The Biden administration's long-awaited executive order on artificial intelligence will require developers of the most powerful AI systems to share critical testing information with the government, Axios' Maria Curi and Ashley Gold report.

What's happening: President Biden is expected to sign the AI executive order this afternoon at a White House event.

Why it matters: According to a White House fact sheet, the order will push companies and government agencies to develop responsible AI.

White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed said in a statement: "Biden is rolling out the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust. It's the next step in an aggressive strategy to do everything on all fronts to harness the benefits of AI and mitigate the risks."

Details: Companies developing models that pose serious risks to public health and safety, the economy or national security will have to notify the federal government when training the model and share results of red-team safety tests before making models public.

• The provision would apply to future models that go beyond a specific compute power threshold and would not lead to any restrictions or removal of existing AI tools in the marketplace, a senior administration official said.
• This provision goes beyond voluntary commitments that the White House garnered from AI companies and requires notification in accordance with the Defense Production Act.
• The official said the DPA enforcement mechanism was not previewed for industry and it remains to be seen how companies will react.

Ahead of the 2024 elections, the administration is also tackling deepfakes by instructing the Commerce Department to develop guidance for content authentication and watermarking.

• Federal agencies will use the content authentication tools and watermarking to make it easy for Americans to know that government communication is authentic.
• Companies like Adobe have been advocating for federal standards around watermarking AI-generated content and lawmakers have introduced bills to protect artists' work from being copied by AI programs.

Here's a breakdown of other areas included in the order beyond safety and security, according to the White House fact sheet:

1. Privacy: The government will prioritize supporting the development of privacy tools using cutting edge AI systems.

• A Research Coordination Network will be funded to strengthen privacy tools, like cryptography tools.
• Privacy guidance for federal agencies using information from data brokers, particularly personally identifiable data, will be strengthened.

2. Equity and civil rights: Landlords, federal benefits program managers and federal contractors will be given guidance to keep algorithms from being used to exacerbate discrimination.

• The Justice Department and federal civil rights offices will be trained on best practices for investigating and prosecuting AI civil rights violations.
• Best practices will be developed on the use of AI in sentencing, parole and probation, pretrial release and detention, risk assessments, surveillance, crime forecasting and predictive policing and forensic analysis.

3. Innovation and competition: Small developers and entrepreneurs will be provided technical assistance and resources to commercialize AI, and the Federal Trade Commission will be encouraged to exercise its authority to promote competition.

• Visa criteria, interviews and reviews will be modernized and streamlined to encourage high-skilled immigrants and nonimmigrants with expertise in critical areas to study, stay and work in the U.S.

What they're saying: "I think the breadth of the executive order is a recognition of the fact that AI policy is like running a decathlon and there's 10 different events here and we don't have the luxury of just picking, of saying, 'We're just going to do safety' or 'We're just going to do equity' or 'We're just going to do privacy.' We have to do all of these things," a senior administration official said.

Yes, but: The Biden administration recognizes executive orders can't replace legislation and continues to call on Congress to pass a law governing AI safety.

Hackers targeting the war between Israel and Hamas are starting to slow their activity — but some groups are taking their attacks global, as Axios' Sam Sabin reports.

Why it matters: Cyberattacks spilling outside countries engaged in war can lead more governments into a conflict.

What's happening: The politically motivated hacking groups that have been active since Hamas' surprise attack on Israel are now starting to target organizations based in nations allied with Israel.

• Anonymous Sudan, a hacking group that's been working against Israel, claims it's now targeting organizations in Kenya due to the Kenyan government's support of Israel, according to SecurityScorecard research published Wednesday.
• Dark Storm Team, a pro-Palestine hacking group, claimed last week it targeted U.S.-based Snapchat for similar reasons, per SecurityScorecard. (No evidence of this attack has surfaced.)
• Gil Messing, chief of staff at Israel-based cyber company Check Point Software Technologies, says in an email to Axios that anti-Israel group Irox Team says it's targeting companies in Brazil — a country that supports Israel.

The big picture: It's become common practice for politically motivated hacking groups (also known as hacktivists) to target allies of the countries involved in an armed conflict.

• During the war in Ukraine, pro-Russia hackers in the Killnet group have targeted several NATO countries, including websites of U.S. airports.

Between the lines: A majority of cyberattacks these hacking groups are launching remain unsophisticated and low level.

• Many of them take the form of a distributed denial-of-service attack, where a website is rendered inaccessible due to overwhelming amounts of bot traffic.

At a New York Stock Exchange tech event last week, Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva talked with the event's emcee, writer and producer Baratunde Thurston, who told her he uses ChatGPT to explain how his health insurance policy works.

Why it matters: People are experimenting with using generative AI to do all kinds of tasks, but many of these applications seem only marginally more efficient than using pre-AI tools.

Zooming in: Backstage in the speaker lounge, Thurston explained that he uses a plug-in that lets him upload PDF documents, then asks ChatGPT various questions about his policy, like how to find certain types of care providers that are covered.

• His insurance provider's benefit explanation is dozens of pages long, so ChatGPT can save him a lot of time searching for an answer.
• He says he thinks of using ChatGPT as "having conversations with data."

Yes, but: It's not perfect and ChatGPT does sometimes weave in some nonsense, he warns.

• G7 countries are expected to agree on a voluntary "code of conduct" for AI developers on Monday. (Reuters)
• Zoom said on Monday that more than 125,000 customers have used its AI companion feature, generating more than a million meeting summaries. As of today, customers will be able to ask meeting questions in seven new languages, Zoom announced.
• Some artists are expressing frustration with the process Meta established to allow them to delete their images from data used to train the company's AI models. (Wired)
• Google paid $26.3 billion in various deals to make its search engine the default option on other platforms, a senior executive testified during the company's antitrust trial. (The Verge)

This was totally what being a kid in the 1980s at Halloween was like.