The Download: Chinese AI divides the White House, and a record copyright payout

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself Last weekend, several current and former advisers to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed insults at the country’s leading AI companies. David Sacks branded Anthropic’s models “lobotomized” and “woke.” Emil Michael, a top Pentagon official, called OpenAI’s new head of strategic futures a “supreme village idiot.” It began because no one can agree on what to do about Kimi, a free, open-source model that Chinese AI company Moonshot launched last week. It appears to rival the intelligence of models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are very much not free. Every time a new smart, free model from China gets released, US companies see less reason to fork out money for models from Anthropic or OpenAI. That’s creating economic and political problems for the president—and dividing the top AI strategists in his orbit. Read the full story on why no one can agree what to do about Kimi . —James O’Donnell This article is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Anthropic’s record $1.5 billion copyright settlement has been approved The plaintiffs said Anthropic used pirated works to train Claude. ( Reuters $) + And won the largest known copyright payout in history. ( Engadget ) + Yet many authors and creators still don’t view it as a win. ( TechCrunch ) + But AI copyright anxiety could limit creativity. ( MIT Technology Review ) 2 The Trump administration is weighing a ban on Chinese AI models The launch of Kimi K3 has revived calls for restrictions. ( Axios ) + But officials are divided on the proposals. ( Fast Company ) + China’s bet on open-source is paying off. ( MIT Technology Review ) 3 China is mu