Why Ben Shapiro’s Media Empire Is Imploding
PDS Published 05/11/2026
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Ben Shapiro spent a decade building The Daily Wire into one of the largest conservative media empires in but now, this past week, between mass layoffs, a public fight with Candace Owens, and a YouTube audience that has gone down anywhere from 70 to 85% in 18 months, you've got a question being asked on both sides of the MAGA Civil War.
Is this empire actually collapsing in real depending on who you ask, the answer is either yes, we're watching Enron or no, calm down, they're it was an absolute bloodbath, not allow them to spin it.
Okay, I'm talking entire departments, big people at the firm, lawyers at the firm, the chief operating officer, the executive vice president, virtually the entire marketing department.
The production team has now been reduced to a mere skeleton crew. No one was safe.
Not even Ben's team was because make no mistake, this is like the equivalent of Enron, right? It's a virtual overnight collapse Okay.
So on May 1st, you have the Daily Wire confirming mass the company telling the rap the cuts were largely concentrated at its national headquarters.
And they said that the restructuring is tied to investment in new production formats and geographic Right.
They didn't, in that initial announcement, give a and so then you have Candace Owens walking in, who you might remember, was fired from the Daily Wire in 2024 over her comments about Israel in a series of statements widely criticized his you had Owens posting on Twitter claiming that 50% of the company's staff had been let though.
She then bumped that number to 60%, and she went on her show and called it an absolute bloodbath, like the equivalent of Enron, saying it's a virtual overnight collapse. Right.
But then you had the Daily Wire firing back with editor in chief Brant share posting on Twitter. Yes, the company had layoffs today. It's always really tough.
No, it was nowhere near 50% of the That's insane and also insane to post without and while the spokesperson for the outlet said that the layoffs amounted to 13% of the staff this year, that figure didn't include layoffs from the prior and so the company appears to still have more than 200 employees. And you had Puck News putting the number closer to 20% or around 42 employees.
there was an independent industry tracker called Layoff Hedge pegged at around 100 so the situation is no one outside of the company really knows the number owns probably inflating it the Daily Wire.
I could see them underplaying it. And the truth is maybe probably somewhere in but whatever.
Those numbers are where the story gets harder for the Daily Wire to spin is with the audience or because that's third party that's not and according to data from Vidic, Ben Shapiro's YouTube views, they're down roughly 70% since December of 2024.
you also had IV time citing different analytics tools, putting the drop at closer to 85% from his late 2023 by the way, people saying those are not normal declines for a flagship channel, saying those are collapse shaped declines.
also data from Social blade shows that the daily wires YouTube subscriber base is plateaued or shrunk.
And 15 of the last 16 months since the start of 2025, By March of this year, the company's website traffic was about half of what it had been a year on the Spotify chart, Shapiro's show is currently ranked 48th, Owens is 16th, Tucker Carlson is eighth, Theo Vaughan's fifth.
Joe Rogan is, of course, number for comparison's sake, by 2020, The Daily Wire had been Facebook's top English language publisher for three straight but 2023, it was being valued in the hundreds of millions of But now, five years later, you've got the company fighting publicly about whether it's still actually healthy or as far as why is this happening?
You have the daily wires official explanation from Shapiro being essentially two things at first, they acknowledge that revenues down from 2024, though Shapiro says that cash flow still dwarfs what their critics and second, Shapiro argues that the audience losses are the result of staying principled while other right wing outlets, in his telling Chase clicks by, quote, embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill, extolling the wonders of Russian supermarkets, and mocking the widow of Charlie And so that is a very specific, very pointed and if you've been following any right wing media for the past year, I know that we've been trying to talk about it more and more, because what's happening there is very important to talk Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and a handful of figures.
They've been peeling more and more of that Daily Wire audience and then also people like Megan Kelly saying, well, it's not really about algorithms at or saying that.
It's actually about Shapiro's unwavering position on Israel and the Iran war at a moment when a substantial chunk of the younger conservative base has been moving in the opposite so folks like Tucker Carlson, they've managed to benefit from that he's gotten very, very popular lately.
I read with viewers because he's been standing up for Islam, I know for a fact he has a lot of young men flocking to him.
And so while he may have lost some contingent of the Fox News audience, that's very, very pro-Israel and, you know, pro-Trump and you can't say anything about Trump.
For every one of those who leaves, there is another newer, younger audience member who does want to hear these traditional lines challenged.
then Shapiro, responding to her clip on Twitter, saying, go get them clicks with Kelly, then shooting back, don't you have a company to know, whether you think Kelly is right about the cause, that the underlying observation here, it's not really debatable.
conservative media center of gravity, it's been Carlson's audience is growing, Owens audiences growing.
Nick Fuentes, who is thought as kind of a fringe no one even cares about figure just 2 or 3 years ago has a huge audience and The Daily Wire, which is just a few years ago, the dominant brand in this space is not but then also.
This is my favorite part of the situation.
there is a very specific business decision that's been getting a ton of blame for the company's financial and it is. And I'm not joking here, a fantasy series called The Pendragon Cycle.
Rise of the Merlin. Right.
To give you a little quick background here, the Pendragon Cycle, it was the personal passion project of Jeremy Boring.
Daily wire co-founder, former co-CEO, the the guy who left the company in early 2025.
and it is a seven episode Arthurian legend adaptation filmed across Italy, Hungary and according to The Hollywood Reporter and Media, the budget was seven figures per episode and eight figures overall.
so believed to be somewhere between 10 and $30 million total, depending on which reporting that you right page six cited $3 million per episode, putting the total above $20 million, making it the most expensive production in Daily Wire written with this according to Candace Owens.
So take that with the appropriate amount of Shapiro and his other co-founder, Caleb Robinson, had grown disillusioned with borings leadership, specifically because of Pendragon.
Pendragon, Jeremy's high school dream, drove the company into the ground financially with a project I want to be clear about, not even Disney studios would have invested tens of millions of dollars in.
That's a tremendous financial risk. now. That said, boring has publicly defended the show.
He called the criticism of his management lies and said that revenue grew every year that he was at the I've read almost every day for a year in change that I left the Daily Wire after bankrupting the company.
That's not true.
Every single year that I led the Daily Wire, we grew revenue every year, year over year for ten straight years.
My last full quarter as CEO was, at that time, the biggest quarter in the history of the company.
My last full year at CEO was, at that time, the biggest year in the history of the company.
Just like the year before it had been and the year before that and the year before within Owens's response to essentially being sure revenue grew. That just means that you sold more stuff.
The question is what you spent to do. he says revenue grew every year while I was there.
All that means is we sold more stuff, Revenue means how much money the company is taking in, but how much it spends matters much more.
What is the profit? right.
Whatever the actual financial impact of Pendragon was, that's the public facing story.
this fantasy show became, fairly or not, the symbol of a company that's drifted from podcast and political commentary into expensive prestige production that it may not have had the audience to and hey, I know for a lot of people it is fun to watch them.
Just like eating their own tail, beating each other but it's also it's very important and enlightening. Right.
Because it is part of a bigger pattern that we've seen playing out across the right wing media for kind of the better part of two years traditional center of conservative media, Fox News, The Daily Wire, the older talk radio brand's built audiences on a particular consensus.
things that were pro-business, pro-Israel, hawkish on foreign policy, broadly pro-establishment that consensus is now actively under attack from within the right itself.
we see that with Carlson, Owens, Fuentes and just countless list of and the audience especially that younger audience is by every available data point going towards that second
and that's also interesting enlightening because the Daily Wire situation, I mean they were essentially viewed as an upstart ten years were the scrappy ones.
They were able to thrive because the legacy ignored but now they're seen as the legacy. Right? They are the internet's Fox the wall.
So without that Fox News money and they're watching a generation of independence and podcasters peel off their people that used to be aligned with them or even worked at that company.
but as far as if the company is going to die, at least according to Shapiro, no. and time will tell whether that is true or it's just kind of PR posturing.
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but also while it is incredibly important and I'll be honest, a little bit of fun to talk about the MAGA Civil there is a version of this story that's been talked about less, and that is the one that is happening on the other side of the Because it appears that Pennsylvania Governor John Shapiro just got caught by Axios quietly working against a congressional candidate endorsed by AOC.
so you see Pennsylvania's third congressional district by Cook Political Reports. Count is the most Democratic district in the entire country.
It's a D the current congressman, Dwight Evans, he's retiring, which means that the May 19th Democratic primary is effectively the November election.
whoever wins, unless the sky falls, that's going to be the person that goes to you've got state Senator Sharif Street, the establishment favorite, former chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party,
son of former Philly Mayor John Street, backed by the city's Democratic Committee and the Building Trades then you've got Doctor Ayla Stanford, a pediatric surgeon, a political newcomer. right.
And she built her public profile during Covid, running mobile testing clinics and black communities. And she's actually endorsed by the retiring representative.
and then you've got State Representative Chris Rabb, the five term state legislator from Northwest Philadelphia, endorsed by the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board and a long list of national progressives.
and that list, it's where things get politically National endorsements include AOC, Chris Van Hollen, Jamie Raskin, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
write in the Justice Democrats, the DSA, the Working Families Party, and the Sunrise Movement.
They're all behind AOC has even fundraised for him and is reportedly heading to Philly this month to campaign for him in and so you've got essentially the establishment, the centrist outsider and the progressive.
That's the and then boom.
Over the weekend, Axios turns this into a national because according to Axios, which talked to three sources familiar with the situation, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is, quote, quietly trying to derail Rams campaign.
and the key word is privately talking to allies, telling them that he disapproves of Raban, according to the reporting.
asking Philadelphia's politically powerful building trades union to back off attacking Ala Stanford.
with the belief being that if the unions go too hard at Stanford, they could inadvertently help Rabb No.
Shapiro spokesman pushed back hard on this Axios saying this is yet another DC story more focused on clicks than the reality on the ground in Pennsylvania,
saying the governor has not endorsed or opposed anyone in this primary saying he looks forward to working directly with whoever wins to win in which to be fair is technically true.
Shapiro has not publicly endorsed anyone in PA but that's also kind of the point of this reporting argument isn't that Shapiro is openly opposing rap.
The argument is that he is working against him without leaving fingerprints on the ones with this.
I do want to note that it does not appear like Shapiro is actually anti progressive across the He's backing Bob Brooks.
He's a Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate in Pennsylvania seventh Congressional he also has alliances with working families party members in Philadelphia. and so then the natural question becomes, well, why this guy specifically?
Why Rab.
and with that you have both the Axios reporting and the Philadelphia coverage pointing to kind of a couple of the first being policy, has been a sharp public critic of Shapiro's record from the left for
On immigration, grabs called for Pennsylvania to stop state collaboration with he's been publicly critical of Ice operations in the state, he's written letters to DHS objecting to Ice facilities.
He said that his administration will aggressively pursue every option to block proposed federal facilities.
Rams argument is essentially that the rhetoric, it doesn't match the on the ground cooperation. multiple agencies are still signed on to immigration enforcement.
but then also the second and possibly bigger flashpoint is Shapiro is Jewish.
He's publicly said that he supports the country of Israel, but he's been openly critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu's Right with that, Shapiro said on a recent podcast appearance.
have profound differences from the with the policies of Netanyahu,
I think he and Trump have politicized and poisoned the relationship between the United States and Israel.
And I think at the end of the day, that makes America less safe but positions to the left of that right, he's been one of the loudest voices in Pennsylvania politics, calling Israel's conduct in Gaza a genocide.
And he's made criticism of pro-Israel lobbying organizations a centerpiece of his and actually that part of his record got very scrutinized last and it's because of this December social media incident that I want,
I want to try to be careful in December of 2025, two gunmen a 50 year old man and his 24 year old son, motivated by what Australian authorities described as Islamic State ideology, opened fire at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
15 people were and in the immediate aftermath, an Instagram post went up on rabbi's campaign account that in part said, we all know the gunman were likely Zionists themselves.
Right. In that post. It resurfaced last week.
You had campaign saying that a former staffer made the repost without authorization.
You would rap himself saying, quote, he has never and would never say anything like this abhorrent comment.
campaign condemned anti-Semitism in the strongest terms you had Stanford's campaign calling the post disqualifying, and Raab has so far not publicly named the
so all of that is why some Democrats reportedly included in that, as Shapiro, are uncomfortable with Raab potentially becoming a National party But then also another reason this is getting a lot of attention is because you have people saying, well, this Democratic situation in the Philly primary, it's not about the Philly rather it's about what the Philly primary signals about 2028.
And there you have both Shapiro and AOC, widely seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates.
those two, I mean, they represent two very different theories on how Democrats have the moderate Governor Lane, which says that you win nationally by holding the center and flipping persuadable Republicans and the populist,
progressive lane, which says that you win by energizing the base and running on big economic justice many saying this race essentially is a proxy fight between the two theories.
Rab wins, AOC gets to point to a national progressive victory in deep blue Philadelphia.
and if Stanford or Street win, Shapiro gets to point at the limits of the progressive lane, even in friendly and you had a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist telling Axios, Chris is an actual problem for Shapiro
for what he wants to be when he grows all that said, I think then we also have to kind of do a reality check on this situation.
There are a few things that people have to keep in mind as the national framing on this race just gets louder and There's not a lot of trust in the polling right now.
Reportedly, there's been no public independent polling of this race so It's a claims about who's ahead or who's behind by what margin. That should be kind of taken very lightly.
Like with a grain of two rebs not actually the obvious Stanford has more cash on hand. The Rab or Street?
Street as the city's Democratic committee, the mayor, the building trades unions and the AFC behind the walls of the Enquirer endorse Rob, outside superPACs have spent roughly $1 million on TV ads boosted him.
But also, this race could end up going to any of the and then also three.
I think the Democratic Civil War framing right now, it is real, but I think it is also overstated and overheated. Are we seeing Axios using that phrase? Strategists are using that phrase.
It makes for a clean narrative. Oh, I love the headline.
but also if you if you take a look at the actual policy gap between, let's say, Stanford and Rab, it is narrower than the framing suggests. both Democrats. They both want to flip Republican seats.
And the fight, it's about tone.
It's about foreign policy and which donors and labor groups have allowed or voice in primaries.
honestly, as Democrats head into a midterm cycle where the maps just got worse for them, and in 2028, who knows what the maps are going to look like it is going to be important
to learn lessons, but also specifically local lessons about what can because both lanes that we've talked about have produced wins in different places at different but for now,
we'll have to wait and see, though we will have an answer here relatively and then there's more we've got to dive into in just a minute.
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U.S. missile stockpiles are reportedly half depleted.
Instead of addressing any of it, his defense secretary spent the weekend trying to open a federal investigation into a sitting U.S. senator.
and he did so for repeating something the defense secretary himself said in a public hearing seven days earlier.
But as far as where things stand right now, Iran has officially responded to the latest US peace proposal, and Trump has officially rejected it. in his own words, he said on Truth Social, totally unacceptable.
And in a follow up at the Oval Office, he called the ceasefire unbelievably weak and on life support. this came after a week where on May 3rd, Trump announced Project Freedom, the U.S.
military would escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has been effectively blockading.
Project Freedom got two commercial vessels through. It also triggered Iranian retaliation against US and allied forces in the region.
roughly 36 hours after launch, Trump paused the we paused it, citing great progress towards a deal.
though then also you had reporting from NBC and other outlets saying that the pause was at least partially because Saudi Arabia denied the US military use of its bases and airspace for the
also the great progress that Trump cited was a one page, 14 point memorandum of understanding sent to Iran outlining a 30 day window to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while negotiators worked on a longer term deal.
the structure, according to Axios, would have eventually included Iran making nuclear concessions in exchange for sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets. right. But then Iran sent its counterproposal this weekend.
And, to put it bluntly, it is not what the U.S. wanted to hear.
Iran's response reportedly kept the 14 point MLU structure, but layered in some hard asks one explicit guarantees that the U.S.
won't attack again to lift sanctions and release frozen Iranian assets immediately upon signing the MOU, not at the end of a longer term negotiation.
three and the war on all fronts, including the ongoing Israeli operations in Lebanon for U.S. recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
and then five on the nuclear program, which apparently is the entire reason this war started, even though where we were given multiple reasons.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said this morning that the regime is focused on what is urgent first, and that it will discuss what decision is to be made later regarding Iran's nuclear program and materials.
Whenever the time is right. which really just seems like a lot of words to, yeah, maybe we'll get to it.
spokesperson also called the Iranian proposal reasonable, generous and responsible and said that Iran wasn't demanding concessions, just legitimate rights.
and as far as how people read that responds, well, you had one former senior Israeli military intelligence officer posting on social media. one thing is clear.
The Iranian regime's reply reflects the mindset of a leadership that believes it survived the war and won, not that it lost.
As a result, its demands remain high and its willingness to compromise is extremely limited. while that's an Israeli analyst.
And so you have to factor in that lens, that point of view, the underlying read there that Iran is not negotiating like a country that thinks that it's lost. That's also what U.S.
officials have been telling outlets like NBC news privately. and then as far as Trump's response, it came in two forms. first up on Truth Social. He laid into Iran for what he said was playing games with the U.S.
for 47 years.
He also took a separate shot at Barack Obama for the original nuclear deal, calling Obama the greatest sucker of them all. and then he confirmed he'd read Iran's counterproposal and rejected then second.
He told Fox News that he's now thinking about restarting Project Freedom, but with what he described as an expanded scope beyond just escorting ships, though, he didn't clarify what that meant.
also, we got this from the Oval Office today when he was asked about if you had an actual plan. lot of people said, well, does he have a plan?
You have, of course, they do have the best plan ever. And Iran has been defeated militarily. Totally. Have a little left.
They probably built up during this period of time. We'll knock that out in about a day. But I have a plan. You know, it's a very simple plan.
I don't know why you don't say it like it is. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. written, while all of whatever that was is playing out, here's what it costs.
jumped 3% this morning, with Brant Crude hitting nearly $105 a US gas prices, which end up actually lagging oil by a few days.
It's averaging about 450 a gallon, about 50% higher than before the war started.
you've got Energy Secretary Chris Wright telling CBS that the administration is open to pausing the federal gas tax, which would shave about 18.4 cents per gallon. also you had right offering this on whether the Strait of Hormuz returns to normal.
I mean, I don't know about interim deals or whatever, but we know where the endpoint is going to be.
The endpoint is going to be free flow of traffic through the international waters that are the Straits of Hormuz and an end to the Iranian nuclear program.
That's where we're going to end the pathway from here to there. We're going to find out.
and so we'll call it the vibe being communicated by both Trump and his energy secretary is we know how this ends. We just don't know how we're getting there.
Which just to point out, is a goal, not a plan.
and then also, as you have the Trump administration kind of rolling around in the shit that they shat on the shag carpet. You have Senator Mark Kelly, right?
A retired Navy captain, former astronaut, a member of both the Armed Services and Intelligence committees going on CBS's Face the Nation this week and and saying that the Pentagon had brief senators on how depleted U.S.
weapons stockpiles have become because of this war.
think it's fair to say it's shocking the how deep we have gone into these magazines, because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline.
And because of that, we've expended a lot of munitions.
And that means the American people are less safe, and that assessments publicly backed up.
CNN, citing internal Defense Department stockpile assessments, reported that as of April 21st, the U.S.
military had expended at least 45% of its precision strike missile stockpile, at least half of its inventory of that interceptors, and nearly 50% of its Patriot air defense stockpile.
and the center for Strategic and International Studies independently reported similar numbers. so Kelly's concern, it's not random.
It's shared by multiple independent analysts, looks consistent with publicly available reporting.
And his core argument is that the US is running through the missiles that it would need for a hypothetical conflict with China. Or which then brings us to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Right.
Because he responded to Kelly's CBS appearance by not addressing the substance, but by accusing Kelly of leaking a classified briefing and announcing that the Pentagon would investigate with headset saying captain Mark Kelly strikes again.
Now he's blabbing on TV falsely and dumbly about a classified Pentagon briefing he received. Did he violate his oath again? Department of War legal counsel will review. Twitch.
Kelly's response was kind of perfect.
he just posted a video clip of himself in headset at a Senate hearing one week earlier where headset himself said publicly that it would take years to replenish the depleted stockpiles.
with him then writing.
We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago, and you said it would take years to replenish some of these stockpiles. That's not classified. It is a quote from you.
this war is coming at a serious cost.
And you and the president still haven't explained to the American people what the goal is.
and, you know, it is important that this is not the first time headsets pulled any of this.
this would be the second Pentagon investigation that headset has opened against Kelly or the first being over Kelly's participation in a video with five other Democratic veterans turned lawmakers urging service members to refuse illegal orders.
that actually got struck down by a federal judge earlier this year as unconstitutionally retaliatory. but again, as all of this is playing out, there is a very real economic cost.
It's just hitting millions of Americans right now. this is already a drag on the American people, the American economy.
And the only question is how bad is it going to get as we get closer and closer to summer? and then there's more we're going to dive into in just a minute.
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But first, a quick the really it's more of a friendly reminder if you need an that also is not just sticking your head in the sand.
You got to come out and see us or sold out show in New York. It was a blast.
And we have 12 more dates coming Seattle and Portland, their first up in followed by Boston, Philly, San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago,
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but then the final thing we need to talk about today is why Florida's attorney general said last month that if it were a person, it would be facing charges for murder.
And yesterday, the widow of a man killed in the 2025 Florida State University shooting filed a federal lawsuit that essentially asked the court to take that argument seriously.
Because on Sunday, attorneys for Vandana Joshi filed a federal lawsuit in the northern District of Florida. her husband, Terrell Jarboe, is 45 years old.
He was a regional vice president for the company that ran food service at Florida State University. He had a wife, he had kids. And on April 17th, 2025, he was killed in a shooting on the FSU campus.
and this lawsuit names two defendants, first is the man who's accused of carrying out the shooting.
a then 20 year old FSU student, now 21, charged with two counts of first degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder. he's pleaded not guilty. His trial is scheduled for October.
And then the second defendant is OpenAI, right.
The company that makes ChatGPT the legal argument is that the AI chatbot spent months in conversations with the shooter, conversations that, taken together, should have triggered some kind of safety response.
that system appears to have failed to do so.
And so her attorney put the case this way, saying quote, he literally utilized OpenAI and ChatGPT as his coconspirator. That's the allegation.
now, according to the complaint, which is built on ChatGPT chat logs released by Florida law enforcement, this shooter went roughly 18 months talking to the chat bot.
the attorneys say that the chat history covers about 16,000 different exchanges. And it was just everything, right.
Homework help, work out advice, relationship questions, loneliness, bullying, depression. by the plaintiff's account, the AI was friendly engage sympathetic.
It became, in effect, a daily presence in his life. also threaded through those routine exchanges.
The lawsuit alleges they there was a separate set of conversations, conversations about Hitler, about Nazi ism, about prior mass shootings, including Columbine and Virginia Tech, right about what kinds of attacks attract national media attention.
the complaint actually quotes a response in which the chat bot allegedly told the shooter that attacks involving children are more likely to generate national coverage, and it's that specific a change that's kind of drawn the most attention since the suit was filed.
though the lawsuit also alleges that the shooter uploaded images of firearms that he had gotten and that ChatGPT provided operational advice on how to use them.
things including, according to the lawsuit, specific instructions about the weapon used in the attack.
and so the core legal claim is and this is where a lot of people are to be paying attention.
that the alleged shooter had extensive conversations with ChatGPT, which cumulatively would have led any thinking human to conclude that he was contemplating an imminent plan to harm others.
but saying.
However, ChatGPT either effectively failed to connect the dots or else it was never properly designed to recognize them.
and so the suit it alleges negligence, gross negligence, strict products liability, defective design, failure to warn negligence and wrongful death. as far as open AI.
They've denied the lawsuits. Core claim.
their spokesperson telling ABC news and NBC news, quote, last year's mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy. But ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.
and their argument is kind of in three parts.
one the information that ChatGPT provided was, in their words, factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet.
two the product did not, in their characterization, encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity.
three, when they became aware of the shooting, they identified an account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared that information with law enforcement.
then with that, you also have OpenAI saying that they're continuing to strengthen safeguards to detect harmful intent. so that's their defense.
And whether that holds up, it's going to depend on the question that the lawsuit explicitly tees up Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Right.
Which is the law that shields internet platforms are being held responsible for user generated content.
it's essentially what you've seen protect Facebook from being sued every time someone post something harmful.
but also this lawsuit anticipated that move and argues that section 230 does not apply here because ChatGPT is not a passive platform. writing is not hosting other people's words.
OpenAI created the model, trained the model, and operates it as an active conversational product that generates its own responses.
and so that distinction right between a platform that hosts user content and a product that generates content, is one that courts really haven't settled when it comes to generative AI.
and so what you're gonna see is that this lawsuit and then others like it, they're going to push that question out into the open. right. Because there are also other lawsuits like this.
In Canada, families of seven victims from a February school shooting in Tumblr, Ridge, British Columbia.
They filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI, And that was an attack that killed six students between 12 and 13 years old and a teacher.
actually, with that, you're the Wall Street Journal reporting that OpenAI's own automated moderation tools had flagged the alleged shooter's chats were content violations months before the attack.
with her graphic descriptions of violence. And so the case there argues that OpenAI knew and just didn't act. Right. More of these stories are popping up.
You CBS news also reporting this week that the suspect in last month's killings of two University of South Florida graduate students allegedly used ChatGPT to figure out how to dispose of a body in the lead up to the disappearances.
So what we're talking about today is not a one off in this case here.
It's going to have an impact, because you got a growing category of cases that are going to ask or it's a question that the legal system has never asked before.
is the legal responsibility of an AI company when a user appears to be planning violence using a chat bot, and the chat bot does not escalate, it?
then also there's going to be a question of do we actually see criminal charges versus just a civil lawsuit.
also honestly, whether it's this story or anything I covered today, I'd really love to know your thoughts.
Because, yes, this is a new show, but I also like it to be a conversation, because without the conversation, it's just all bad stuff all the time.
And, We we already have enough of that. But that, my friends. Beautiful bastards is the end of your Monday Philip DeFranco of course.
Do not forget, I'll be back to hang and entertain or ruin your day tomorrow with another brand new Philip DeFranco Thank you for watching.
I love yo faces. And I'll see you
