PFAS: The Widespread Contamination of 'Forever Chemicals' Found Everywhere From Rainwater to Newborns - Ep. 52
Download MP3Welcome to Litigation Nation. I'm your host, Danessa Watkins, here with my co host, Jack Sanker. As a reminder, Jack and I are our litigation attorneys practicing here in Chicago. And on this show, we are covering some of the latest developments in legal news from across the country. Frankly, anything that catches our attention or that you all let us know you want us to cover.
Danessa Watkins:So what are we covering today, Jack?
Jack Sanker:So there's a bombshell expose from ProPublica, which was published jointly with the New Yorker on the widespread contamination of in the environment and really the entire world which we'll talk about with quote unquote forever chemicals, how that might affect a few of America's largest companies, and what business leaders and risk managers need to be thinking about as different regulatory changes are being rolled out.
Danessa Watkins:Alright. And I'm gonna discuss some of the latest legal troubles for OpenAI, which is the creator of ChatGPT. This is including the alleged use of Scarlett Johansson's voice and its new AI assistant technology as well as some copyright infringement claims that have been filed by a number of authors, including George r r Martin after chat gpt was used to create the final two installments of the Game of Thrones book series.
Jack Sanker:Oh my god.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Very interesting. So all that and more, here's what you need to know.
Jack Sanker:In a joint report that was published by ProPublica in The New Yorker this past Monday titled, Toxic Gaslighting, How 3 m Executives Convinced a scientist the forever chemicals she found in human blood were safe. The story follows a chemist named Chris Hanson who was employed by the Minnesota based 3 m for over 20 years, kinda details her discoveries around certain chemicals that have found their way, first into many streams of commerce that 3 m operates at this point. And for anyone at home who's wondering, like, have I been exposed to it? The answer is probably yes. PFAS, and this is according to the, Department of Health, website from, Wisconsin, which our our firm is active in.
Jack Sanker:PFAS are found in cleaning products, obviously, water resistant fabrics such as rain jackets, umbrellas, and tents, grease resistant paper which is very interesting because that specifically is is I know from a little bit of experience, that refers to, like think of, like, the paper that your burger from McDonald's gets wrapped in. That's that's a a big issue, and that's been that's been in, you know, circulation since the fifties. Like that you know, it's one of the reasons why you can wrap a burger in in, like, that wax paper and it doesn't get soggy. Nonstick cookware, that's also mentioned in the piece. It it was was or is well, no longer is, but was being used, in Teflon, which was being, manufactured by DuPont.
Jack Sanker:And I do believe DuPont got sued separately for that. Personal care products, shampoo, dental floss, nail polish, eye makeup, stain resistant coatings used on carpets, upholstery, other fabrics, paints, I believe. According to the Department of Health in Wisconsin, how can I be exposed to PFAS? The main way people can be exposed to PFAS include drinking water, contaminated, municipal, or private well water. And that put a pin in that because it's not like someone is dumping PFAS into the water.
Jack Sanker:This is this is chemicals that are added to these products and then, leach off of the products into the groundwater, that way. So it's it's not like someone is, you know, we're not saying 3 m or someone else is dumping this stuff into, you know, the well water, but all of the, you know, nail polish and nonstick cookware and all those things, it that is also gonna include, like, maybe you you don't drink it and you take a shower and that steam that you breathe in, you've also been exposed that way. Eating fish with high levels of PFAS, and as we've talked about seemingly everything, has this stuff. It seems like the freshwater fish in Minnesota, probably not great. Food grown or raised near places, that used or made PFAS.
Jack Sanker:Sorry, Minnesota. Packaged materials, this is, like, again, the paper that's used in, like, your Amazon boxes, things like that.
Danessa Watkins:Tape.
Jack Sanker:Tape. Mhmm. Tape. Contaminated soil or dust, so that's gonna be on everything. And then other things like, I don't know why it was ski wax, and things like that.
Jack Sanker:So to answer the question I started this with, if you think you have been exposed to it, it's because almost out like, without a doubt you have been. Now Hansen worked for 3 m starting in the mid nineties as a chemist. For some context, 3 m, the company makes basically everything. Post it notes, scotch tape, the n 95 mask that was everything, post it notes, scotch tape, the n 95 masks that were so important during COVID, waterproofing sprays for fabric and leather, insulation, and so on. They're a massive company with a market cap as of today of about 55,000,000,000.
Jack Sanker:It's also probably on the brink of bankruptcy according to a couple of financial and legal analysts, in part because of its role in spreading these forever chemicals into the environment, which we're about to discuss at length, allegedly. So back to the story. Chris Hansen, the kind of protagonist of the story and the chemist with 3 m, was asked one day in 1997 to do something a little different from her day to day operations to test blood, specifically blood collected from 3 m factory workers for the presence of fluorochemicals or PFOS, which is short for perfluoro Octanesulfonic acid. I'm not going to try to say that again. I'm gonna say fluorochemicals or PFOS, for the remainder of this.
Jack Sanker:Anyways, many 3 m products contain these fluorochemicals and and what's interesting here is that as you find out as you read the article and if you've been paying attention to this, it was already known at this point in even in 1997 that fluorochemicals would American Red Cross. Now what's really, really interesting is, Chris Hanson found that both the 3 m employee samples and the random samples from the general population contained fluorochemicals. And the piece goes on to detail how Hanson and, 3 m first assume that this has gotta be some kind of mistake and all the ways in which they, repeated the tests over and over again and getting the same results because, you know, theoretically, the m it makes sense for the 3 m employees to have, you know, higher exposure to these chemicals, but what are they doing showing up in the bloodstream of everyday people? Eventually, eventually, Hansen told her bosses at 3 m that there was seemingly fluorochemicals present in everyone's blood, at least according to her test. Now the bosses Hansen and her team on.
Jack Sanker:Hansen and her team ordered fresh samples from every supplier that 3 m worked with, and each of the samples tested positive for PFOS. Now the piece Hanson didn't know was that 3 m had already, conducted Hanson didn't know was that 3 m had already, conducted animal studies 2 decades earlier. Remember, this is in 1997, so they're talking about the the late seventies at this point. They had shown p o PFOS to be toxic, yet the results remain secret even to many at the company. In one early experiment conducted in the late seventies, a group of 3 m scientists fed PFOS to rats on a daily basis.
Jack Sanker:Starting at the second lowest dose dose that the scientists tested, about 10 milligrams for
Jack Sanker:every kilogram of body weight, the rats showed signs of possible
Jack Sanker:harm to their livers, and half of them died. At higher doses, every rat died. Soon afterward, 3 m scientists found that a relatively low dose, 4.5 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, could kill a monkey within weeks. Based on this result, the chemical would currently fall in the highest of 5 toxicity levels recognized by the United Nations. This daily dose of PFOS was orders of magnitudes greater than the amount the average person would adjust, but it was still relatively low, roughly comparable to the dose of aspirin in a standard tablet.
Jack Sanker:Now in 1979, an intern internal company report deemed PFOS quote, certainly more toxic than anticipated and recommended longer term studies. That year, 3 m executives flew to San Francisco to consult with Hodge, a respected toxicologist. They told Hodge only part of what they knew, that PFOS had sickened and even killed laboratory animals and had caused liver abnormalities in factory workers according to a 3 m document that was marked confidential. Hodge urged the executives to study whether the company's fluorochemicals cause reproductive issues or cancer. After reviewing more data, he told one of them to find out whether the chemicals were present in man.
Jack Sanker:And he added, quote, if the levels are high and widespread and the half life is long, we could have a serious problem, unquote. Yet, Hodge's warning was omitted from the official meeting notes and the company's fluorochemical production actually increased over time, unquote. So Hansen tests showed fluorochemicals in local farm animals and wildlife, lab rats, fish, so on. Some female animals would kind of unexpectedly show a decrease in fluorochemicals. And the explanation for that, it turns out, is kind of, depressing because Hansen discovered that those animals were likely offloading their own fluorochemicals into their offspring when they gave birth.
Jack Sanker:So pregnant mammals were giving birth to offspring that also tested positive for chemicals without having actually been exposed to them yet. This part gets interesting. Quoting from the piece again, quote, Hansen knew that if she could find a blood sample that didn't contain PFOS, then she might be able to convince her colleagues that the other samples did and parenthetical. Because at this point, they still didn't believe her. Right?
Jack Sanker:Going back to it, she and her team began to study historical blood from the early decades of PFOS production. They soon found the chemical in blood from a 1969 or 1971 Michigan breast cancer study. They then ran an overnight test have been have been somewhere remote where 3 m products weren't in widespread use. The next morning, anxious to see the results, Hansen arrived to the lab before anyone else. For the first time since she had begun blood testing, some of the samples showed no trace of PFOS.
Jack Sanker:She was so struck that she called her husband. There was nothing wrong with her equipment or her methodology. PFOS, a man made chemical produced by her employer, really was in human blood practically everywhere. Hansen's team found blood samples from 1957 and 1971. After that, her lab analyzed blood that had been collected before 3 m created PFOS and it tested negative.
Jack Sanker:Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them. They had leached out of 3 m's sprays, coatings, and factories, and into all of us, unquote. So it's it's a correlation versus causation thing here, but there's a point in time in which none of the testing is indicating any fluorochemicals in anyone's blood. The chemicals get introduced into the larger stream of commerce, and now you really can't find blood samples that do not contain them. And I should note that 3 m is the inventor and primary, producer of these chemicals during this time period.
Jack Sanker:I I also don't wanna gloss over the rest of the story about Chris Hansen because it's it's really a good read and and kind of tragic, and she gets harassed, and, her career is sidelined according to the piece, of course. But that's a bit outside the scope of this show. I I do highly recommend that anyone who's interested go read the article. It's really well done. She also ends up testing her own blood when she was pregnant with twins.
Jack Sanker:And sure enough, she was positive for flurochemicals, but had an extremely low count, which she thought and and understandably believes, meant that she had offloaded the chemicals that were in her body into her unborn twins at this point in utero. But I do wanna stick to the kind of the legal business and, you know, societal angles of this this story. Some more info on that. In 2,002, 3 m announced it would be replacing its primary commercial fluorochemical PFOS with with another one called PFBS. Then in 2,006, the EPA accused 3 m of violating the Toxic Substances Control Act, and 3 m paid a fine without admitting any wrongdoing.
Jack Sanker:Eventually, fluorochemicals and other semicol chemicals eventually, fluorochemicals and other similar chemicals. Don't ask me to I was a history major, turned commercial litigator. I'm not some kind of dork chemist.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Psychology. I got I've got nothing for you there.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. I I'm joking about that. My wife's a doctor, and she listens to the show sometimes. Sorry.
Danessa Watkins:Thanks for your support.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. This show is actually or this story rather has been, dramatized in the 2016 movie, Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo, if anyone's seen that, which I haven't seen, but this actually does remind me a bit more of Michael Clayton, which is a a great lawyer movie if you haven't seen that. Mhmm. Not implying that 3 m has had anyone, assassinated, like, which happens in that movie, but, you know, it's a good movie. Anyways, the term that's being thrown about now, PFAS or PFAS, which includes PFOS, Fluorochemicals, and, industrial chemicals.
Jack Sanker:Going back to the piece, quote, between 1954 and 2000, 3 m produced at least £100,000,000 of, PFOS and other chemicals that degrade into PFOS. This is roughly the weight of the Titanic. Titanic. After the late seventies, when 3 m scientists established that the chemical was toxic in animals and was accumulating in humans, it produced 1,000,000 of pounds per year. Scientists are still to get to grasp all of the biological consequences.
Jack Sanker:They have learned just as Hansen's bosses at 3 m did decades ago that proteins in the body bind to PFOS and there's our cells and organs where even tiny amounts can cause stress and interfere with basic biological functions. It contributes to diseases that take many years to develop. And at the time of a diagnosis, one's PFOS levels may be may have fallen making it difficult to establish causation with any certainty, unquote. So these chemicals are now being linked to developmental disorders, different types of cancers, and so on. I don't wanna speculate on how closely linked they are.
Jack Sanker:We'll leave that to the, toxic tort plaintiff lawyers. Quoting again from the piece, quote, new health effects continue to be discovered. Researchers have found that exposure to PFAS remember, PFAS, PFAS, is a broader term that encapsulates florochemicals and PFOS. Exposure to PFAS during pregnancy can lead to developmental delays in children. Numerous recent studies have linked the chemicals to diabetes and obesity.
Jack Sanker:This year, a study discovered 13 forever chemicals, including PFOS, in weeks old fetuses from terminated pregnancies and linked the chemicals to biomarkers associated with liver problems. A team of New York University researchers estimate in 2018 that the cost of just 2 forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, in terms of disease burden, disability, health care expenses, amounted to as much as Grandjean, a physician who helped discover that PFAS harm the immune system, believes that anyone exposed to these chemicals, which is essentially everyone, may have an elevated risk of cancer. Our immune system systems often find and kill abnormal cells before they turn into tumors, quote, PFAS interfere with the immune system and likely also this critical function, he told the author. Grandjean, who served as an expert witness in the Minnesota AG's case as a parenthetical against 3 m, has studied many environmental contaminants including mercury. The impact of PFAS was so much much more extreme, he said, that one of his colleagues initially thought it was the result of nuclear radiation.
Jack Sanker:Unquote. Yeah. So why are we covering this in the show? It is an interesting story. There is plenty of litigation around this already.
Jack Sanker:We'll talk about in a moment. But more specifically, it's worthwhile to talk about what the different regulators are doing to address this stuff now. In April of 2024, for example, the EPA issued a few new rule changes and statements that would acknowledge that no amounts of PFAS are safe, that they are likely to cause cancer, that they are deemed hazardous chemicals under federal laws, and are subject to federal enforcement mechanisms to force polluters to clean the chemicals up. The the EPA also sets limits for PFAS in drinking water. Now local utilities will be forced by law to test for PFAS in water supplies starting in a few years.
Jack Sanker:And you can already see how this is gonna affect companies and businesses, not just 3 m. Anyone that uses PFAS in its products, processing, manufacturing, or putting them into streams of commerce can be caught up in these regulations. In fact, 3 m just settled, I think, in April of this year, a lawsuit filed by different municipalities for, up to 12,500,000,000, which is to cover the cost of treating local water supplies, and in 2022 announced that it would stop making PFAS altogether. From the regulatory side of things, 30 4 states have introduced regulations on PFAS. 28 states have adopted some measure of regulation on the use.
Jack Sanker:And, importantly, for a lot of people listening, the disclosure of the use of such chemicals by really anyone doing business in those states. And from the work that I've been doing on this and and my experience here, what I could tell you is that a lot of these disclosure agreements extend not only to the immediate components those materials or parts, contain PFAS. Any components that they're having assembled abroad and being brought into the states and then being sold, all of these things are going to be required to be disclosed. So that level of, like, knowledge and keeping tabs on the supply chain is going to be incredibly burdensome, for a lot of businesses, you know, especially considering, you know, how much in our kind of global commerce, how much different parts, different things are imported from abroad and then assembled here, repackaged, whatever. Minnesota, for example, has some of the strictest regulations in the country on this so far and incidentally is the home state of 3 m.
Jack Sanker:Broadly speaking, the rules in Minnesota require and I'm gonna go ahead and quote from a fact sheet that's put out by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency here. Quote, that a manufacturer of a product sold, offered for sale, or distributed in Minnesota, so that's, manufactured, offered for sale, or distributed, that contains intentionally added must submit certain required information to the MPCA, which is the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. This rulemaking proposes to establish a program to collect information about products containing intentionally coding of the product, the purpose of any PFAS in the product, the coding of the product, the purpose of any PFAS in the product, the identity of each PFAS present, the amount MPCA MPCA must be prepared to collect this information by January 1, 2026. So break that down for a moment. It's, intentional addition of PFAS to products or components, things like that.
Jack Sanker:I it seems to be carving out an exception for unintentional contamination. If you know anything about PFAS, they show up in everything. So if there was a test that was done, involving a factory worker had who had used shampoo that contained PFAS and then was touching certain components of this guy's, like, shampoo residue. Right? So, they're looking for the intentional addition of the of PFAS to different products, things like that.
Jack Sanker:But it does ex expand pretty significantly down the supply chain, and the information that's requested here, you know, the purpose track of if you're just some, you know, local supplier in the United States. And, like, think about, like, I don't know, dropshippers or, like, the the the team who salespeople that are on, like, you know, Instagram or whatever. They have no idea. They're just, you know, what just advertising something that gets sold in the US. It gets shipped from China or whatever.
Jack Sanker:So from talking with folks in the industry, and this is something that our office has been working on, this disclosure requirement and this tracking requirement and all that, it looks like it's gonna be extremely burdensome on local business. But, if you're not thinking about this and if you are in any of these states, you really need to be because it's already halfway through 2024. The Minnesota regulation goes into effect January 1st. The EPA regulations go into effect in 2025. There are different ones all over the different states.
Jack Sanker:Illinois has one that's going to, into effect shortly as well. Different requirements from each. But, ultimately, at some point, we expect that the federal government is going to kind of unify a, a federal standard here. It it would be well within, you know, congress' regulatory authority, interstate commerce, whatever, to do that. And, this type of disclosure and
Producer:decade.
Jack Sanker:It also seems like this information is going to be retrospective to a point, so you're going to and think about it. If you have a product that is being sold, it's hitting the shelves, in 2027, but the components and the different parts and things like that have been sourced over the course of a couple years, you're gonna have to disclose that as well. So the amount of record keeping and, the way in which you can kind of make sure that you're all kosher with these regulatory agencies, pretty serious. And the other thing is if you are in the business of merging with or acquiring or getting acquired by any company, you're gonna need to know this is gonna need need to be part of your due diligence process, and it wasn't before. So, on the corporate side of things, we're now seeing a ton of inquiries about, you know, hey.
Jack Sanker:I'm some local construction company. I wanna buy this contractor, and and they, you know, are using hypothetically 3 m insulation. Right? What do I need to know about this? What do I need to disclose?
Jack Sanker:Whatever. I'm just a small, you know, $10,000,000 company. So it's it's causing a lot of people to ask questions, which is a good thing, but it it is going to shake up how business has done for a lot of people in the next couple of years. And this story that is in the New Yorker and ProPublica this week, and I'm seeing has picked up on, you know, what's been on cable news now and everything else, PFAS and this type of, you know, quote, unquote forever chemicals, it's been in the news for a long time. This is probably the first time that I've seen it, like, on the front page.
Jack Sanker:With the big settlement from 3 m, as I mentioned, it's 12 and a half 1000000000. 3 m also has some other legal troubles around, their earplugs, which I think was a $10,000,000,000 settlement if I remember.
Danessa Watkins:I think I think I just read it was for 6,000,000,000.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. I I So they're,
Danessa Watkins:I mean, they're shelling out 1,000,000,000 of dollars for different products.
Jack Sanker:They have a market cap of 55,000,000,000 and roughly 16 to 20 is now gonna be earmarked for, settlements. And this is, like, before, the and this is not this is not the, the, like, toxic tort litigation that I think and I think most people think will happen. You'll have lawsuits similar to the asbestos talc litigation.
Producer:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:That's been going on for decades. That has almost bankrupted, you know, Johnson and Johnson several times and has bankrupted other companies. Interestingly, the, you know, the big insurance companies, they're to me, they're like Vegas. Like, they're never wrong about this stuff. Like, they're all they're really great at clocking the risk.
Jack Sanker:And they, you know, this is kind of insider baseball, but a lot of the reinsurers have already written this out of their policy. So if you think that your insurance policy, covers liabilities for whether it's toxic exposure for PFAS or, business liabilities associated with the disclosure requirements, it probably doesn't. So if you're thinking about, the contracts that you're entering into, if you're acquiring or merging or, anything on those lines, you really need to be thinking hard about the risk management side of this thing and how it's gonna affect you kinda down the road. So that's that's the story, Denessa. I mean, there's a lot going on, obviously.
Jack Sanker:There's the the human interest element of it all, of course, which I do think I've rees passed, and maybe we should spend a moment on that.
Danessa Watkins:Well, I think it's probably yet to be seen. I mean, we we do have this this
Producer:settlement pending. I think
Danessa Watkins:I saw that, settlement pending. I think I saw that, 3 m is gonna start making payments in the Q3 of this year, but is it is expected to extend 2 years where they're gonna start you said, it's front page news, this is when we're gonna start seeing the class action lawsuits.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. And and like I said, it's gonna be you know, you're going to have the, like, kind of toxic toward personal injury type class actions, you know, that are kind of with this type of thing. But the municipality aspect of it, I think, is very interesting because, cities and towns who are going to, by law, be required to test for this thing and then, by law, be required to remove it from the water supply. That's not free.
Danessa Watkins:Right.
Jack Sanker:And they're gonna be looking for someone to, contribute or and that's going to come down to you know, 3 m is singled out here because that's what article's about, but they're not the only ones, obviously. Mhmm. So, yeah, it it's it's, like, kind of looming. A lot of these companies just are going to have to, to deal with this. And my first experience is a brief experience, but my first experience out of law school was in an asbestos litigation firm.
Jack Sanker:And I kinda view this as almost exactly as that.
Danessa Watkins:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:It's like it looks exactly like that where they kinda knew, allegedly, that it was bad and didn't do anything about it. And and now it's kind of the house of cards is coming down.
Danessa Watkins:Well, on the frustrating part is, like you said, not only do the municipalities now need to probably pay for certain things, which maybe some of this settlement will cover, but I have a feeling that
Jack Sanker:It'll exceed 12.5.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. I think 12 and a half 1000000000 is gonna go pretty quickly. So that's probably gonna come from either the government or the taxpayers ultimately.
Jack Sanker:Well, I think from the part of the reason that that settlement was reached, and I was keeping tabs and it was happening, was because of solvency concerns for 3 m. It's like, take this money now or take it, you know, get in line with our other creditors.
Danessa Watkins:Right. Yeah. And that's what I'm thinking is at some point, they're gonna go bankrupt here.
Jack Sanker:Some people think. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:But, I mean, it's This is not financial advice. Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Danessa Watkins:But aside from, you know, just that, now you have these businesses that have to spend all this money in their compliance and, you know, the things they need to do because of a company that knew for decades, allegedly, that I was selling these products.
Jack Sanker:Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:And, you know, now that that cost is being passed on to to these businesses, unbeknownst to them, that Yeah. You know?
Jack Sanker:And as I understand, 3 m invented this type of product. And, like, there's some cool anecdotes in the story about, like, where these these cool and, you know, if we're going to defend 3 m here, you know, may maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. But, the products that they that they have kind of contributed to the world are important and very interesting and it and it's it's pretty cool. Like, there's an anecdote in the story about how, one of the, PIFA's, chemicals dropped onto one of the factory workers' shoe, and then they noticed that they, like, couldn't get it off the shoe. And then it, like, coated the shoe in such a way that it was waterproof and then they turned it into, Scotchgard.
Jack Sanker:Scotchgard. Yes. That's that's the product. Scotchgard which is, you know, like a a leather fabric waterproofing material. And that's, like, that's cool.
Jack Sanker:And I've prob I've used that, you know. I use Scotch tape obviously. And we all, like, were clamoring for, n 95 masks, you know, not all that long ago. And I should note 3 m does they they have defended themselves on this publicly and said, you know, whatever the whatever an inadvertent damage we've done, it was in service of, like, providing these goods and services and, you know, I don't think they say, you know, whether they should have talked about it earlier or not, but I think they do make the key like, the cost benefit case. Yeah.
Jack Sanker:You know, I don't know if that's compelling or not.
Producer:Yeah.
Jack Sanker:But,
Danessa Watkins:I'm shaking my head over here. Yeah.
Producer:Well,
Danessa Watkins:Tell that to the person who has cancer. You know?
Jack Sanker:Yeah. And and, you know, there I will say also from being around this, the reason that the toxic tort cancer lawsuits, the birth abnormality lawsuits, the, you know, renal failure stuff. That hasn't sprung up yet is because the the science at the individual level, I don't think is there, for what I've seen. Well,
Danessa Watkins:it seems like it's so widespread that it how do, you know, how do you cast out the other variables?
Jack Sanker:That's the really interesting part is Yeah. That they're you can't find a control group. Mhmm. I mean, it was they had to go back decades, in the US to find anyone who was, like, free of this thing. There was a headline that caught my eye the other day, actually, on this as I was putting this article together.
Jack Sanker:It was a study that they they called them microplastics, but that would also largely be included in this. Jesus. Every single one. So Yikes. And it's it's it's in unborn fetuses.
Jack Sanker:It's in everything. It's, you know yeah. It's really strange. And there does seem to be there's a temporal link, of course, between when the chemicals were introduced by 3 m, and when this stuff started showing up in everyone's bloodstream. So there's not in this article, but there's other information about, like, really, really far into, like, sub Saharan Africa.
Jack Sanker:There's examples of people that have not have been exposed or you have to get pretty far into the unindustrialized world to find people Mhmm. That haven't been around this, but that's gonna be an increasingly shrinking number.
Danessa Watkins:Mhmm. Right. Yeah. It's almost too big to wrap your mind around, to be honest, but, it's probably one of those things where the more that lawsuits get filed, it's just gonna be too expensive to litigate them, and it'll just, yeah, turn into settlements.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. Yeah. You'd you'd think so. But the regulatory compliance aspect of this is is gonna be what we kind of have our eye on here. And we may even bring on, one of our partners here at the firm in the next couple of weeks by the name of Craig Craig Kubiak, who kind of specializes in that and is working with of these companies to, get their ducks lined up in advance of all these deadlines.
Jack Sanker:And, also, as we know, these regulations come out, they can move back, they can, you know, a year or 2 years, 3 years. And the EPA, at the federal level is gonna be inundated with this information. It's gonna take them 5 years to you know, if you give them the data for 2,025, they will not be able to sift through it until 2,030. You know? Kind of like the IRS in that regard.
Jack Sanker:But you still have to do it. You know? And, like, you have to, I make a public log of having done it.
Producer:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:That's gonna affect investor relations. That's gonna affect, you know, whether someone wants to buy your company or not. It's a it's a big deal. So we're trying to get our heads around that here and, doing our best to to help everyone out. Everyone who wants to, you know, be good faith actors in this process.
Danessa Watkins:Alright. Well, pivoting away from one area of doom and gloom, and I guess entering into a scary world of artificial intelligence. I'm going to cover some recent stories and and litigation and claims against OpenAI. So this is an American artificial intelligence research organization that was founded in 2015. The company's website states, quote, our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence, AI systems that are generally smarter than humans, benefits all of humanity, end quote.
Danessa Watkins:Open AI researches generative models and how to best align them with human values. So the company openly acknowledges the potential power of artificial intelligence as it employs a specialized safety systems team and dedicates a whole section of its website to discussing its safety standards and best practices for users who interact with its products. Now OpenAI is most readily known for its chat gpt product, which we've taught talked a lot about on this podcast in in different areas of law and how it's used. But the company just recently expanded the capabilities of this product by introducing voice mode or voice assistance. So in May of 2024, OpenAI unveiled its voice assistant during an event in San Francisco.
Danessa Watkins:Mark Chen, who's the company's research lead, he in a demonstration, he told the assistant that he was nervous to be doing a live demo. And then in a peppy cheerleader type voice, the assistant responded, oh, you're doing a live demo right now? That's awesome. And then mister Chen, he went through a lengthy demonstration just explaining how the product essentially combines combines conversational skills of the chat GPT chat box with the sound of a voice assistant similar to, like Siri on the iPhone. So in total, OpenAI has 5 voices associated with its assistant, which are all assigned kind of catchy, earthy names.
Danessa Watkins:Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper, and Skye. Not sure what the origin of those.
Producer:Okay.
Danessa Watkins:Yep. Now all of this was great until the voices went public. And one in particular, Skye, was eerily similar, if not indistinguishable, from the voice of well known a list actress Scarlett Johansson. So if you recall in 2013, Johansson starred in the Spike Jonze movie Her, and she provided the voice of an AI system in that film. And if I remember right, I think that film was about a man who sort of secludes himself and then ends up falling in love with his virtual assistant, which is Johansson's voice.
Jack Sanker:It's a lovely movie. It sound it sounds, sad the way you just said it, but but it's actually a really sweet movie, believe it or not.
Danessa Watkins:I think it's supposed to, though, highlight the the power and, you know, potential issues with AI.
Jack Sanker:In this movie, he's just like a tragic, like, emo guy.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Lonely lonely guy who, yeah, relies on AI for, I guess, his only social interactions.
Producer:Love. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Yep. So, I guess, you know, it it's just kind of a weird situation where Scarlett Johansson was an AI voice, and now there is a voice out there that
Jack Sanker:She won an Academy Award for
Producer:them, by the way.
Danessa Watkins:Oh, did she?
Jack Sanker:She did. Yeah. Oh.
Producer:Quick producer note, she did not.
Danessa Watkins:Look at you.
Jack Sanker:I like the movie. What do you think?
Danessa Watkins:So. Gosh. So since that voice called her agent and asked that she consider licensing her voice for a virtual assistant. And he made that request at least twice over the past year and both times, Johansson declined. So OpenAI quickly addressed Johansson's allegations, and the company actually immediately ceased using the Sky voice, but posted on its online blog over the weekend, quote, AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice.
Danessa Watkins:Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson, but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice, end quote. OpenAI said that it couldn't actually share the names of its voice professionals for privacy reasons, but that it had worked with directors and producers to develop these 5 voices for its products, and they were recorded last summer in San Francisco. So, ultimately, OpenAI is just saying that the similarities to mister Henson's voice were incidental and that the voice wasn't specifically designed to sound like that actress. So we're just gonna stop here because I do wanna address just generally that the imitation of voices has become so prevalent recently across so many situations. I know we've seen fake songs come out claiming to be artist's work when it really was AI, in my
Jack Sanker:home Drake?
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Drake. That's what I was thinking of. Yep.
Jack Sanker:Sacrilege. You know, AI Tupac.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Exactly. And then in my home state of New Hampshire, a few months ago, voters were receiving robocalls, which sounded like president Biden telling citizens not to go out and vote in the primaries. My god. So, yeah, I mean, the technology here, it's it's real.
Danessa Watkins:It's being used regularly. And, you know, Johansson, royalties.
Producer:Exactly. Yeah. And, I mean,
Jack Sanker:she is a voice actress. On royalties.
Danessa Watkins:Exactly. Yeah.
Jack Sanker:And, I mean, she is a voice actress. On top you know, she's a she gets paid to do this, like, a lot of money to do this.
Danessa Watkins:You know? Right.
Jack Sanker:Financially is, like, she's getting ripped off. Mhmm.
Producer:Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah. There is no lawsuit filed yet. But There was a cease and
Jack Sanker:desist, I believe.
Danessa Watkins:I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like I said, this is just one of many of OpenAI's problems that they've been facing recently.
Danessa Watkins:They have been hit with a litany of copyright infringement claims over the past year or so, alleging that the company is using copyrighted works to train its flagship large language model or LLM. And, that chat gpt, its outputs improperly summarize, mimic, or reproduce copyrighted materials. So one of these class action lawsuits was brought in the Southern District of New York. It was filed in September of 2023 by the authors guild, which is the nation's oldest and largest organization of writers. Along with 17 individually named authors, many of whom are are well known household names like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George RR Martin.
Danessa Watkins:So these authors are alleging that their books were downloaded from pirate ebook repositories and then copied it into the models that power Chat gbt. So Open AI is allegedly using the author's voices, characters, stories, etcetera to train chat gpt, which in turn allows users to create unauthorized sequels and derivatives of these copyrighted works. So the claim is that OpenAI should have first obtained these are loaded into the chat gpt model, when a user prompts it to, the the system will produce an unauthorized, for example, outline of the next purported installment work for these authors. So it'll actually pull characters from these books. It also can generate low quality ebooks impersonating the authors.
Danessa Watkins:So one of the plaintiffs is author Jane Friedman, and she discovered what she says, quote, a cache of garbage books, end quote, written under her name, for sale on Amazon that they discovered were created by Chat GPT. So one of the questions in this lawsuit is, although certainly chat gpt has been used to produce these infringing works, how do we know that OpenAI knowingly trained chat gpt on these copyrighted materials. Well, the lawsuit provides a number of bases, but most notable and probably most concerning is that OpenAI has has confirmed this to be true true stating that their training data is, quote, derived from existing publicly accessible corpora of data that include copyrighted works, end quote.
Jack Sanker:Right. They're they're broadly speaking claiming fair use here. Right?
Danessa Watkins:Exactly. That is their argument. So
Jack Sanker:We can talk about fair use in a minute. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:Oh, well, yeah. Actually, that's kinda where I was going anyways. And that is just a legal doctrine that will permit the unlicensed use of copyright protected works in certain circumstances, like, for example, parody, comment, criticism. It kinda goes hand in hand with first amendment rights. So that's what OpenAI is arguing that their program's ingestion of these copyrighted works to create large language models or other AI training databases is generally fair use.
Danessa Watkins:So like I said, that's just one of the lawsuits that's out there right now. There are also a number of lawsuits in the Northern District of California, and these were actually brought prior to the New York lawsuits. And just recently in April, the the California cases, they were trying to intervene in the New York actions for the purpose of saying those. I think the the concern of the plaintiffs or the plaintiff's in California who are trying to bring action under California's laws. But the the New York judge ended up, rejecting that that intervention saying that the claims were different.
Danessa Watkins:For example, the New York plaintiffs had actually added Microsoft as a defendant in their case, saying that Microsoft as an investor of OpenAI is responsible for some of the training because it couldn't have happened without Microsoft's judge mentioned was that the thing that judge mentioned was that the whole purpose of intervening was to stay the case. So those New York plaintiffs would have to wait and see what happened in the California litigation, which just would be unfair to them. So the judge is essentially saying, let's let's keep these cases safe separate from now. You all bring your claims in California. We'll maintain ours here in New York.
Danessa Watkins:I'm sure there are others that have popped up, but those are definitely 2 of the the venues that seem to be the biggest for for these type of cases. So I was kind of interested in this story when I read that ChatGPT can be used to actually create full works, and, George r r Martin is one of the plaintiffs that has fallen victim to that problem. Okay. I don't need to know your thoughts on
Producer:I mean, we've
Jack Sanker:been waiting for the books.
Danessa Watkins:I know.
Producer:What do
Jack Sanker:you want us to do?
Danessa Watkins:I know. So that's It's been
Jack Sanker:a long time.
Danessa Watkins:That's what they're saying. There are so many people out there that are just sitting on the edge of their seats. And, yeah.
Jack Sanker:He has been promising these books
Danessa Watkins:for Alright. Well
Jack Sanker:10 years.
Danessa Watkins:He's still diligently working on them. Yeah. So Alright. But it so, yes, one tenacious fan said I'm done waiting and actually used chat gpt to finish the series, obviously, in a fraction of the time of of what George is taking. So I looked into that a little bit, and I found this IGN article, in develop or excuse me, independent developer, Liam Swain.
Danessa Watkins:He actually published his project where he used Chat GPT to write the remaining 2 books of, what is it, song of ice and fire series. So he explains like, went through the prompts he did. He essentially created an outline for the first chapter of 1 of the books and then just repeated it over and over and then asked Chat GPT to get more in the outlines. Ultimately, he came up with 45 chapters of of a book. And
Jack Sanker:Has anyone read it?
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. So I I think they've been pulled down now because of these lawsuits. But, yes, they they were put out there. People did access them. And so he talks in this article about what he thought chat gpt did well and what it didn't.
Danessa Watkins:Apparently, if anyone knows Game of Thrones, I mean, I I started to I did the audiobooks. I started to listen to him on audio, and and then I, you know, watched the series and then Yeah. The audio fell off.
Jack Sanker:Shows better. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:But I just can't even imagine reading the book and trying to keep up with characters. Like, I would probably have to have, like, side notes going because it'll be, you know, know, a couple 100 pages before a character pops up again, and in that time you forget. Well, apparently, chat gbt does not forget, and it was very good at tracking character continuity, would have characters, yeah, disappear. It actually says for 100 100 of thousands of words before a character would return to a scene and, you know, pick up exactly how you knew that character before. So that was kind of interesting.
Danessa Watkins:But this guy said that what chat gpt is not good at at is Martin's best trick of killing off characters in surprising ways. So those type of plot twists, there there just isn't enough examples of that out there. So, you know, chat g GPT doesn't have all of that data that would, I guess, teach it to do those type of, like, sporadic killings.
Jack Sanker:To be creative.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah.
Producer:Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Essentially, to to be an author. So that was certainly lacking. And, so this guy says, you know, AI is not gonna replace authors anytime soon. But still, that's not a reason to to not protect their works, especially when these books are being put out under their names.
Danessa Watkins:You know?
Jack Sanker:Yeah. And and as I no. Caveat. Not an intellectual property attorney, but I took one class in law school. But as I understand, fair use allows you to use copyrighted materials for certain instances like, educational purposes, critical review, things like that.
Jack Sanker:One thing that is, like, a big no no is using copyrighted materials for commercial purposes.
Producer:Mhmm. So it's
Jack Sanker:something you're gonna use it to, you know, to make money off
Danessa Watkins:of. Right. Right.
Jack Sanker:Chat gbt is has a free version and has a paid version, but it is ultimately a a paid company.
Producer:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:And it is just consuming copyrighted materials to spit out I would say even the the end product is itself is maybe not even the infringement so much as the infringement is the creation of the algorithm. The algorithm is the material to the program so that I can work off of it. Right. Without license. Right.
Jack Sanker:So
Danessa Watkins:material to the program so that it can work off of it.
Jack Sanker:Right. Without license.
Danessa Watkins:Right.
Jack Sanker:Yes. Yeah. Is infringement on on these folks' copyrights? Because what it does is it spits out, you know, an amalgamation of, like, a what it is legal to do is write, like, fan fiction. Right?
Jack Sanker:Like, that would be legal
Producer:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:To say, like, I wrote my own take on the Game of Thrones books.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah.
Jack Sanker:That's, fine. It's not fine if you're commercializing that, through this through ripping off copyrighted materials to do so as as I understand it.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. Creating, like they call them derivative works
Producer:Right.
Danessa Watkins:Essentially.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. And it gets even worse when you, like, falsely attribute it to the to the author.
Danessa Watkins:Well, yeah, that's that's certainly the most egregious. But, but, yeah, even using, George RR Martin's other books, you know, having the same characters, the same plot lines, and all that, and then coming out with these book. I mean, does that hurt his future sales? You know? Because now fans have already alright.
Danessa Watkins:We got our fix.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. And I should take that back, actually. I actually do think if you take if you're, like, writing a book and you're like, this is my take on Game of Thrones and you're using the same characters and, like, whatever, I think that that actually is infringement.
Danessa Watkins:I think you might be right. Yeah.
Jack Sanker:I think that the authors will be, like, okay with it if you're, like, publishing it on Tumblr Yep. Versus, you know, selling it as an ebook. Versus, you know, selling it as an ebook. Right. Absolutely.
Jack Sanker:Another lawsuit
Producer:that's been brought at New York is, actually by New York Times.
Jack Sanker:So, Chad Gbt,
Danessa Watkins:actually by New York Times. So, ChattGbt somehow got into a database of a bunch of old New York Times articles, and then it's been, you know, spitting those out in different ways. So, as much as you would think, you know, the news is free and anyone can access it, well, sure, if it's published by New York Times.
Jack Sanker:And it's not free. You know? Like, there is a cable there.
Danessa Watkins:That's true. Yeah. So, so they and that goes back decades. I mean, they their lawsuit is pretty big with that. I think they may I don't think they actually joined that case with the one by the the authors guild, but I think the same judge is overseeing them, which, you know, makes sense.
Danessa Watkins:So because they're definitely related. So, you know, these are these are in the early stages. I think one one case is hearing motion to dismiss arguments soon. The New York one of the New York cases is just going into preliminary discovery. So there's a lot to be seen.
Danessa Watkins:Obviously, OpenAI is going to protect chat GPT as much as it can. You know, it it needs access to all of this information in order to do what it does. So
Jack Sanker:And it can't. Its business model, like, probably can't sustain licensing this stuff. Right?
Danessa Watkins:Oh, yeah. I mean, the I can't even imagine what the cost involved would be. Right.
Jack Sanker:That's the whole point.
Danessa Watkins:Mhmm. For sure. And, and I'm sure there are people that will say no.
Jack Sanker:Yeah. I I was, like, glancing around before coming here to record, and there are, you know, scholarly articles that have been written in law review. I don't know how you know, I can't vouch for the credibility of the authors or the law review, and I didn't really spend time much time reading it. But there are people that are claiming it is fair use.
Producer:Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:So, like, it will have to be, like, decided. Be stuff will just gobble it all up. You know?
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. It's definitely there's gonna be some interesting loss set from these cases, if they don't end up just settling, but I think the the interests at stake, you know, unless discovery starts to go a certain way are are so important that probably these these companies, including Microsoft, now that Microsoft is a named defendant, you know, that ups ups the stakes as well. They may want to get some rulings, potentially.
Jack Sanker:Going back to Scarlett Johansson, did you did you see the tweet that, Sam Altman put out, regarding this? It so this when they demo the the voice, assistant, it was Sky, which is the one that sounds like Scarlett Johansson. Everyone was, like, sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson, and it's, like, very obviously an homage, at the very least, to her role in the movie Her. Mhmm. And he just tweeted the word her.
Producer:Yeah. I did
Danessa Watkins:see that. Oh, yeah.
Jack Sanker:Just admit to it, dude. Why not?
Producer:Right. Right. Now I know. Why do that? You know?
Producer:Yeah. That was I'm
Jack Sanker:sure that their
Producer:legal was
Danessa Watkins:like Yeah.
Jack Sanker:I can't. Billy Pet.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. I can't say that I envy his lawyers. That was
Jack Sanker:Well, you know, it's it's another it is an example. Like, we've talked about this with respect to, Facebook's kind of, a company like Facebook, a company like Uber, that have and that whole, like, you know, move fast and break things ethos from the mid 2000s of, like, this may or may not be legal. It's you know, we'll call it in a gray area for now, but let's, like, get into that space as quickly as we can because regulators don't understand it
Danessa Watkins:Yep.
Jack Sanker:And, establish ourselves and then raise as much money around it as possible. And then, you know, regulators will be forced with, you know, the choice of dismantling a multibillion dollar enterprise or bending the rules. And that is at least somewhat an effective business model. You know, we'll call that regulatory arbitrage, for, like, a company like Uber that, you know, at the outset was like, we're not a taxi company. We're, you know, something else.
Jack Sanker:We're a dispatch company. Yeah. And so we don't have to have workers' comp insurance.
Danessa Watkins:Right.
Jack Sanker:And regulators are like, we don't know what you are because we're 80. You know? Mhmm. And they've more or less weathered the storm, and have avoided what I think at the outset was probably pretty condemning legal arguments, and now we've bent those rules in their favor and for good or for bad.
Danessa Watkins:And it and that's also the varied state to state, sometimes city to city, which now kinda when you yeah. I use that analogy. Now I can kind of see why the plaintiffs in California wanted to intervene in the New York case because, you know, artists aren't stationary. They travel, and they wanna make sure that their rights are protected, you know, across the country.
Jack Sanker:And the larger of the sticking points of the big studios and a lot of the streaming services was, we want to retain rights to your name, image, and likeness for use in, like, subsequent things. So if you wanna in the the big shots, you know, the a listers, things like that, someone likes Scarlett Johansson, have a lot more leverage there. But if you're like a working actor who is an extra or has speaking parts in a TV show or whatever, that would have would have had to have been something you signed on to as part of the new renegotiation of these streaming deals, where they could just you know, you could come on, do your thing, they pay you once, and then they can just simulate your voice and image via AI forever, and you get none of those residuals. There's a Black Mirror episode about this too, actually.
Danessa Watkins:There's a Black Mirror episode about everything scary that happens.
Jack Sanker:Salma Hayek. It's a great episode.
Danessa Watkins:No. I actually a couple of months ago, I met the attorney that was involved in the negotiations on behalf of the actors, and and she was you know, there's a lot she couldn't talk about, but that was one of the the big issues that came up was that, yeah, actors, they would be required to do these, like, body screens Yeah. Which okay. From you know, let's say that these these production companies aren't all bad. And, you know, they're shooting, and then they, at months after the fact, realize, oh, you know, we need to the the story doesn't make sense.
Danessa Watkins:We need to add in this one extra scene with this actor doing this. And what are they gonna do? Pay that person a $1,000,000 to fly out for, you know, 30 minutes of No.
Jack Sanker:That's what they used to do. Right.
Danessa Watkins:Right. That's it. But now they're like, no. Now we have their digital replica so they can just add in that scene. They don't have to pay, you know, whatever fees that person would would charge for coming out for a day.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah.
Jack Sanker:I mean, even going back further, I mean, one of the reasons why there was, like, there was, like, the NIL deals in in, like, athletics is because, this I mean, this, I think, goes back 10 years, but, like, EA Sports, which makes, like, NCAA football, you know, whatever, was doing this with, college athlete athletes. And it was like, we're going to make, you know, the digital stand in of Tim Tebow
Producer:Yeah.
Jack Sanker:And that person is gonna be on, you know, NCAA 2,006. And, eventually, they're like, no. You can't do that. Like, that's you know, that that person who's, like, number 15 for the Florida Gators is clearly Tim Tebow. Mhmm.
Jack Sanker:You know, he looks exactly like him. There's no name on him, but that's that's who you're emulating here, and that's who you're trying using to sell this game. You have some rights to that, and that's kind of what started the ability of these athletes now to sell their, name, image, and likeness NIL Mhmm. And get themselves some money while they're in college and everything else.
Producer:Mhmm. And
Jack Sanker:this is kind of trying to reverse engineer that, it seems like.
Danessa Watkins:Yeah. For sure. And and like you said, it depends on the bargaining power. I mean, you know, that that was the idea is that we need to make it so that these actors can have some power, and it's not just, yeah, you automatically need need to assign away your rights or you're not in this film. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:Because, you know, I get it. I don't think you need to be a, like, bomb shelter person to be concerned about having someone have your your name and likeness to you know? Even though they say we're only gonna use it for this film. How do you know that? So I I get it.
Danessa Watkins:I understand we wanna use technology to our advantage, but, yeah, it's
Jack Sanker:less learning. Lest you despair and, are worried again about AI, you know, take gobbling up your jobs and everything else, I will show share a personal anecdote, that it if if you just kinda playing around with chat gpt, and I saw people doing this online since it wasn't my idea. But, you know, just just so everyone understands, like, the level of what a where I is AI is at this point. And I posted this to my LinkedIn if anyone needs proof of this interaction. But I asked Chad GPT if they'd like to play a game of rock, paper, scissors with me, and I told I said, you start.
Jack Sanker:And Chad GPT says, sure. I'll start. I choose rock. What's your move? My response, paper.
Jack Sanker:Chat GPT, paper covers rock. Nicely done. You win this round. Ready for the next one? I say, yeah.
Jack Sanker:Go ahead. Chat gpt says, alright. Here we go. This time, I choose scissors. What's your move?
Jack Sanker:I say rock. Congratulations. I won again. So I have a 100% win rate against, Chat gbt, and, and that is kind of you know, I'm sure that people that are in this space are probably fuming that, you know, know that it's better than that and you you break the game, you know, whatever. And I get that, but I will say that, like, if the, like, studios or if these companies, like, got their way, what you would get is, like, a crummier version of, like, you would get the, you know, the AI Game of Thrones, you know.
Jack Sanker:Like, you would get which isn't good, and you would get, like, the AI Scarlett Johansson, you know. Like like, that would just be uncanny valley, you know. We we would not like it, I think, long term. It would be cheaper and the Netflix folks would make more money or whatever. But, like, we don't want this to happen, I think.
Jack Sanker:Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Danessa Watkins:No. I agree.
Jack Sanker:Thanks for listening everyone. Reminder you could find us, spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, wherever you get your shows. We upload every 2 weeks on Tuesday. You could find us here on the firm website as well. If you have any you wanna drop a line to myself or Danessa.
Jack Sanker:If you wanna complain about, my rigging the game against chat g p t. Or if you just wanna know anything anything about these stories or have anything else you wanna ask about regarding some stories we've covered in the past. Otherwise, we will talk to you in 2 weeks.
