AI startup Stability AI has released Stable Audio Open Small, a “stereo” audio-generating AI model that the company claims is the fastest on the market — and efficient enough to run on smartphones. Stable Audio Open Small is the fruit of a collaboration between Stability AI and Arm, the chipmaker that produces many of the processors inside tablets, phones, and other mobile devices.
Source: Stability AI releases an audio-generating model that can run on smartphones | TechCrunch
What initially appeared to be a power play by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take over the US Copyright Office by having Donald Trump remove the officials in charge has now backfired in spectacular fashion, as Trump’s acting replacements are known to be unfriendly — and even downright hostile — to the tech industry.
Source: Elon Musk’s apparent power play at the Copyright Office completely backfired
Audible is now offering AI-powered narration and production services to select audiobook publishers, with AI translation services to launch in beta later this year. “Audible believes that AI represents a momentous opportunity to expand the availability of audiobooks with the vision of offering customers every book in every language, alongside our continued investments in premium original content,” Audible CEO Bob Carrigan said.
Source: Audible Expands Catalog with AI Narration and Translation Services
Today a federal judge in San Jose ordered Anthropic to address allegations that one of its expert witnesses referenced a non-existent academic paper in the company’s court filing. The citation is purportedly from the journal American Statistician and was included in the filing to bolster Anthropic’s argument that the reproduction of copyrighted song lyrics is a “rare event.”
Source: Music Publishers Accuse Anthropic AI of ‘Hallucinating’ Citations
German firm AIxchange is the latest startup building bridges between the music industry and GenAI companies through licensing deals for the music data used by the latter to train their models. “Our mission is to empower the GenAI music revolution by offering legal, high-quality music training data, ensuring ethical and compliant licensing for AI music generation,” explains operations manager Peer-Uli May.
Music publishers have refiled their legal complaint against Anthropic, and the AI company has once again moved to have the case dismissed. But this time, the publishers say they come armed with a stronger case, and they argue Anthropic hasn’t. “For its part, Anthropic’s motion to dismiss simply rehashes some of the arguments from its earlier motion – while giving up on others altogether,” a spokesperson for the plaintiff publishing companies said.
The European Commission is open to amending the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act following an upcoming review, a top Commission official told POLITICO’s AI and Tech Summit Tuesday. Kilian Gross, head of the Commission’s AI policy unit, ruled out fundamental reform of the rules and said that simplifying the implementation is the Commission’s first focus. But “if this should not be enough, we will as well reflect whether we need targeted changes.”
Source: EU Commission opens door for ‘targeted changes’ to AI Act
Google considered allowing publishers to opt out of their data being used for AI grounding and still appear in search results but described it as a “hard red line.” New documents disclosed in the remedies portion of an antitrust trial into Google’s search monopoly in the US reveals the tech giant preferred not to give publishers the option as it was “evolving into a space for monetization.”
Source: How Google forced publishers to accept AI scraping as price of appearing in search
Intercept Music says it’s secured $50 million to invest in U.S. and Latin song rights under a ‘private partnership.’ “This is more than just a funding deal—it’s a commitment to restructuring music rights management,” Intercept CEO Tod Turner elaborated. “This partnership is a significant endorsement of our platform and strategy allowing us to combine capital with cutting-edge technology to unlock more value for artists, songwriters, and catalog owners.”
Source: Intercept Music Announces $50 Million Catalog Partnership
While the company says it hasn’t used user-created content for model training, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that it will in the future. A spokesperson for SoundCloud, provided the following statement. “SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes.”
Source: SoundCloud says it isn’t using your music to train generative AI tools