Standing down federal AI prosecution does not stand down AI liability.
As the DOJ disclaims 'regulation by prosecution,' enforcement energy migrates to FTC Section 5 actions, state attorneys general, and private plaintiffs wielding legacy antitrust and product-liability statutes against AI conduct.
The same conclusion keeps arriving from across the workspace's research — 1 topics independently instantiate this theme. Filter the evidence by where it came from:
DOJ disclaims regulating AI by prosecution yet quietly runs a formal probe while FTC Section 5 and state AG energy pick up the slack — enforcement migrates even as the federal posture stands down.
Federal withdrawal from a liability theory does not extinguish it — fourteen state AGs adopt the identical theory against algorithmic hiring, lending, and screening tools.
With no AI-specific statute to invoke, paying subscribers are weaponizing century-old antitrust law against frontier labs in exactly the vacuum federal prosecutors vacated.