It’s been difficult to miss this fall’s ad campaign from New York’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS). The “Turn the Page on Stigma” campaign has blanketed subway cars, billboards, local television networks, and social media feeds across the state with ads reminding viewers not to judge those battling addiction.

The ads feature people holding up books or emerging out of book pages, with captions such as “Know what they say about judging a book by its cover?”

There is indeed more than meets the eye about the people in these ads: many are not real, but instead reproductions generated by artificial intelligence.

The campaign comes amid growing efforts by state lawmakers to regulate the use of AI in advertising, which they say can mislead viewers and undermine trust. The ads don’t disclose the use of AI. In a statement, OASAS spokesperson Evan Frost said that OASAS partnered with the Binghamton-based agency Idea Kraft to produce the ads, which were made with a blended approach of AI and traditional methods. A spokesperson for Idea Kraft directed questions back to OASAS.

New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie has introduced new legislation to impose consistent standards on foreclosure auction sales following a New York Focus and Gothamist investigation into widespread irregularities that can cost former homeowners thousands of dollars while boosting lenders’ profits.

The investigation, which was based on interviews and an independent review of thousands of state court records, found some lenders, their attorneys and court-appointed referees routinely used a disputed calculation method to increase debts owed by former homeowners following foreclosure sales. The method, which charges interest on top of interest, contradicts state court system guidance. Former homeowners allege in federal lawsuits that the practice also violates a state law prohibiting compound interest on residential loans and has gone unchecked by judges, referees and state court officials.

After a year of walking back its major climate commitments, New York moved an inch forward on Monday, when the Department of Environmental Conservation finalized rules to guide how major polluters report their greenhouse gas emissions.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration announced the rules just after filing an appeal last week in a lawsuit brought by climate groups over her decision to shelve an ambitious carbon pricing program, called “cap and invest,” earlier this year. She’d once described the program as a cornerstone of her climate agenda, but the DEC’s reporting rules now look like all that remain of it.