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Tucked in a two-sentence footnote in a voluminous court opinion, a federal judge recently called out immigration agents using artificial intelligence to write use-of-force reports, raising concerns that it could lead to inaccuracies and further erode public confidence in how police have handled the immigration crackdown in the Chicago area and ensuing protests.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis wrote the footnote in a 223-page opinion issued last week, noting that the practice of using ChatGPT to write use-of-force reports undermines agents’ credibility and “may explain the inaccuracy of these reports.” She described what she saw in at least one body camera video, writing that an agent asks ChatGPT to compile a narrative for a report after giving the program a brief description and several images.

The judge noted factual discrepancies between the official narrative about those law enforcement responses and what body camera footage showed. But experts say the use of AI to write a report that depends on an officer’s specific perspective without using an officer’s actual experience is the worst possible use of the technology and raises serious concerns about accuracy and privacy.

Law enforcement agencies across the country have been grappling with how to create guardrails that allow officers to use the increasingly available AI technology while maintaining accuracy, privacy and professionalism. Experts said the example recounted in the opinion didn’t meet that challenge.

“What this guy did is the worst of all worlds. Giving it a single sentence and a few pictures — if that’s true, if that’s what happened here — that goes against every bit of advice we have out there. It’s a nightmare scenario,” said Ian Adams, assistant criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who serves on a task force on artificial intelligence at the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear if the agency had guidelines or policies on the use of AI by agents. The body camera footage cited in the order has not yet been released.

Adams said few departments have put policies in place, but those that have often prohibit the use of predictive AI when writing reports justifying law enforcement decisions, especially use-of-force reports. Courts have established a standard referred to as objective reasonableness when considering whether a use of force was justified, relying heavily on the perspective of the officer.

“We need the specific articulated events of that event and the specific thoughts of that specific officer to let us know if this was a justified use of force,” Adams said. “That is the worst case scenario, other than explicitly telling it to make up facts, because you’re begging it to make up facts in this high-stakes situation.”

Besides raising concerns about an AI-generated report inaccurately characterizing what happened, the use of AI also raises potential privacy issues.

Katie Kinsey, chief of staff and tech policy counsel at the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, said if the agent in the order was using a public ChatGPT version, he probably didn’t understand that he lost control of the images the moment he uploaded them, allowing them to be part of the public domain and potentially used by bad actors.

Kinsey said from a technology standpoint most departments are building the plane as it’s being flown when it comes to AI. She said it’s often a pattern in law enforcement to wait until new technologies are already being used — and in some cases, mistakes being made — to then talk about putting guidelines or policies in place.

“You would rather do things the other way around, where you understand the risks and develop guardrails around the risks,” Kinsey said. “Even if they aren’t studying best practices, there’s some lower-hanging fruit that could help. We can start from transparency.”

Kinsey said while federal law enforcement considers how the technology should be used or not used, it could adopt a policy like those put in place in Utah or California recently, where police reports or communications written using AI have to be labeled.

The photographs the officer used to generate a narrative also caused accuracy concerns for some experts.

Well-known tech companies like Axon have begun offering AI components with their body cameras to assist in writing incident reports. Those AI programs marketed to police operate on a closed system and largely limit themselves to using audio from body cameras to produce narratives because the companies have said programs that attempt to use visuals are not effective enough for use.

“There are many different ways to describe a color, or a facial expression or any visual component. You could ask any AI expert and they would tell you prompts return very different results between different AI applications, and that gets complicated with a visual component,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University Law School.

“There’s also a professionalism question. Are we OK with police officers using predictive analytics?” he added. “It’s about what the model thinks should have happened, but might not be what actually happened. You don’t want it to be what ends up in court, to justify your actions.”

The Enhanced Games is going public in two ways — with a new listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange and also by offering a direct-to-consumer business focused on performance products in a move it says “aims to democratize access to performance enhancement tools and protocols.”

The announcement Wednesday comes six months ahead of the swimming, track and weightlifting competition the company will hold in Las Vegas. Olympic sprinter Fred Kerley and swimmer Ben Proud are among the handful of athletes who have signed up to compete for $250,000 first prizes.

They will not be drug tested in the way Olympic athletes are, but will be “mandated” to adhere to medical profiling to ensure their health prior to the competition, according to Enhanced’s news release.

The new public offering is expected to raise $200 million for Enhanced. The company said it closed a $40 million equity deal before its announcement, with that stake convertible into public shares once the company starts trading.

A key part of the financial model — one that was not discussed publicly when Enhanced Games launched in 2023 — is to offer what it calls consumer health products. The Enhanced news release says it intends to launch its product in early 2026. Currently on the Enhanced website is a link to “reserve access” to testosterone replacement medicines.

“By merging scientific progress with elite athletic performance, we can not only build an exciting new sports property that changes athletes’ lives, but also showcase that performance enhancements — under the right clinical and medical supervision — can deliver long term health and longevity benefits," Enhanced CEO Maximilian Martin said.

Martin’s appointment as CEO was announced last week as part of a broad reworking of the company’s front office, one that will see founder and frontman Aron D’Souza move away from day-to-day operations but remain as a shareholder.

Sid Banthiya, formerly the chief finance officer at the bakery Milk Bar, took the same position with Enhanced. Rick Adams, the former chief of sport performance at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, is now an executive at Enhanced as its chief sporting officer.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”

The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.

RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The landlords do not have to follow the suggestions, but critics argue that because the software has access to a vast trove of confidential data, it helps RealPage’s clients charge the highest possible rent.

“RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price,” said DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, who emphasized that the settlement avoided a costly, time-consuming trial.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, RealPage can no longer use that real-time data to determine price recommendations. Instead, the only nonpublic data that can be used to train the software’s algorithm must be at least one year old.

“What does this mean for you and your family?” Slater said in a video statement. “It means more real competition in local housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm.”

RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company is pleased the DOJ worked with them to settle the matter.

“There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage’s software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters,” Weissman said in a statement. ”We believe that RealPage’s historical use of aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data, which include rents that are typically lower than advertised rents, has led to lower rents, less vacancies, and more procompetitive effects.”

Over the past few months, more than two dozen property management companies have reached various settlements over their use of RealPage, including Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, which agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit, and $7 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by nine states.

The governors of California and New York signed laws last month to crack down on rent-setting software, and a growing list of cities, including Philadelphia and Seattle, have passed ordinances against the practice.

Ten states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington — had joined the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit. Those states were not part of Monday’s settlement.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising Tuesday following updates on the economy that kept alive hopes for a coming cut to interest rates.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% in afternoon trading, as 4 out of every 5 stocks within the index climbed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 562 points, or 1.2%, as of 2:09 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

The gains for indexes masked some swings underneath the surface, particularly among stocks linked to the artificial-intelligence industry.

Alphabet rose another 1.3%, continuing a strong run on excitement about its recently released Gemini AI model. Chinese giant Alibaba, meanwhile, saw its stock that trades in the United States fall 2.1% after losing an early gain. It reported stronger revenue than analysts expected for the latest quarter thanks in part to the AI boom, but its overall profit fell short of forecasts.

Some chip companies dropped sharply following a report from The Information that Meta Platforms is in talks to spend billions of dollars on AI chips from Alphabet instead of them. Nvidia sank 3.9% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 by far, while Advanced Micro Devices dropped 6.9%.

Mixed profit reports also caused big swings for several retailers.

Abercrombie & Fitch soared 35.1% after the apparel seller reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also raised the bottom end of its forecasted range for revenue and profit over the full year.

Kohl’s surged 34.9% after reporting a profit for the latest quarter, when analysts were expecting a loss. Best Buy rose 5.3% after boosting its profit forecast for the full year following a better-than-expected third quarter, citing strength across computing, gaming and mobile phones.

Dick’s Sporting Goods rose 2.3%, in a reversal from a more than 4% slump earlier in trading. It reported a weaker profit than expected. Executive Chairman Ed Stack said the company is “cleaning out the garage” by clearing inventory at Foot Locker, which it recently bought.

Helping to keep the overall market calm were hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate at its next meeting in December. The Fed has already cut rates twice this year in hopes of shoring up a slowing economy, and lower interest rates can cover up a lot of sins in financial markets, including prices going too high.

A raft of economic data on Tuesday left traders betting on a nearly 85% probability that the Fed will cut in December, according to data from CME Group. That’s roughly the same as a day before and up sharply from the coin flip’s chance seen a week ago.

One report said that shoppers bought less at U.S. retailers in September than economists expected. Another said confidence among U.S. consumers worsened by more than economists expected in another potentially signal that the economy could use lower interest rates.

A third report, meanwhile, said that inflation at the wholesale level was a touch worse in September than economists expected, but a closely tracked underlying trend was slightly better. That’s important because lower interest rates can make inflation worse, and still-high inflation is the main deterrent that could push the Fed to hold off on more cuts.

After taking all the data together, several economists suggested the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, could be leaning toward cutting rates on Dec. 10.

“Taking a pause on rate cuts would probably do more damage to sentiment than a cut would help,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management, who also said “Powell doesn’t need to be the Grinch that stole Christmas.”

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.00% from 4.04% late Monday.

Easier interest rates can help stocks of smaller companies in particular, because of the need for many of them to borrow to grow. The Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks rose 1.9% to lead the market.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly across much of Europe and Asia.

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AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

As “Wicked: For Good,” the second part of last year’s phenomenon simply known as “Wicked,” makes all the money in the world, let’s take a look back at the history of the two-part film trend and ask ourselves: Should it stop?

As the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” film serieses were coming to a close, studios didn’t want to say goodbye to their steady profits, so…they didn’t. They split their final installments into two films. The two-parters would shoot at the same time and be released a year apart. Both parts of both finales were massive successes.

“Hunger Games” followed suit with less profitable results, and the “Divergent” series fared even worse with part two being scrapped because part one did so badly.

Now we’ve had “Dune,” “Spider-verse,” “Fast & Furious,” “Mission: Impossible,” and, of course, “Wicked.” But “Wicked: For Good” is the only second part of a film to actually hit its release date as planned. “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” are still currently unresolved with their next installments that were meant to release last year, still not coming for, at minimum, two more years. “Dune” pulled the rug out from audiences with part two not providing closure but rather ending with another cliff hanger that is supposed to be resolved next year sometime. Ish. And “Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two,” retitled to” Final Reckoning” after Part One was bodied by Barbenheimer, ended the Tom Cruise franchise years after it was supposed to.

The two part movie stretches material thin and makes worse movies but more profits, or it just takes so long that it just becomes frustrating for audiences. I realize studios are primarily motivated by the “more profits” part of the equation but these two-part films suck for audiences. Let’s leave them behind, please.