'Big AI' is subverting regulations just like tobacco and oil firms
A recent study reveals that the AI industry is employing tactics similar to those used by tobacco and oil companies to influence regulations. Researchers from several universities found evidence of 'corporate capture' where industry interests overshadow public concerns. The study highlights various mechanisms, including narrative capture and legal loopholes, that the AI sector uses to shape policy in its favor.
- ▪The AI industry is copying techniques used by tobacco firms and oil companies to influence governmental policy.
- ▪Researchers identified patterns of 'corporate capture' where regulations act in the interest of industry rather than citizens.
- ▪The study analyzed 100 news stories covering global AI events and found numerous cases of narrative capture.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | www.theregister.com - Articles |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/18/big-ai-is-subverting-regulations-just-like-tobacco-and-oil-firms/5241910 |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 16:45:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T14:46:42.693Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T14:55:50.562Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | DI-qZmD5ExMm |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); AI + ML 'Big AI' is subverting regulations just like tobacco and oil firms Researchers warn that regulatory capture means industry concerns trump those of citizens Dan Robinson Dan Robinson Published mon 18 May 2026 // 15:45 UTC The AI industry is copying techniques used by tobacco firms, big pharma and oil companies to influence governmental policy and regulation of itself, according to an academic study.Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, Delft…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at www.theregister.com - Articles.