The proliferation of large language models and generative AI has created fertile ground for vector database technologies to flourish. Vector databases, store and process data in the form of vector embeddings, which convert text, documents, images, and other data into numerical representations that capture the meaning and relationships between the different data points.
Source: Why vector databases are having a moment as the AI hype cycle peaks | TechCrunch
The Internet Archive is doubling down on its position that its digital lending library service operates under the bounds of fair use. Major publishers assert that digitizing books without appropriate licensing amounts to infringement but IA counters that the practice is in the public interest. It also fits copyright’s ultimate purpose; to promote the broad public availability of literature and other arts.
Source: There’s More to Copyright Than Financial Incentives, Internet Archive Argues in Court * TorrentFreak
As music IP owners continue to clash with AI behemoths over what constitutes fair use, Soundtrack Loops’ latest expansion — specifically with its OneStop Audio Library for AI training — aims to remove copyright conflict from the picture entirely. The company believes that in the face of rampant litigation and raging copyright wars, its latest release is simply the right path for both developers and rights holders.
Source: Soundtrack Loops Expands From General Use to AI Licensing
California politicians are advancing a bill that would force Google and Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — to pay news publishers each time they display pieces of their articles or show links to them in search results or on social media. The companies are lobbying furiously to block it, saying the law would enact a “link tax” and upend the free flow of information online.
Source: California wants Big Tech to pay for news. Google is fighting back.
En masse, the music industry seems to have decided that NFTs were a terrible idea best swept under the carpet and forgotten. And in fairness, many of the industry’s initial experiments with NFTs deserve exactly that fate. However, with the hype having ebbed away the musicians who are still exploring how NFTs and related web3 technologies might be able to serve their art and their fan communities.
Source: Sound of Fractures wants tokens to ‘re-imagine our relationship with music’
When Walter Woodman and his team were working on one of their latest film productions, they kept hitting a snag. They couldn’t get the character at the centre of their picture, a man with a balloon for a head, to look quite right. “It would draw a face on the balloon and we didn’t really want that,” Mr. Woodman said. “If we even mentioned the word ‘face’ it would put a human face inside the balloon … and so I think we learnt after a while to say ‘the balloon man is expressionless’.”
Source: Lights, camera, algorithm: How artificial intelligence is being used to make films
Concord launched a USD $1.511 billion bid for the UK-listed company’s assets, at $1.25 per share. That bid very slightly topped a recent $1.50 billion takeover proposal from Blackstone, which valued HSF at $1.24 per share. Today (April 25), Blackstone issued a terse-but-fascinating comment to the markets, and specifically to HSF shareholders, in the wake of Concord’s new offer.
Jeff Price, the founder and CEO of global publishing administrator Word Collections, has released an article providing the results of auditing the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) using the MLC’s own publically available data. The results, according to Price, reveal that since the organization’s inception on January 1, 2021, the MLC has not paid out $600 million, or over 25%, of the mechanical royalties it has received from Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music, and other digital services.
Source: Word Collections says 25% of MLC Collection Isn’t Distributed
“The MLC is not authorized to opine on whether particular transmissions offered by Pandora or other DMPs [digital music providers] are properly characterized as interactive or noninteractive as a legal matter,” Pandora wrote in its firmly worded answer, “much less whether Pandora qualifies for statutory licensing under a different section of the Copyright Act (Section 114) that falls outside the MLC’s purview.
Source: Pandora Fires Back Against ‘Misguided’ MLC Royalties Lawsuit
The agreement will lead to the production of audio versions of select deep backlist series books that would not otherwise have been created, using ElevenLabs’s text-to-speech technology. According to ElevenLabs, the tech firm has developed an AI-based tool that can transform text into speech using artificial intelligence and makes it possible to “reflect the emotion, intonation, and pacing of the written word in audio, delivering a high-quality experience that sounds human”.
Source: HarperCollins and ElevenLabs AI to create audiobooks for foreign titles