happening as the countries grapple with a trade war only heightens Polsky's concerns.

"It's easy to foresee that the rich data that comes from millions of Canadians' purchases could easily be leveraged to inform trade negotiations," said Polsky, who has advised corporations and governments for more than 30 years on privacy and access matters.

Colin Deacon, an Independent Canadian senator, is also concerned about how the U.S. government could use Canadians' data.

"[Data] under force and under request from the U.S. government could be then shared on an individual basis," said Deacon during an interview with CBC's Power and Politics.
WATCH | Deacon raises concerns over Moneris deal:




Canadian senator concerned by U.S. purchase of BMO, RBC payment processor
August 13|
Duration8:39Nova Scotia Sen. Colin Deacon is warning against further financial integration with the United States after one of Canada's biggest payment processing platforms was bought by an American bidder. Deacon joins Power & Politics to discuss why he is so concerned about this acquisition.

"There's a number of ways in which [U.S. President Donald Trump] has absolute control over services that Canadians rely on every day."

Both BMO and RBC pointed to press releases announcing the deal, refusing to provide further comment when contacted by CBC News.

"As ownership transitions to FP, Moneris's commitment to serving Canadian businesses will remain unchanged," read a separate press release from Moneris.
Privacy legislation in the works

Canada's legislation meant to protect digital privacy isn't where it needs to be, according to Polsky, who said this comes at Canadians' "collective peril."


"Canada isn't ready," she said.

Polsky argues there's a clear outcome if a company based in Canada is compelled by the U.S. to supply data as a result of this deal.

"If the choice is either to comply with the American law or go to jail, or comply with Canadian legislation that really is nowhere near as stringent … it's a no-brainer. They will comply with the American legislation."

The Canadian government has taken steps to address digital sovereignty. In June, the government introduced Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act.

New privacy bill would give Canadians right to request companies delete AI deepfakes

It proposes a major overhaul of Canada's private sector privacy framework, updating language to establish privacy as a "fundamental right" and replace parts of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which sets out rules for how businesses, including tech, airlines and banks, collect and use customers' data.

The bill also requires companies to conduct a "privacy impact assessment" before transferring personal data outside of Canada.

At the time, government officials said the legislation would cover any company that has a "substantial connection" to Canada.

But Polsky said C-36, and the Liberals' other attempts to update Canada's digital privacy laws, only "dance around the issues."

"They don't really speak to data being retained in Canada as a matter of national security or as a matter of data sovereignty," she said.

Bill C-36 represents the Liberal government's third attempt to update privacy regulations, following failed attempts in 2020 and 2023. It underwent its first reading in June, but has a number of steps to go before becoming law.


Meanwhile, the sale of Moneris still requires regulatory approvals, including clearance under the Competition Act, and is expected to close by the end of the banks' fiscal first quarter in 2027.

Where does that leave Canada?

"Behind the eight ball," said Polsky.

"[Canada is] trying to look tough, but we have a ways to go."

ClarificationsAn earlier version of this story said Moneris processes more than $5 billion in transactions every year. In fact, Moneris processes more than 5 billion transactions every year.
Aug 14, 2026 7:41 AM PDT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Brock Wilson

Journalist

Walmart reports slowest sales growth in 6 years

 

Walmart reports slowest sales growth in 6 years

Niv Bavarsky

Walmart’s same-store sales growth wobbled out of last quarter with the power of the last remaining shopping cart during a Sunday afternoon grocery trip. US sales growth inched up just 2.6%, the company’s slowest growth in almost six years in what was otherwise a positive earnings report. With Walmart often seen as a bellwether for the broader US economy, economists are worrying if consumer spending might finally be starting to dwindle.

In response to the news, the retail giant’s stock dropped over 9% yesterday. Much of the blame was placed on Walmart’s health and wellness business, which suffered from new drug price caps, including on GLP-1s. But, even excluding those losses, sales growth clocked in at 3.4%, just shy of Wall Street’s expected 3.5%. Last year, same-store sales grew 4.6% during the same time.

So what’s going on?

• CFO John David Rainey told investors that the consumer environment has softened in the last quarter, pointing to gas prices jumping past $4 a gallon in July.
• Average hourly earnings have slowed, consumer sentiment sank this month, and folks’ personal savings rates are at their lowest levels since 2022.
• Spring also brought higher-than-usual tax refund checks that have likely dried up.

Some relief might be on the way. Walmart said that it’s investing its tariff refund—a record $2.9 billion—back into lowering prices. Last quarter, the retailer said it eased prices on 11,000 items, an increase from 7,200 products in Q1.

What about the competition? Retail sales across the board were down 0.6% in July compared with June, according to the most recent Census Bureau data. But some areas are doing better than others: Target said its back-to-school sales were up by almost 20% compared with last year, while Home Depot said that sales of items needed for small projects, like painting and gardening, have replaced large-scale remodels.

Miami is now more expensive than NYC

 

Miami is now more expensive than NYC

Adobe Stock

Trading the Big Apple for Miami has become as financially prudent as packing a Kobe beef lunch at home instead of getting a burrito bowl at work. The Miami metropolitan area has become pricier to live in than greater New York for the first time ever, according to Bloomberg’s analysis this week of government data from 2024.

Costs have climbed further since then, squeezing longtime locals and the scores of recent transplants lured not just by warmer weather, but also by the promise of cheaper living and no state income tax. Consumer prices have risen 36% for Miamians since 2019, which is more than in any other US metro area except Tampa, Florida.

No more cheap condos

The recent influx of sunshine chasers—made up of folks earning an average of $122k per year—has contributed to Miami’s home prices rising 79% since the pandemic, per the S&P Case-Shiller index.

While Miami’s per-square-foot home prices are still lower than New York’s, the average total cost of housing is now 5% higher than in the tri-state area, which includes parts of Connecticut and New Jersey:

• Greater Miami’s property taxes have skyrocketed 62% since 2019, per real estate data firm Attom.
• Many residents in older apartments now have to pay for costly safety upgrades that have become more frequent after the deadly Surfside condo collapse in 2021—on top of the steepest homeowners’ insurance rates in the country.

Outside the home, there aren’t many dollar slices. An average restaurant check in Miami was $94 last year, compared with $79 in New York, according to OpenTable.

To add insult to injury: Miami workers are earning $1,000 less per year than the median American. Bloomberg noted that Miami’s white-collar wages are also lower than New York’s.

Not struggling to afford Miami…are the billionaires who continue to relocate there in a trend vocally championed by Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who bought a $107 million estate in the city this year. Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have also recently become Miami-area residents.

StubHub sold ‘ghost tickets’ for World Cup months before real ones were issued

StubHub sold ‘ghost tickets’ for World Cup months before real ones were issued, CBC finds
Calls mount for bans on speculative tickets as StubHub cancels on thousands of fans


Dave Seglins, Aloysius Wong, Kathleen Coughlin · CBC News · Posted: Jul 03, 2026 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: July 6


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Estimated 9 minutes

A year before FIFA started selling assigned World Cup tickets, social media users were calling out ads claiming tickets were for sale. Here, a screengrab of what appears to be a StubHub Instagram ad was posted to Reddit by user Bruno Borges on Oct. 11, 2024. (CBC)

A CBC News investigation into resale website StubHub has found evidence the company advertised and allowed speculative listings for World Cup tickets months before FIFA actually released any seats.

The resale giant is facing a storm of controversy and calls for stricter regulation over what's known as "speculative ticketing" after the company stranded thousands of soccer fans, cancelling ticket orders just hours before game time when deals with sellers fell through.

"We're calling for governments to pay attention," said Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), the live industry association for the United States. He's written Congress calling for a ban on scalper speculation.


"You cannot sell a car that you don't own. You can't sell a house that you do not own.… If you take money for something and then don't deliver it, that's fraud."CBC Investigates

StubHub World Cup ticket cancellations prompt calls for investigations, legal action

StubHub, a global resale marketplace used by casual resellers and professional mass scalpers, has declined requests for an interview.

Spokesperson Jack Sterne in an email to CBC last week blamed the company's widespread cancellations on FIFA's ticketing technology.

"StubHub does not allow speculative tickets, period," he wrote.

But in a statement Thursday, the company said its sellers often post tickets they've been promised but don't yet have in-hand.

CBC's investigation found a lack of controls on StubHub's platform and evidence World Cup tickets were offered for resale long before FIFA first made assigned seats available on Sept. 10, 2025.
WATCH | Testing StubHub's ticket verification:




StubHub sold 'ghost' World Cup tickets, CBC investigation finds
July 3|
Duration2:18A CBC News investigation has found evidence that StubHub advertised and allowed speculative World Cup ticket listings months before FIFA officially released them, leaving some fans without a seat on game day.
'Ghost tickets' never delivered

Multiple social media posts show what appear to be StubHub advertisements for 2026 FIFA World Cup tickets as early as August 2024 — a year before FIFA's official release.

StubHub did not respond to CBC's questions about the ads.

Jeremy Wright of Austin, Texas, bought his pair Sept. 3, 2025, as a Christmas gift for his wife, a week before FIFA's official release.

"I clearly bought ghost tickets," Wright told CBC News after he was left stranded on game day.


They drove four hours to Houston only to be stiffed while waiting outside the stadium.
WATCH | He bought 'ghost tickets' for World Cup match:




‘I bought ghost tickets,’ says World Cup fan
July 3|
Duration0:47Austin, Texas, resident Jeremy Wright missed the World Cup and says he’s learned the hard way about shopping on StubHub before event tickets are actually released.

He attributes the ticket cancellations to speculative ticketing.

"Speculators … will start selling tickets that they don't have on platforms like StubHub and the expectation is that they can buy the tickets later and fill the order," Wright explained.

"The World Cup didn't work out that way for them. Ticket prices kept going up and lots of these sellers just never bought the tickets, never filled the orders."

Wright has since filed formal complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Texas Attorney General, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.CBC Investigates

StubHub cancels thousands of World Cup tickets, leaving fans furious and heartbroken

Brad Michel of San Antonio, Texas, placed his order on StubHub on Jan. 5, 2025 — nine months before FIFA began issuing actual tickets.

He paid $15,654 US for what he thought were three prime, mid-field seats for a Netherlands versus Sweden match in Houston.

His tickets claimed to be Section 104, but lacked any seat or row numbers.

He planned to bring his son and fly in his father-in-law who is from Sweden.

"I feel like I got scammed," Michel told CBC News. "I'm like stupid for even thinking that I would be able to buy tickets that far in advance."


"I think they sold the tickets to someone else for a higher price point than what I originally paid. [That's] what I think. It's kind of a bait and switch."

Brad Michel, left, his son Aden and his father-in-law Ricardo Popa-Olave never received their StubHub order for three seats bought nine months before FIFA’s official ticket release. (Submitted by Brad Michel)

StubHub failed to deliver and offered "nosebleed" seats as replacements, he said.

Michel refused, watched the game on TV instead at the Airbnb they had rented, and is now fighting for a refund.

StubHub has not answered direct questions about whether World Cup tickets on its site were sold "on spec." The company said in its statement that resellers can buy special "guaranteed access" packages in advance of major events and are promised allotments of seats which they can post for sale so long as they have a "path to obtaining" real tickets in the end.
Verification lacking

Artist manager Randy Nichols, an advocate for ticket reforms, tested StubHub's platform last May and was able to list imaginary tickets for resale.

"There's only a trust system, there's zero verification," he told CBC News.

"I recently, before World Cup tickets were even on sale to the general public, was able to list and put tickets up for sale within seconds."
WATCH | 'Zero verification' tickets are real before posting, says advocate:




Posting tickets on StubHub too easy, industry advocate says
July 3|
Duration0:32Randy Nichols, an advocate for reforming the ticketing industry, was able to post World Cup tickets for sale on StubHub without any proof of having a real ticket.

CBC attempted to post its own imaginary World Cup tickets onto StubHub this week, but found the platform now explicitly requires a seller to upload a real FIFA ticket before allowing it to be posted for resale.

However, CBC was able to list two pretend tickets for resale on StubHub for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles — offering to resell them for $2 US each — with just a few simple clicks.

StubHub didn't ask for a real ticket, or require a row or seat number. The company simply asked for a credit card and for the seller to check a box attesting that "I agree to StubHub's Terms and Conditions. I confirm I own these tickets or have the right to be issued these tickets."


A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Olympics, which goes by LA28, told CBC in an email, "LA28 tickets listed for resale prior to 2027 are not verified by LA28."
Super Bowl tickets on spec

CBC News also found what appear to be speculative tickets for the 2027 Super Bowl in Los Angeles already posted for resale on StubHub as well as similar resale sites Vivid Seats and TicketsOnSale — when real, verified NFL tickets have yet to be issued by the box office.

StubHub has nearly 100 Super Bowl seats on offer. There are more than 200 posted on both Vivid Seats and Tickets On Sale — most without assigned seat or row numbers. One pair on StubHub for $10,526 US is listed simply as "Upper Endzone" — which doesn't actually exist as a section on the stadium seat map.

StubHub shows nearly 100 tickets on offer for the 2027 Super Bowl in Los Angeles, claiming just two per cent of tickets remain when none have been released yet by the box office. (CBC)

StubHub, in its statement, said sellers listing Super Bowl tickets may have received promises of future tickets through purchased allotments or season ticket holder agreements even if they don't have assigned seats.

"This is standard practice across the entire Super Bowl ticketing market — other marketplaces like Vivid Seats are also listing 2027 Super Bowl tickets now — and is not unique to StubHub."

Vivid Seats spokesperson Julia Young told CBC News that her company prohibits "undisclosed speculative ticketing" but allows sellers to offer seats they don't possess.

"Our Seat Saver program [is] a service where the seller has offered to procure tickets for the customer," she wrote in an email.

"You cart your selections; we'll handle the shopping," proclaims the company website.

SeatGeek, an official ticketing partner with the National Football League, has no advance seats for resale for the Super Bowl.

Resale sites VividSeats and Tickets On Sale both list more than 100 tickets available for Super Bowl 2027 before they are officially on sale for the public. (CBC)
Calls for ‘resale price cap' laws

The World Cup fiasco has prompted calls for government action and enforcement to combat speculative ticketing.


Stephen Parker of NIVA and the Fan Alliance wrote a joint letter June 18 to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson urging lawmakers "to ban the sale of fake, or ‘ghost,' tickets and enact ticket price gouging protections for all resale tickets sold in the U.S."

"The way to fix this – is a resale price cap," Parker told CBC News in an interview. "You have to take away the incentive to defraud. You have to take away the incentive to price gouge."

He points to the World Cup held in Qatar four years ago where a resale price cap was imposed.

"If the United States had [a resale price cap], if Canada had that. I don't think we'd be seeing the issues that we're seeing right now."
WATCH | 'Their leverage needs to go away':




Ban scalping to prevent ticketing fiascos, watchdog says
July 3|
Duration0:58Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association in the U.S., says World Cup ticket cancellations are caused by professional scalpers, speculators who he wants to see banned.

Keldon Bester of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly project says authorities need to step up enforcement.

"The fix has to include stronger competition and consumer protection enforcement, clearer rules against deceptive conduct, and real accountability for platforms that profit from these transactions," Bester said in an email.

Jeremy Wright of Austin, Texas — for whom StubHub provided replacement tickets in the end — says there need to be laws to ban speculation.

"There clearly needs to be some legislation against selling these ghost tickets," he said, despite StubHub's attempts to make amends. "It's egregious that StubHub was selling tickets that didn't exist."CBC Investigates

B.C. launches probe into StubHub over World Cup resale ticket fiasco


Soccer fans file class-action lawsuit against StubHub over cancelled World Cup tickets

In Canada, British Columbia (which has launched a probe into the StubHub World Cup ticketing fiasco) and Ontario both have laws that explicitly ban speculative ticketing.

In the U.S. there is no federal ban. However, Nevada (2017), Maryland, Minnesota, Arizona (2024), and Oregon, Vermont, Illinois (2026) have all passed legislation outlawing the practice.


California is currently considering such a ban.

StubHub is on record as opposing California Bill AB 1349, and is helping to fund an advertising campaign to defeat the measure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Dave Seglins

CBC Investigations

Dave Seglins is an investigative journalist whose recent work includes exposés on global ticket scalping, offshore tax avoidance and government surveillance. He covers a range of domestic and international issues, including rail safety, policing, government and corporate corruption.

His paintings sell for millions, but who was E.J. Hughes?

His paintings sell for millions, but who was E.J. Hughes? New doc tells the story of enigmatic B.C. painter
After the film's world premiere last fall, a Hughes landscape broke records at auction


Leah Collins · CBC Arts · Posted: Jan 30, 2026 7:44 AM PST | Last Updated: January 30


Listen to this article
Estimated 10 minutes

As seen in the feature documentary The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes, the artist appears in an archival photograph with his 1949 painting, Entrance to Howe Sound. (Optic Nerve Films)

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It’s like an image out of a strange dream, and yet Entrance to Howe Sound — a 1949 painting by E.J. Hughes — is unmistakably a picture of B.C.

The work depicts a turbulent coastal landscape, foregrounded by a titan forest which springs from a stony island. The trees’ brush-like boughs dominate the canvas, craning toward a smoky sky, and despite the shadowy atmosphere — marked by black craggy mountains and dark waters — the greenery glows with an almost radioactive sheen. It’s an eerily expressive scene, but off in the distance, there’s a sign of ordinary human life and industry: a steamship puffs along the water — the cheerful curve of its hull resembling a gleaming white grin.

For many years, Entrance to Howe Sound hung in a Vancouver Island home, but this November, the painting went on the block at the Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Toronto, selling to a private collector for $4.8 million.

First impressions from the floor at Canada’s biggest art fair

The price tag made history. The sum was more than double Hughes’s previous sales record, and Entrance to Howe Sound is now the fourth most expensive Canadian artwork to ever be sold at auction. Only paintings by Lawren Harris and Jean-Paul Riopelle have pulled more on the secondary market.

That detail may leave many Canadians curious to understand Hughes’s legacy — and the seven-figure interest in artwork. In a timely turn of events, a new feature documentary can offer some insight.
WATCH | The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes, official trailer:

The film is The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes. Directed by B.C. filmmaker Jenn Strom, it premiered at the Vancouver Film Festival last October, weeks before the record-breaking auction of Entrance to Howe Sound, and it begins a Canadian screening tour Feb. 7 with a run at the VIFF Centre in Vancouver. (The doc, which was commissioned by B.C.’s Knowledge Network, will be available to stream at www.knowledge.ca after April 16.)

It's a comprehensive biography of Hughes, whose 70-year career began on the cusp of the Great Depression. In the '30s, Hughes was student at the Vancouver School of Art, now known as Emily Carr University of Art + Design. There, he was taught by Frederick Varley, and some years later, the young artist would be championed by another founding member of the Group of Seven, Lawren Harris, who recommended him for the inaugural Emily Carr Scholarship.

The film also explores Hughes’s experience during the Second World War. From 1940-46, he served as an official Canadian war artist, and the doc visits the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa for a look at his closely observed scenes of military life.

E.J. Hughes, Canadian war artist, seen in an archival photo from 1945. (Malak Karsh/Optic Nerve Films)

When Hughes's army time ended, he and his wife moved to Vancouver Island, where he began painting the regional landscapes for which he’s best known. These picturesque scenes were wholly out of step with the times.

In the catalogue for Hughes’s 1967 solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, curator Doris Shadbolt describes Hughes as an “eccentric” and something of an anomaly among his contemporaries. “Essentially a loner and a non-intellectual, he belongs to no school and will never found one,” she wrote. “But on the other hand his private revelation is of a kind to resist the wearing of time. He has created a permanent poetry of Canada’s Pacific coast.”

Abstract Expressionism was the movement of the day, and yet, Hughes was able to establish himself as a working artist, even while maintaining a secluded life in the rural village of Shawnigan Lake. As captured in the doc, a fateful encounter made his long career possible.Landscape Art

Landscape art isn't just painting your surroundings — in a way, it's a kind of self-portrait

In 1951, Max Stern, owner of the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, was shown one of Hughes’s paintings while visiting Vancouver. Moved, Stern was determined to meet the artist, and after a long search, he turned up on Hughes’s doorstep to purchase every last artwork on the premises.

Before Stern said goodbye, he offered Hughes a contract. The arrangement allowed Hughes to support himself as a full-time artist, and over the decades, he produced hundreds of Canadian landscapes which were sold by the gallery. They are held by museum collections throughout the country, including the National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery (which houses more Hughes than any institution).

The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes takes viewers inside the Vancouver Art Gallery's vault. In this behind-the-scenes photo, curator Ian Thom looks at Hughes artwork from the gallery's collection. (Kevin Eastwood/Optic Nerve Films)

When Strom was growing up on the West Coast, the Vancouver filmmaker was familiar with Hughes’s work. She has a theory he’s “like a family member that everyone kind of seems to know in the province.” Even if you haven’t heard his name, you probably recognize his landscapes.

Strom’s past credits include Assembly, a hand-painted animated short for the NFB, and A Golden Voice, a profile of Haida artist Bill Reid. The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes is her feature debut, and she began pursuing the project in 2019 after reading a book by Robert Amos. A long-time arts writer for the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper, Amos has authored five Hughes biographies and he contributed a wealth of archival material to the film, including audio interviews recorded by the artist’s long-time assistant, Pat Salmon.

“What I was really drawn to looking at Robert Amos’s books was the depictions of towns and places in B.C.,” says Strom, and during the making of the doc, she travelled to as many communities as she could, hunting for the views Hughes captured in his artwork. Her camera takes us to Revelstoke and Chilliwack, Rivers Inlet and Comox Valley — among many other destinations.

Jenn Strom is the director of The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes. (Optic Nerve Films)

Equal attention is paid to the artwork itself, and the doc goes behind the scenes to view collections at institutions including the Vancouver Art Gallery and the B.C. Archives at the Royal B.C. Museum.

E.J. Hughes is renowned for meticulous detail, says Strom, and she was determined to capture “the draftsmanship and the brush strokes and tiny details” he’s famous for. “To do that, we had to go and find the actual paintings, and that scavenger hunt was a whole other thing.”

It’s possible to see Hughes artwork on public display; at the Audain Museum in Whistler, for example, a selection is always on view at the Barbeau-Owen Gallery. Still, the experience is rare, she explains. Hughes paintings “are often in collections, in vaults or they’re in private homes,” she says. But as luck would have it, several of those privately held works hit the market while the film was in production.
Although he passed away in 2007, the way his work is moving out into the world is alive and is unfolding as a story and it's continuing to change and grow.- Jenn Strom, director of The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes

With Heffel’s cooperation, Strom was given access to paintings before they went to auction. The record-setting sale of Entrance to Howe Sound left her “gobsmacked” in November, but the director is fascinated by the “enigmatic value” of Hughes’s work, and how it’s connecting with viewers today.

“Although he passed away in 2007, the way his work is moving out into the world is alive and is unfolding as a story and it's continuing to change and grow,” she says. “People are appreciating him more and more.”

David Heffel, president of Heffel Fine Art Auction House, saw the doc when it premiered at VIFF last fall, and he says it captures a true sense of who Hughes was as a character: introverted, charming, a consummate gentleman. (Heffel first met the artist in the late 1980s, and his company has championed Hughes’s work for several decades.)

B.C. painter E.J. Hughes dies

Early in the doc, Heffel appears in an archival clip from another landmark auction, the 2004 sale of Fishboats, Rivers Inlet. Like the Howe Sound piece, it’s a painting from Hughes’s post-war period, and in a voiceover from a news report, it’s described as “the most important masterpiece of his career.” The original buyer acquired it for $150. That day in 2004, the work sold for $920,000 — then the highest amount for a living Canadian artist.

Hughes, by then in his 90s, was still living on Vancouver Island, and he answered an unexpected call from the auction house while the sale was transpiring. It’s a moment Heffel will always remember. “We brought him into the ballroom of about 350-plus people to share his enthusiasm and surprise as a result of that sale. It was priceless," he says. “We will never have an opportunity to do something like that with an artist of that calibre again.”

In 2004, Hughes had already received the Order of Canada (2001), and a survey exhibition had appeared at the Vancouver Art Gallery the previous year. But the “golden era of the Canadian art market,” as Heffel describes it, was just beginning. “There hadn’t been very many paintings, probably fewer than a dozen, that had approached that million dollar price level in 2004,” he explains.

B.C. painter's works fetch nearly $2M at auction

When Fishboats, Rivers Inlet was auctioned again in 2018, it sold for $2,041,250 — the previous record for a Hughes painting. Over the years, Heffel says the fervour among Hughes’s collectors has remained constant. “The passion has always been there, but the price of Hughes’s works has changed as other things in life become more expensive and rare.”

Of the top 10 Hughes sales recorded on the auction house’s website, the majority have found homes with private collectors, and according to Heffel, all but one work resides in B.C. “Most [paintings] seem to be making their way back,” he says.

“Hughes is a hometown favourite, but I think he also has the capacity to inspire viewers from around the world,” says Heffel. Still, it’s Hughes’s affection for B.C. that may have lent him such broad appeal, says Strom.

“There’s a story about where we’ve come from that is embedded in his depictions,” says the filmmaker. “He was really just capturing what he was seeing with an open heart. And we can all maybe relate to that.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Leah Collins

Senior Writer