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Welcome to this week's edition of The Legal Wire!

Hollywood escalated the copyright fight: Warner Bros. Discovery sued Midjourney for letting users conjure Superman and Bugs Bunny without licenses, joining similar actions from Disney and Universal, another test of how far “fair use” can stretch for AI training and outputs.

Colorado hit pause on its “algorithmic discrimination” law for hiring and housing, pushing enforcement to June 30, 2026 amid compliance concerns, while Nvidia warned of legal risk as a proposed 15% tariff on China-bound AI chips remains undefined even as export rules keep shifting.

Switzerland went the other way on opensource: EPFL, ETH Zürich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre launched Apertus, a fully open model (8B/70B) trained on 15T tokens across 1,000+ languages, with architecture, data, and docs all public.

And a first for legal deals in the UK: Cambridge startup AnthroTek closed £950K at a £10.5M valuation using Genie AI’s contract automation, no law firms, claiming a 90% cut in legal costs the TFN reports. Another £550K may follow, underscoring how AI is remaking even the funding paperwork.

Also in this issue: Yuri Kozlov’s essay on why legal tech can’t truly move forward without formalizing justice, arguing that LLM fluency still isn’t legal reasoning.

And we profile Afriwise, the Africa-first legal intelligence platform built on deep local partnerships to replace contradictory PDFs with current, plain-language guidance.

This week’s Highlights:

• Industry News and Updates

• Afriwise and the Future of Legal Intelligence in Africa

• AI Regulation Updates

• AI Tools to Supercharge your producivity

• Legal prompt of the week

• Latest AI Incidents & Legal Tech Map

➡️ AnthroTek Closes £950K in UK’s First AI-Only Legal Deal |
TFN Reports: Cambridge startup AnthroTek raised £950K at a £10.5M valuation using Genie AI’s contract automation instead of law firms, cutting legal costs by 90%. It’s the first UK seed round completed entirely through Legal AI. AnthroTek develops synthetic anatomy for medical training, robotics and film prosthetics, with contracts in Hollywood and healthcare. Another £550K is expected, which could push its valuation to £12M. The raise highlights how AI is reshaping startup funding by eliminating costly legal fees.
^{Sep 9, 2025, Source: Tech Funding News}

➡️ Warner Bros. Discovery Sues Midjourney Over Copyright | Warner Bros. Discovery has sued AI image generator Midjourney, accusing it of illegally using films and TV shows to let users create images of characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. The studio argues Midjourney’s tools divert consumers from licensed products and seeks up to $150,000 per infringed work. Disney and Universal have filed similar suits, escalating Hollywood’s fight over whether AI training on copyrighted content is protected by fair use.
^{Sep 5, 2025, Source: The Hollywood Reporter}

➡️ Colorado Delays AI Law Targeting Employment Decisions | Colorado’s Artificial Intelligence Act, aimed at regulating high-risk systems in areas like hiring and housing, has been pushed back from February to June 30, 2026. Lawmakers failed to agree on amendments, while businesses raised concerns over compliance burdens. The law targets “algorithmic discrimination,” requiring developers and deployers to ensure AI decisions are fair and accountable.
^{Sep 4, 2025, Source: The HR Digest}

➡️ Nvidia Flags Legal Risks Over Unclear U.S. AI Chip Tariffs | Nvidia CFO Colette Kress warned that the U.S. government has yet to formalize a proposed 15% tariff on AI chip sales to China, creating legal risks if the company makes payments without regulation in place. Until the fee is codified, Nvidia can continue sales without paying the commission. The chipmaker remains caught in U.S.-China tensions, with previous restrictions already blocking some processor exports and cutting into revenue.
^{Sep 4, 2025, Source: Yahoo Finance}

➡️ Switzerland Launches Fully Open AI Model “Apertus” | Swiss institutions EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre have launched Apertus, a fully open-source AI model. Available in 8B and 70B versions, it was trained on 15 trillion tokens in 1,000+ languages, including Swiss German and Romansh. Unlike most models, Apertus makes its architecture, training data, and documentation public. Researchers say it is designed as public infrastructure for education, research, and industry, with Swisscom already deploying it on its AI platform.
^{Sep 4, 2025, Source: AI News}

Legal Technology

Afriwise and the Future of Legal Intelligence in Africa

If you’ve ever tried to track competition law developments in more than five African jurisdictions at once, or even just tried to compile a clear view on notification obligations across a few nascent regimes, you’ll know the feeling: faced with nothing but a flurry of outdated PDFs, a handful of semi-translated legislative texts, and a few snippets prepared by local or regional law firms (that contradict) there’s no way of confirming the position without on the ground knowledge. That’s been me, too many times. As a competition lawyer advising clients across Africa, I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit chasing down regulatory updates, verifying sources, and cross-checking citations. So when I came across Afriwise, I was curious, and maybe even a bit hopeful.

Afriwise is a legal and regulatory intelligence platform built for Africa. But unlike most legal tech products we’ve come across, leans into the nuance of Africa, through deep local partnerships, up-to-date legal frameworks, and plain-language guidance tailored to the unique character of each jurisdiction. It’s more than a database. It’s a platform shaped by the legal realities of the continent.

Afriwise’s CEO and founder, Steven De Backer, is no stranger to those realities. A seasoned international lawyer and longtime champion of African legal development, he’s spent much of his career building trust across African jurisdictions, first in private practice, and now as the driving force behind Afriwise. The result is a platform that blends deep legal expertise with a tech-forward, user-centric design. And it’s growing fast.

Click here to continue reading the full interview

The AI Regulation Tracker offers a clickable global map that gives you instant snapshots of how each country is handling AI laws, along with the most recent policy developments.

The most recent developments from the past week:

📋 5 September 2025 | President Trump hosts roundtable with tech CEOs discussing AI policy: President Donald Trump has hosted top Silicon Valley executives to the White House for a roundtable focused on AI. Leaders from Meta, Google, OpenAI, Apple, Microsoft, AMD and others joined the president to discuss their investments and progress in AI development. President Trump emphasized his administration’s commitment to supporting the industry, and rolling back burdensome regulations they argue will put the US behind China in AI innovation.

📋 4 September 2025 | India and Singapore deepen defence tech cooperation, covering AI: India and Singapore have agreed to deepen defence technology cooperation in emerging areas such as quantum computing, AI, automation and unmanned Vessels. Both nations have decided to continue the cooperation in maritime security and submarine rescue, as well as working closely within regional security architectures.

📋 2 September 2025 | Uruguay signs Council of Europe’s global AI treaty: Uruguay has signed the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, the first-ever international legally binding treaty aimed at ensuring that the use of AI systems is fully consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Uruguay has become the first Latin American country to sign the treaty, thereby joining another 16 signatories that have signed it to date (eleven Council of Europe member states, as well as Canada, Israel, Japan, the USA, and the EU).

📋 2 September 2025 | Cabinet Approves National AI Strategy Committee Formation: The South Korean government has approved the formation of the National AI Strategy Committee to advance the Lee Jae Myung administration's AI G3 strategy. This committee, an expansion of the previous National AI Committee, will be chaired by the President and include ministers from 13 departments, along with private sector representatives. Its responsibilities encompass overseeing and coordinating AI strategies, policies, and projects across government departments, with the aim of unifying efforts between the public and private sectors to enhance the nation's AI capabilities.

Legal Technology

Why LegalTech cannot move forward without formalizing justice

Legal technology has always existed in a space between ambition and limitation. Every few years a new wave of tools promises to transform the profession, and each time the results prove more modest than the rhetoric. Automated research, contract analytics, compliance monitoring, and discovery platforms have all reshaped parts of legal practice, yet none have solved the central challenge: how to make machines capable of true legal reasoning.

That question became sharper with the arrival of large language models. The launch of GPT-5, with its scale and fluency, convinced some observers that law was finally entering the age of automation. The model can summarize thousands of pages in minutes, produce draft contracts that appear convincing, and even simulate cross-examinations. Yet when it comes to the core functions of law, issuing binding judgments and creating new norms, GPT-5 is not merely unprepared. It is fundamentally unable to take on the task.

Click here to continue reading the full story

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This prompt prevents write-offs and rejects before they happen, standardizes onboarding for new matters, and saves hours of manual OCG review each time.

Instructions:
Paste the client’s Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs) or key excerpts, plus your firm’s standard billing/timekeeping policies. Ask for an output that:

- Builds a compliance checklist (do/don’t rules for billing, staffing, expenses, vendors, data security).

- Flags conflicts with firm policy (e.g., block billing bans, travel caps, review tool mandates) and rates risk (H/M/L).

- Suggests operational changes (time-entry rules, task codes, approval flows) to ensure compliance.

- Drafts negotiation language for exceptions/waivers and a client confirmation email summarizing your compliance plan.

- Returns a one-page summary your finance/PM team can implement immediately.

The Responsible AI Collaborative is a not‑for‑profit organization working to present real‑world AI harms through its Artificial Intelligence Incident Database.

View the latest reported incidents below:

⚠️ 2025-05-07 | Judge Reportedly Disqualifies Butler Snow Lawyers Following Purported Use of ChatGPT-Fabricated Citations in Alabama Prison Litigation | View Incident

⚠️ 2024-10-01 | L.A. Woman Reportedly Defrauded of $81,000 and $350,000 Condo Proceeds in Romance Scam Using Purported Deepfake Videos of Actor Steve Burton | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-08-22 | Purportedly Taxpayer-Funded Deloitte Report for Australian Government Contains Alleged AI-Generated Citations and Fabricated Legal Quote | View Incident

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