Attorney General Behind Historic Meta Fine Picks Next Target
A state attorney general named his next target after successfully obtaining a historic-level fine against Meta.
Sean Moran · Oct 25, 2026 · 4 min read
A state attorney general named his next target after successfully obtaining a historic-level fine against Meta.
New Mexico District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found that the company misled users about its privacy practices. Democratic New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said that the company mishandled New Mexicans’ personal information. Now, the attorney general said that he may focus on controlling artificial intelligence.
“Anyone in artificial intelligence, people who are building products that they can’t control, people who are making representations in the marketplace about what a product does or doesn’t do, or how it uses or doesn’t use specific types of consumer data, we are going to be watching, and we are prepared to do this again. The message should be received in Silicon Valley that this is not the end, it’s just the beginning,” Torrez told Politico on Thursday.
Torrez’s team did not respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation comment request.
This is not the first time that Torrez has moved to police AI.
The New Mexico attorney general and state Democratic Rep. Linda Serrato in early October announced the Frontier Artificial Intelligence Safety and Accountability Act, a bill that would mandate that the largest AI developers disclose risks associated with their models and allow New Mexico to sue for damage caused by rogue AI models, according to an Oct. 1 New Mexico Justice Department press release.
Torrez and 25 attorneys general called for federal oversight of safety testing and standards and international cooperation to pace AI development, according to a New Mexico Department of Justice release.
The New Mexico lawsuit sued Meta after a whistleblower revealed that Facebook collected and shared people’s information with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, per Politico.
Most states have their own consumer protection laws and New Mexico’s victory may provide an example for other states that want to police such conduct.