Joy Cardaño said she used to get commissioned almost every week to create anime-inspired art. Now, she said, that work has nearly come to a halt, with many online users seeming to gravitate toward artificial intelligence-made art, instead. From Studio Ghibli-inspired illustrations to doll and action figure “starter packs,” an explosion of AI-generated images in recent weeks has sparked a fresh wave of concern among artists like Cardaño, who argue that using AI undermines the importance of trained artists and takes away their commission opportunities. “People who use it [AI generators] should be respectful of artists,” Cardaño, who goes by Joyblivion on Instagram, said in an email, calling the trend “so unethical.” “Even if the artists are vocal about how they don’t want their art to be used, they refuse to listen. I think whoever uses it or is thinking of using it should research how it impacts the art community.” Many in the art community echo the sentiment as they continue to monitor the latest advancements in AI, including the recent rollout of OpenAI’s GPT- 4o, which can generate text, images and audio. ChatGPT users are able to generate images using the model for free. The rest of its capabilities are for paid users only, with membership prices starting at $20 a month. Cardaño, 30, who is based in the Philippines, said she has been a full-time artist since she graduated from college. She primarily sells her work on INPRNT, an online shop. Her commissioned pieces usually start at $100. After having seen the virality of the Ghibli trend, she took to Instagram to highlight her past work in hope of swaying people to pay for art, instead. “Studio Ghibli fan art that I drew with my own hands without needing AI,” she wrote in an April 1 post, accompanied by a sample of her work.

In 1886, a French chemist dissolved holmium oxide in acid. Then, he added ammonia. Toiling over the marble slab of his fireplace, he repeated the procedure dozens of times. Finally, voilà: He’d extracted a new element. More than a century later, Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s painstaking discovery — which he named dysprosium, from the Greek for “hard to get” — is a crucial ingredient in the powerful magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. If the world is to succeed in its efforts to slow global warming, it will need dysprosium. It will also need a suite of other rare earth elements and minerals that many of us first heard about this week when China announced export controls that would effectively cut off the global supply of seven rare earths. China’s export ban, part of the country’s retaliation for President Trump’s steep new tariffs, has exposed the extent to which the global energy transition depends on raw materials produced by China. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It’s not just rare earths, as my colleague Max Bearak and I reported this week. China supplies more than half of the 50 minerals the U.S. government has deemed critical to national security and the economy. Among those critical minerals are lithium, cobalt and nickel, components of the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy on the grid when the weather is unfavorable for wind and solar generation. China refines or mines significant portions of the world’s supply of all three, and Chinese companies have acquired major stakes in mineral-rich countries: nickel in Indonesia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium in Zimbabwe. “China’s influence over critical mineral supply chains is far greater than trade data alone suggests,” said Krista Rasmussen, director of natural resource security at C4ADS, a research organization based in Washington that has traced Chinese companies’ hidden ownership of Indonesian nickel refineries. “Chinese firms exert substantial control across nearly every stage of the supply chain.” Some critical minerals are far more abundant than rare earths, and American mining companies have been engaged for years in extracting them domestically and around the world, though at a fraction of the scale of Chinese companies. Mr. Trump has sought to increase American access to certain critical minerals through deals with Ukraine and Congo, and there are deposits in Canada and Greenland, two places he has mused about annexing. Rare earths, on the other hand, have narrower supply chains and are often more difficult to extract, requiring more cumbersome processes to separate them from other minerals (as Lecoq de Boisbaudran learned). The United States has just one operational rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., which produces around 15 percent of global rare earths. China’s rare earths export ban applies to all countries, not just the United States, meaning the U.S. will be unable to acquire the banned commodities through intermediaries. U.S. companies have stockpiled rare earth inventories that can tide them over, but they will not last forever, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James who specializes in the mineral trade. “If we are still having this conversation six-plus months from now, that’s when we would begin to get worried about physical shortages,” Molchanov said, “but not right now.”

Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its advertising products. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. Websites use publisher ad servers to store and manage their ad inventories. Antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that Google had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote. Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said Google will appeal the ruling. “We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” she said in a statement, adding that the company disagrees with the decision about its publisher tools. “Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective." Google’s shares were down around 2.1% at midday. The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. The Justice Department has said Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and ad exchange. However, a Google representative said Thursday that Google was optimistic it would not have to divest part of the business as part of any remedy, given the court’s view that its acquisition of advertising tech companies like DoubleClick were not anticompetitive.

New Jersey has sued the social gaming platform Discord for allegedly failing to adequately protect underage users from predators, the first state to do so. The heavily redacted civil suit, filed Thursday, accuses Discord of violating the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act by making it easy for children to create an account and by not taking more steps to prevent adult users from finding and contacting minors. Discord is designed as a hub for gamers to chat through text, audio and video, and has become popular as an app for chatting while playing video games, including ones particularly popular with children like Roblox and Minecraft. Calling itself a “fun and safe space for teens,” Discord bans anyone under the age of 13, and says it has a zero-tolerance policy toward people who exploit minors. New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew Platkin, accused Discord of not making it hard enough for children under 13 to get on the platform and for predators to find and contact underage users. “They’ve waged a very extensive PR campaign to tell the public all the features that they put in place to protect kids on their app,” Platkin told NBC News. “They know that they’re not working, and they know that they’re not actually protecting kids the way they say they are.” In an emailed statement, a Discord spokesperson defended the company’s measures against child exploitation. “Discord is proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer,” the spokesperson said. “Given our engagement with the Attorney General’s office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today. We dispute the claims in the lawsuit and look forward to defending the action in court,” the spokesperson said.

Two court rulings on Tuesday unfroze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal climate funds, a win for nonprofit groups that have been denied access to money they were promised under the Biden administration. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the federal court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered the immediate release of up to $625 million in climate grants that have been frozen since mid-February under the $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The fund is also known as the “green bank” program and has been a major target of Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Separately, Judge Mary S. McElroy of the federal court for the District of Rhode Island ordered five federal agencies to unfreeze environmental and infrastructure funding that had been awarded to nonprofits during the Biden administration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In her ruling, Judge McElroy said the nonprofits had demonstrated in court that the indefinite freeze, put in place by the Trump administration, “was neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.” She added that the nonprofits were likely to be able to prove that the freezes were “fundamentally arbitrary.” The lawsuits are among many filed against the Trump administration’s moves to freeze billions of dollars in funding that had been awarded through two laws passed in 2021 and 2022, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Various judges have ordered the administration to unfreeze funds, but the administration has cited legal loopholes to avoid doing so. Administration officials have said the pauses are necessary to align with executive orders President Trump has issued since taking office. The $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act and finalized before last November’s presidential election, represents roughly twice the E.P.A.’s budget for 2025. Mr. Zeldin seized on the program early in his tenure, citing a hidden-camera video filmed in December in which an E.P.A. staffer likened the outgoing Biden administration’s efforts to spend federal money to tossing gold bars off the Titanic. The video was released by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents. Mr. Zeldin called for the funds to be returned to the federal government. Citibank, which holds the money on behalf of the grant recipients, froze the accounts. The nonprofit grant recipients then sued the E.P.A. and Citibank last month. The bank declined to comment on Wednesday. The E.P.A. has notified that court that it will appeal. “The D.C. District Court does not have jurisdiction to reinstate the $20 billion Biden-Harris ‘Gold Bar’ scheme,” an E.P.A. official said Wednesday. “These grants are terminated, and the funds belong to the U.S. taxpayer.” The E.P.A. is allowed to freeze the grants if it uncovers evidence of waste, fraud or abuse. Judge Chutkan, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, asked the agency to produce evidence of that, but it has not offered anything concrete, despite investigations by the Department of Justice, the F.B.I. and the agency’s Office of Inspector General. Judge Chutkan’s order, which was released late Tuesday, calls for the release of funds that were “properly incurred before the mid-February suspension of plaintiffs’ funds.” A court filing from the E.P.A. estimated the total withdrawal requests at up to $625 million. On Wednesday morning, grant recipients were still trying to figure out exactly which transaction requests would be honored. Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United, one of the nonprofits that sued, said that the decision “gives us a chance to breathe after the E.P.A. unlawfully, and without due process, terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated.” The group, a national investment fund based in Maryland, said it intended to use the grants for projects in solar energy in Arkansas and hydropower in Alaska. In the Rhode Island lawsuit, filed in March, the named defendants include the departments of Agriculture, Energy and Interior, as well as the E.P.A., the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget, and the agency heads. None of the agencies immediately commented on the ruling. Six nonprofits had filed the suit. They argued that their work had been hamstrung by the uncertainty created by the funding freeze. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Examples of harm cited in the lawsuit included nonprofits having to furlough employees and pause projects, with no ability to plan for the future. “We are pleased that a federal court has seen the Trump administration’s freeze of congressionally approved funds for what it is, another abuse of executive power,” said Skye Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward, a legal group focused on challenging the Trump administration. It worked with co-counsel DeLuca, Weizenbaum, Barry & Revens, a firm based in Providence, R.I., on the case. Judge McElroy, who was appointed by President Trump in 2018, imposed a deadline of 5 p.m. on Wednesday in Rhode Island for the agencies to report back on their compliance with the order.

Nvidia plans to produce AI supercomputer chips entirely in the United States for the first time. The semiconductor maker said in a blog post Monday that it had commissioned more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test its Blackwell chips in Phoenix and is building supercomputer plants in Houston and Dallas. Nvidia said it would take at least a year to reach mass production scale at both plants. At the same time, Nvidia said its Blackwell chips have already started production at Phoenix chip plants run by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a major semiconductor foundry.

Consumer worries grew over inflation, unemployment and the stock market as the global trade war heated up in March, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey released Monday. The central bank’s monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations showed that respondents saw inflation a year from now at 3.6%, an increase of half a percentage point from February and the highest reading since October 2023. Along with concerns over a higher cost of living came a surge in worries over the labor market: The probability that the unemployment rate would be higher a year from now surged to 44%, a move up of 4.6 percentage points and the highest level going back to the early Covid pandemic days of April 2020.The survey also showed angst about the uncertainty translating into problems for stock market prices. The expectation that the market will be higher a year from low slid to 33.8%, a decline of 3.2 percentage points to the lowest reading going back to June 2022. While the expectations for equities pulled back, respondents said they figure gold to rise by 5.2%, the highest since April 2022. The survey reflects other readings, such as the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, which showed one-year expectations in mid-April at their highest since November 1981. In the case of the New York Fed measure, the survey took place ahead of President Donald Trump’s April 2 “liberation day” tariff announcement, as well as the 90-day suspension of the order a week later. However, it is largely consistent with other measures reflecting consumer concern over the impact tariffs will have, even as market-based measures show inflation worries are low among traders. Expectations for inflation at the five-year horizon actually edged lower to 2.9%, down 0.1 percentage point, and were unchanged for the three-year outlook at 3%. The outlook for food prices a year from now nudged up to 5.2%, its highest since May 2024, and was at 7.2% for rent, an increase of half a point. The outlook for medical care costs also jumped to an expected 7.9% increase, the most since August 2024. Respondents expect gasoline to rise by 3.2%, a 0.5 percentage point drop from the February outlook.

Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less. An accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee. The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. Some of it could also go to developing countries most vulnerable to climate hazards. The accord would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives at the agency’s next meeting in October. Given the widespread support for Friday’s terms, the head of the organization expressed hope it would be adopted in October with few or no changes. The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit. “The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed to clean up the maritime industry. The agreement is the “first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.” The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement. A State Department official said only that the U.S. didn’t participate in the negotiations. Ships mostly run on heavy fuel oil, sometimes called bunker fuel and more than 80 percent of global goods move by ships. The industry accounts for around 3 percent of global greenhouse emissions, comparable to the emissions from aviation. The agreement reached Friday is far less ambitious than one initially proposed by a group of island nations that had suggested a universal assessment on emissions. After two years of negotiations, the proposal sets out a complicated two-tiered system of fees. It sets carbon intensity targets, which are like clean-fuel standards for cars and trucks. Ships using conventional shipping oil would have to pay a higher fee ($380 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent produced) while ships that use a less carbon-intensive fuel mix would have to pay a lower fee ($100 for every metric ton that exceeds the fuel standard threshold). It is expected to raise $11 billion to $13 billion a year, according to the Organization’s estimates. “It is a positive outcome,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the organization’s secretary-general. “This is a long journey. This is not going to happen overnight. There are many concerns, particularly from developing countries.” The threshold would get stricter over time. It could allow the industry to switch to biofuels to meet the standards. That is a contentious approach, since biofuels are made from crops, and growing more crops to make fuel could contribute to deforestation. The new shipping-fuel standards are meant to spur the development of alternative fuels, including hydrogen. There were objections from many quarters. Developing countries with maritime fleets said they would be unfairly punished because they have older fleets. Countries like Saudi Arabia, which ship huge quantities of oil, and China, which exports everything from plastic toys to electric cars worldwide, balked at proposals to set a higher price, according to people familiar with the negotiations. “They turned away a proposal for a reliable source of revenue for those of us in dire need of finance to help with climate impacts,” said Ralph Regenvanu, the climate minister for Vanuatu, in a statement after the vote. In the end, countries that voted in favor of the compromise agreement included China and the European Union. Saudi Arabia and Russia voted against it. The United States pulled out of the talks entirely. The global shipping industry agreed in 2023 to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050. Last year, it followed up on that commitment with a more concrete plan, taking the first steps toward establishing an industrywide carbon price. Projections by the International Chamber of Shipping, an industry body, found that it would have a negligible effect on prices. “We recognize that this may not be the agreement which all sections of the industry would have preferred, and we are concerned that this may not yet go far enough in providing the necessary certainty,” said Guy Platten, the council’s secretary general. “But it is a framework which we can build upon.”

Southern California Edison, the electric utility whose equipment has been the focus of investigations into the deadly Eaton fire in Los Angeles County in January, said on Friday that it planned to bury more than 150 miles of power lines in fire-prone areas near Altadena and Malibu, Calif. The project would require approval from state regulators, would take years to complete and would cover only a fraction of the utility’s vast service area. Still, underground lines have been among the top requests from fire-ravaged communities as Los Angeles looks to rebuild. In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, company officials estimated the cost of the project at more than $650 million. That amounts to about two-thirds of the nearly $1 billion that the utility estimated it would cost to rebuild the infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed in the wildfires that began on Jan. 7. Much of that cost is expected to be passed on to customers. But, officials said, the project will address a significant risk in two of Southern California’s most fire-prone areas. Officials said at least 90 miles of power lines would be buried in Malibu, and more than 60 miles in and around high-risk fire zones in Altadena, where the Eaton fire burned. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “SCE will build back a resilient, reliable grid for our customers,” Steven Powell, the president and chief executive of the utility, said in a statement. Officials said on Friday that any distribution circuits not buried underground would be “hardened with covered conductor.” Company officials said in the letter that the investigation into the cause of the fire was still in progress, but they “acknowledged the possibility of SCE’s equipment being involved in the cause of the Eaton fire.” After the fires, Mr. Newsom suspended key environmental laws that often delay construction so that utility companies could quickly rebuild their damaged and destroyed infrastructure. He also urged utility companies to bury power equipment where possible. In the aftermath of the fires, electrical equipment has been a major source of concern in the communities where the flames left the greatest destruction. Kathryn Barger, the Los Angeles County supervisor who represents Altadena, applauded the utility’s announcement, saying it “demonstrates a strong alignment with the safety needs” of the community, which backs up to the San Gabriel Mountains. And in public meetings, homeowners have repeatedly called on the authorities to place Southern California’s power lines underground. On a state website created by the Newsom administration to obtain public feedback on rebuilding, for instance, hundreds of commenters from Altadena and Pacific Palisades, a coastal Los Angeles neighborhood that also experienced sweeping losses, begged for spark-prone electrical equipment to be relocated away from the region’s whipping winds and chaparral-covered canyons. “Require SCE to bury ALL power lines,” one commenter wrote in March, a demand that was repeated scores of times. “Underground, underground power lines!” another urged. After Pacific Gas & Electric’s equipment was determined to have been responsible for causing a series of wildfires in Northern California between 2017 and 2019, the utility sought to bury thousands of miles of its power lines. That has proved to be a challenge. Moving power lines underground is a highly expensive undertaking for utilities and customers, who often must share parts of the cost of installation and who typically end up with higher rates. Consumer advocates have urged utilities to explore other options, like covered wires. Mark Toney, the executive director of the Utility Reform Network, which represents consumers before the California Public Utilities Commission, the utility regulator, said burying power lines underground could cost $3 million to $4 million a mile. “Everybody knows that we’ve got to rebuild the grid when it burned down the way that it did,” Mr. Toney said. “We think it’s important to look for ways to get things done the most cost-effective way possible.” But cost-effectiveness varies from community to community, and initiatives to bury power lines in California often raise questions of equity. When utilities install underground lines, Edison officials noted, they typically charge customers thousands of dollars per home to “trench” individual lines from the property line to a customer’s electrical panel. Not all customers can afford such a capital investment. “Finding alternative ways to fund this significant out-of-pocket expense, including through government funds or philanthropic sources, could meaningfully assist customers in their rebuilding efforts,” Edison officials suggested in their letter to Mr. Newsom. Disparities in wealth have similarly come up in Los Angeles’s current debate over rebuilding. In an interview earlier this month, Monica Rodriguez, a Los Angeles City Council member who represents a working-class area of the San Fernando Valley, noted that the Jan. 7 fires had swept through parts of her district and that Edison also serves her constituents. “Their power lines run through all the foothill areas I represent,” she said. “And we’d love to see them undergrounded. So yeah. We’re a frontline community also. Hook us up, too.” Any move by Edison must be approved by the state utilities commission to ensure that the utility can recoup costs from ratepayers. Regulators have to balance the rising cost of electricity with the need for improvements to support safety and reliability.

Consumer price growth cooled in March as the White House prepared far-reaching global tariffs, with a key inflation measure falling to its lowest level since March 2021. The consumer price index slowed to an annual rate of 2.4%, less than expected and below the 2.8% notched the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. Inflation rose just 0.1% between February and March, in line with forecasts and below the 0.2% monthly reading seen in February. A 12-month measure of price growth that excludes volatile food and energy prices climbed 2.8%, the smallest annual increase for that so-called core reading since March 2021. The pace of price hikes for airfare, car insurance, used vehicles and recreation all eased in March. Despite the favorable reading, concerns remain widespread that President Donald Trump’s unprecedented and ever-changing tariff agenda — which he abruptly softened Wednesday — will bring rising prices in the coming months. “Today’s softer than expected CPI release feels backward looking given the large changes to trade policy seen in recent days,” Goldman Sachs analysts said Thursday morning. The bank warned that “tariff driven price increases [will] start to feed through to the inflation data” before long. Even before Trump’s sweeping tariff rollout on April 2, many investors were predicting some run-up in consumer costs. U.S. businesses “appear eager to pass on cost increases to consumers,” analysts with BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients this week. They cited a February Federal Reserve survey that found 80% of respondents would raise prices following higher input costs, with 60% stating the increase would at least equal the amount of the cost hike. “These findings indicate both widespread impact and a strong likelihood that a majority of affected firms will pass cost increases through to consumers,” the analysts wrote. While the pause announced Wednesday means the economic fallout from Trump’s plan may not be as severe as feared, Wall Street firms continue to predict a dramatic slowdown in the economy as a result of the entire episode. In a note to clients following Trump’s tariff pause Wednesday afternoon, Goldman Sachs said it still predicted a 45% chance of a recession, with economic growth in 2025 slowing to 0.5% and 12-month inflation rising to as much as 3.5%. Trump has put his own spin on the situation, writing on his Truth Social platform this week that there was “no inflation” as oil prices and food prices were falling.