The Brief – Monday 18 May: OpenAI accused of sharing private user data, Israel to sue NYT, X’s commitments to Ofcom

🤖 A new class action lawsuit filed in California accuses OpenAI of sharing private user data, including chat queries, emails and user IDs, with ad giants Meta and Google without obtaining user consent. It points specifically to OpenAI’s integrations with Meta Pixel and Google Analytics, which facilitate targeted ads. (Futurism)

🏛️ The Israeli government said it would sue The New York Times for defamation over a column by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Kristof that detailed widespread sexual abuse of Palestinians by Israeli settlers, soldiers and prison guards. The article, “The Silence That Meets The Rape of Palestinians”, cited survivor testimony, human rights groups, the UN and others. The Israeli government has denied allegations that its soldiers abuse prisoners. (FT)

📺 Byron Allen, the new majority owner of BuzzFeed, wants to turn the online news outlet into a free-TV “superapp” that combines news, weather reports, and entertainment content. (Bloomberg)

📉 Specialist publisher Future reported an 8% year-on-year decline in revenue to £349.1m in H1, as well as a 24% year-on-year decline in adjusted Ebitda to £83.3m. The publisher cited falling referral traffic from Google as reason for the decline, and has moved to embrace a “Google-Zero” strategy. (Future)

🚫 Paramount‘s $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery is reportedly likely to put the company in breach of its joint venture agreement with Comcast for SkyShowtime, which is available in 22 European markets. (Deadline)

📱 X has made a number of new commitments to Ofcom as part of the regulator’s probe into the platform’s role in hosting or promoting illegal hate and terror content. These include agreeing to expedited timescales for reviewing such content, improving reporting systems for such content, and taking action against accounts operating on behalf of proscribed organisations. (Ofcom)

📺 Former Sky News political editor Adam Boulton has said Ofcom should suspend GB News’s broadcasting license over its failure to maintain due impartiality standards. “I think the regulator has said,” he said. (The Guardian)