Welcome back to Mlex's regulatory podcast, the first for 2021.

My name is James Panicki, and every week we catch up with Mlex's team of reporters around the globe

for a chat about

the most significant regulatory stories of the moment. In just over 10 minutes we'll be crossing

to South Korea where an artificial intelligence powered chatbot is making news for, well, for what else,

for being racist. It's a quirky story, but one that's unfolding

against a backdrop of regulatory change, with tougher privacy rules now very much on the table.

And we'll hear that it's not just the chatbot's racism that's causing consternation,

but also its propensity to release personal data to those who ask it the right questions.

Wu Yong Li is standing by to give us the lowdown.

First up, though, what a start to the year,

with insurgents storming the capital and digital giants deciding to de-platform the leader of the free world?

Yes, it's all happening.

To make sense of how the role of digital platforms is

feeding into the political upheaval in the US, I'm joined now by our digital reporter in D.C., Dave Pereira,

and from San Francisco Mlex's chief global digital risk correspondent, Mike Swift.

Okay, Dave, we're not even a full month into 2021 and already we've had a riot

inside the halls of the US Congress and a second history-making impeachment of President Donald

Trump. So why is it that even amid so much dramatic political news, we're discussing something as seemingly pedestrian

as content moderation.

We're hearing about it because of the role that social media played in that storming

of Congress, the role that it played as an organizing tool and as an inciting tool for that to have happened.

...