Paramount’s $110 Billion Warner Bros. Deal Backed by Arab Sovereign Funds

Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery is not just a Hollywood deal. Powered by $24 billion from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, the proposed merger is sparking debate over soft power, influence and media independence at a company that includes CNN and HBO. Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) are jointly putting up a total of $24 billion investment into the Hollywood mega merge

Source: Paramount’s $110 Billion Warner Bros. Deal Backed by Arab Sovereign Funds

Sarandos: Paramount Offers Were ‘Irrational’ Relied on Political Pressure

Sarandos gave the interview to Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg, where he didn’t mince words about losing out to Paramount.  “It’ll be fascinating to see the next steps. I have been on the record a lot in the last two weeks talking about what I think the future looks like. I’m confident in our future that we’re not impacted by all that. In fact, maybe it’s to our advantage. But I hope I’m wrong for the sake of the industry.”

Source: Sarandos: Paramount Offers Were ‘Irrational’ Relied on Political Pressure

All the Ways Netflix Actually Won Even Though It Lost Warner

For Netflix, such a deal would have complicated the business model for a company that had already vaulted to a leading position in Hollywood on its strength as a streaming pure-play. Even its recently diminished market cap had Netflix nearly twice as valuable as Disney and far above any other media outlet. And at $72 billion, the price for Warner was steep for a company with just under $10 billion in annual free cash flow—and no history of doing megasize deals. 

Source: All the Ways Netflix Actually Won Even Though It Lost Warner

Reservoir receives unsolicited $1.2B bid from activist investor Irenic Capital

Activist investment fund Irenic Capital Management reportedly made an unsolicited takeover bid for Reservoir Media, the Nasdaq-listed independent music company. That’s according to a report from Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, which said the bid, submitted in February, values Reservoir at between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion, including debt, at a per-share price of $10 to $11.

Source: Reservoir receives unsolicited $1.2B bid from activist investor Irenic Capital

High-res music service Qobuz joins France’s Deezer in flagging AI-generated tracks

Qobuz said in a recent blog post that it will start tagging these tracks “to protect artists and listeners from AI-generated content.” The French company follows Deezer, another France-based streaming platform, which has already made AI labels publicly visible to users. Last year, Deezer filed two patents for an AI detection tool, which it said can discover “fully AI-generated tracks.” Deezer has since published periodic updates on how many tracks the tool has flagged.

Source: High-res music service Qobuz joins France’s Deezer in flagging AI-generated tracks

Tilly Norwood Creator Plans ‘Rapid Expansion’ With the ‘Tillyverse,’

As part of the expansion Van der Velden has tapped Prime Video’s Mark Whelan as head of strategy and operations at her new AI talent studio Xicoia. Whelan will be tasked with helping Van der Velden create the “Tillyverse,” described in a press release as a “dynamic, constantly evolving digital universe where Tilly and a new generation of AI characters will live, collaborate and build careers.”

Source: Tilly Norwood Creator Plans ‘Rapid Expansion’ With the ‘Tillyverse,’

News Corp, Meta in AI Content Licensing Deal Worth Up to $50 Million a Year

The deal will run for at least three years and allow Meta to use the media company’s content from the U.S. and the U.K., according to people familiar with the matter. They said the deal allows Meta to retrieve new information for users of its artificial-intelligence products and to train on other content, such as story archives. The size of the Meta deal reflects the increasing value technology companies are placing on the news content.

Source: News Corp, Meta in AI Content Licensing Deal Worth Up to $50 Million a Year

Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the ​issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning ‌away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system. Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ​decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ​because it did not have a human creator.

Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material

Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter books

Following backlash in a Hacker News thread, Microsoft deleted a blog post that critics said encouraged developers to pirate Harry Potter books to train AI models that could then be used to create AI slop. The blog was written in November 2024 by a senior product manager, Pooja Kamath. According to her LinkedIn, Kamath has been at Microsoft for more than a decade and remains with the company. In 2024, Microsoft tapped her to promote a new feature that the blog said made it easier to “add generative AI features to your own applications.

Source: Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter books

These Tools Say They Can Spot A.I. Fakes. Do They Really Work?

More than a dozen online tools claim they can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s A.I. by looking for hidden watermarks, composition errors and other digital clues. The reality is more mixed, according to a battery of tests conducted by The New York Times. While many tools did a good job detecting some A.I. content, they were not accurate enough to offer users complete confidence.

Source: These Tools Say They Can Spot A.I. Fakes. Do They Really Work?

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