Here’s the kitchen sink for May 2, 2025 of ten stories that I didn’t get to this week – with another brand-new meme from Gates Dogfish!

Why “the kitchen sink”? Find out here! 🙂

The Kitchen Sink is even better when you can include a brand-new eDiscovery meme courtesy of Gates Dogfish, the meme channel dedicated to eDiscovery people and created by Aaron Patton. For more great eDiscovery memes, follow Gates Dogfish on LinkedIn here! If I’ve seen that happen once, I’ve seen it happen a million times! 🤣

Here is the kitchen sink for May 2, 2025 of ten-ish stories that I didn’t get to this week, with a comment from me about each:

eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey 1H 2025: I’ll start with an appeal again to take the eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey from ComplexDiscovery, which is apparently now being conducted twice a year instead of quarterly. Even more reason to take it, especially in these economically challenging times.

New ChatGPT Models Seem to Leave Watermarks on Text: Speaking of Aaron (aka “Gates”), he raised this issue on LinkedIn of  the newer GPT-o3 and GPT-o4 mini models embedding special character watermarks in generated text, which got me wondering who else was reporting it. This was the only article I found on the topic. They issued an update to say it seems to have been resolved, but still, I’m surprised this didn’t get more coverage. 🤔

Exit the Dragon: What happens when a lawyer decides to put a “large multi-colored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit” as a watermark for their court filing because their firm is “Dragon Lawyers PC ^©”? It causes the court to state: “Use of this dragon cartoon logo is not only distracting, it is juvenile and impertinent. The Court is not a cartoon”, while ordering plaintiff to “file an amended complaint, containing the same allegations as the original complaint, without the cartoon dragon”. 😁

Seriously? Lawyer Representing the My Pillow Guy – Already Known For Having Been Caught Pantsless on Zoom – Now Faces Sanctions for Hallucinated Cases: So many stories on this, I picked the one from Bob Ambrogi. All he needs is a dragon watermark for the trifecta! 🤣

GREAT NEWS !! Death is edging toward a subscription model !!: No, it’s not an episode of Black Mirror; it’s Generative AI which, trained on a lifetime of texts, voice notes and video, can already sculpt interactive replicas of deceased individuals. Eric DeGrasse of Project Counsel Media discusses this one.

The History of E-Discovery is Both Interesting and Important: Michael Berman gives us a post on the EDRM blog “chock-full” of stories and links to illustrate how we got where we are today in eDiscovery. He had me at “History of E-Discovery”. 😉

Getting Pep Talks From Generative AI To Lift Your Spirit: Hey, if it can mimic a dead person, how hard is it to give you a little encouragement, right? 😉

Former school athletic director gets 4 months in jail in racist AI deepfake case: Latest update in this case where the aforementioned high school athletic director used an AI-generated voice to frame the school’s principal of saying antisemitic remarks. 4 months in jail doesn’t sound like much of a deterrent to me, just sayin’.

Survey: Some Use AI to Avoid Their Colleagues: More office workers are turning to AI than coworkers for answers, Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Report reveals. Why? Reasons vary, but 8% of respondents use it to avoid having to share credit with a colleague. The funniest part of this story? It was “created with the help of AI”. 🤣

Meta Unveils ChatGPT Rival: Meta is making its move in artificial intelligence with a new standalone app that blends AI with the familiar feel of social media in the company’s bid to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Of course, The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta’s AI chatbots will engage in “romantic role-play,” and that the newspaper’s investigation revealed such chats could turn graphic and sexual even for users identified as underage. Sigh.

Zero-Person Startups: How Agentic AI is Shaping a New Business Frontier: As Rob Robinson notes: “Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic fantasy, it’s fast becoming the operational engine behind a new class of business: the zero-person startup. These are fully autonomous companies designed to function without full-time employees or traditional executive leadership.” Are there still humans in the loop in that scenario? Rob addresses that and other considerations!

Hope you enjoyed the kitchen sink for May 2, 2025! Back next week with another edition!

So, what do you think? Which story is your favorite one? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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