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Nike is going to start selling its products directly on Amazon’s U.S. website for the first time since 2019 as the company looks for more ways to bring goods to customers and boost sales.

Nike, which sells footwear, clothing and other items, cut ties with Amazon at a time when the online retailer was trying to lure big brands to its website. While Nike stopped selling its sneakers and athletic gear directly to Amazon in 2019, Nike’s goods were still available on Amazon.com, sold by independent sellers that list their merchandise directly on Amazon’s marketplace.

Now Nike is resuming its direct relationship with Amazon.

“Nike is investing in our marketplace to ensure we’re offering the right products, best services, and tailored experiences to consumers wherever and however they choose to shop,” the company said in a statement. “This includes expanding to new digital accounts, including Amazon in the U.S., new physical partners like Printemps (a French luxury department store chain), elevating retail experiences across the marketplace, and launching Nike’s AI powered conversational search to improve our online services.”

Amazon is navigating its way through bringing Nike back on board.

“While independent sellers have listed some Nike inventory in our store for many years, Amazon will soon begin sourcing a much wider range of Nike products directly to expand our selection for U.S. customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “We value independent sellers, and we’re providing an extended period of time for the small number of sellers affected to sell through their inventory of overlapping items.”

When Nike announced the pilot program with Amazon.com in 2017, it hoped that it would have more control over the brand. Amazon acknowledged at the time that there were problematic sales of counterfeit goods on its site and implemented some tools to try to stop them.

Nike is reestablishing a more direct relationship with Amazon at a time when its sales are weakening.

In March the Beaverton, Oregon, company reported that its third-quarter sales fell 9% to $11.27 billion as revenue declined for the Nike brand and Converse.

Jefferies’ Randal Konik is supportive of Nike reconnecting with Amazon.

“We like this move by Nike plain and simple,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Amazon is the largest e-commerce platform and the move further cements Nike’s brand ubiquity.”

Shares of Nike rose more than 2% in Thursday afternoon trading.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.

The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of the attorneys for Garcia, said the judge’s order sends a message that Silicon Valley “needs to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market.”

The suit against Character Technologies, the company behind Character.AI, also names individual developers and Google as defendants. It has drawn the attention of legal experts and AI watchers in the U.S. and beyond, as the technology rapidly reshapes workplaces, marketplaces and relationships despite what experts warn are potentially existential risks.

“The order certainly sets it up as a potential test case for some broader issues involving AI,” said Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida with a focus on the First Amendment and artificial intelligence.

The lawsuit alleges that in the final months of his life, Setzer became increasingly isolated from reality as he engaged in sexualized conversations with the bot, which was patterned after a fictional character from the television show “Game of Thrones.” In his final moments, the bot told Setzer it loved him and urged the teen to “come home to me as soon as possible,” according to screenshots of the exchanges. Moments after receiving the message, Setzer shot himself, according to legal filings.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Character.AI pointed to a number of safety features the company has implemented, including guardrails for children and suicide prevention resources that were announced the day the lawsuit was filed.

“We care deeply about the safety of our users and our goal is to provide a space that is engaging and safe,” the statement said.

Attorneys for the developers want the case dismissed because they say chatbots deserve First Amendment protections, and ruling otherwise could have a “chilling effect” on the AI industry.

In her order Wednesday, U.S. Senior District Judge Anne Conway rejected some of the defendants’ free speech claims, saying she’s “not prepared” to hold that the chatbots’ output constitutes speech “at this stage.”

Conway did find that Character Technologies can assert the First Amendment rights of its users, who she found have a right to receive the “speech” of the chatbots. She also determined Garcia can move forward with claims that Google can be held liable for its alleged role in helping develop Character.AI. Some of the founders of the platform had previously worked on building AI at Google, and the suit says the tech giant was “aware of the risks” of the technology.

“We strongly disagree with this decision,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. ”Google and Character AI are entirely separate, and Google did not create, design, or manage Character AI’s app or any component part of it.”

No matter how the lawsuit plays out, Lidsky says the case is a warning of “the dangers of entrusting our emotional and mental health to AI companies.”

“It’s a warning to parents that social media and generative AI devices are not always harmless,” she said.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

The smoke that filled the cabin of a Delta flight as it took off from the Atlanta airport in February was so thick that the lead flight attendant had trouble seeing past the first row of passengers and the pilots donned oxygen masks as a precaution.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report Wednesday that the plane quickly returned to the airport on the morning of Feb. 24 and evacuated all 99 people aboard. Two people sustained minor injuries during the evacuation, but no one was hurt by the smoke.

Initially, the airline described the incident as just a haze inside the Boeing 717 aircraft. A Delta spokesman said he couldn’t comment during the NTSB’s ongoing investigation that the airline is cooperating with.

The flight attendants reported that the smoke began near one of the doors in the front of the plane before it also started coming out of all the vents throughout the plane, according to the report. The flight attendants tried contacting the pilots but initially couldn’t reach them because they were focused on emergency procedures and flying the plane.

The flight attendants assured passengers they were trained for the situation and asked them to remain calm.

Shortly after the smoke appeared, the NTSB said, the pilots got a low oil pressure alarm for the right engine, so they shut it down as they were returning to the airport. When maintenance personnel inspected that engine after the plane landed they found little or no oil in the engine.

The NTSB hasn’t determined if that oil leak was the cause of the smoke. That won’t be established until the agency completes its full report sometime next year.

The plane was met by firefighters when it landed, and when the pilots opened the flight deck door, they “noticed a tremendous amount of smoke in the cabin, and the captain immediately ordered an evacuation,” the report said.

Passengers evacuated the plane through a combination of the emergency slides at the front and back of the plane and climbing off the wing.

The flight’s destination had been Columbia, South Carolina.

ATLANTA (AP) — Florida was the first state to pass a law regulating the use of cellphones in schools in 2023. Just two years later, more than half of all states have laws in place, with more likely to act soon.

Bills have sprinted through legislatures this year in states as varied as New York and Oklahoma, reflecting a broad consensus that phones are bad for kids.

Connecticut state Rep. Jennifer Leeper, a Democrat and co-chair of the General Assembly’s Education Committee, on May 13 called phones “a cancer on our kids” that are “driving isolation, loneliness, decreasing attention and having major impacts both on social-emotional well-being but also learning.”

Republicans express similar sentiments.

“This is a not just an academic bill,” Republican Rep. Scott Hilton said after Georgia’s bill, which only bans phones in grades K-8, passed in March. “This is a mental health bill. It’s a public safety bill.”

So far, 26 states have passed laws, with eight other states and the District of Columbia implementing rules or making recommendations to local districts. Of the states, 17 have acted this year. Just Tuesday, Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed a law banning phones throughout the school day. Earlier Tuesday, Alaska lawmakers required schools to regulate cellphones when they overrode an education package Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy had vetoed for unrelated reasons.

More action is coming as bills await a governor’s signature or veto in Florida, Missouri, Nebraska and New Hampshire.

When Florida first acted, lawmakers ordered schools to ban phones during instructional time while allowing them between classes or at lunch. But now there’s another bill awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ action that goes further. It would ban phones for the entire school day for elementary and middle schools.

Ten states and the District of Columbia have enacted school day bans, most for students in grades K-12, and they now outnumber the seven states with instructional time bans.

North Dakota Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong called the ban throughout the school day that he signed into law “a huge win.”

“Teachers wanted it. Parents wanted it. Principals wanted it. School boards wanted it,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong recently visited a grade school with such a ban in place. He said he saw kids engaging with each other and laughing at tables during lunch.

The “bell-to-bell” bans have been promoted in part by ExcelinEd, the education think tank founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The group’s political affiliate has been active in lobbying for bans.

Nathan Hoffman, ExcelinEd’s senior director of state policy and advocacy, said barring phones throughout the day heads off problems outside of class, like when students set up or record fights in halls.

“That’s often when you get some of your biggest behavioral issues, whether they go viral or not,” Hoffman said.

But other states, particularly where there are strong traditions of local school control, are mandating only that school districts adopt some kind of cellphone policy, believing districts will take the hint and sharply restrict phone access. In Maine, where some lawmakers originally proposed a school day ban, lawmakers are now considering a rewritten bill that would only require a policy.

And there have been a few states where lawmakers failed to act at all. Maybe the most dramatic was in Wyoming, where senators voted down a bill in January, with some opponents saying teachers or parents should set the rules.

Where policymakers have moved ahead, there’s a growing consensus around exceptions. Most states are letting students use electronic devices to monitor medical needs and meet the terms of their special education plans. Some are allowing exceptions for translation devices if English isn’t a student’s first language or when a teacher wants students to use devices for classwork.

There are some unusual exceptions, too. South Carolina’s original policy allowed an exception for students who are volunteer firefighters. West Virginia’s new law allows smartwatches as long as they are not being used for communication.

But by far the most high-profile exception has been allowing cellphone use in case of emergencies. One of the most common parent objections to a ban is that they would not be able to contact their child in a crisis like a school shooting.

“It was only through text messages that parents knew what was happening,” said Tinya Brown, whose daughter is a freshman at Apalachee High School, northeast of Atlanta, where a shooting killed two students and two teachers in September. She spoke against Georgia’s law at a news conference in March.

Some laws call for schools to find other ways for parents to communicate with their children at schools, but most lawmakers say they support giving students access to their cellphones, at least after the immediate danger has passed, during an emergency.

In some states, students have testified in favor of regulations, but it’s also clear that many students, especially in high schools, are chafing under the rules. Kaytlin Villescas, a sophomore at Prairieville High School, in the suburbs of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is one student who took up the fight against bans, starting a petition and telling WBRZ-TV in August that Louisiana’s law requiring a school day ban is misguided. She argued that schools should instead teach responsible use.

“It is our proposition that rather than banning cellphone use entirely, schools should impart guidelines on responsible use, thereby building a culture of respect and self-regulation,” Villescas wrote in an online petition.

A few states have provided money for districts to buy lockable phone storage pouches or other storage solutions. New York, for example, plans to spend $13.5 million. But states have typically provided no cash. New Hampshire lawmakers stripped a proposed $1 million from their bill.

“Providing some specific money for this would kind of ease some of those implementation challenges,” Hoffman said. ”That said, most states have not."

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota; and Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida; contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.

OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.

OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been “quietly” collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.

Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple’s chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm.

In a joint letter posted on OpenAI’s website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it “became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company.”

That’s when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.

OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.” Both OpenAI and Ive’s design firm are based in San Francisco.

Leading the new io division for OpenAI will be longtime executive Peter Welinder, who led robotics research in the startup’s early years and more recently has been vice president of its “new product explorations” team that delves into hardware, robotics and other early stage research.

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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.