SAG-AFTRA and the video game companies are resuming contract negotiations for the first time since video game actors went on strike. SAG-AFTRA is seeking a contract that will require game developers to obtain informed consent and compensate video game performers when using the technology to digitally replicate their voices, movements or likenesses.
Source: Hollywood unions are facing an uphill battle against Trump, AI and the slowdown
Amid Spotify’s effort to improve its video offerings, the company is enhancing the audiobook experience for its premium users with video clips, as well as author pages, and the ability to add visuals that appear while listening. The latter gives authors or publishers the option to submit a video of up to 30 seconds for their audiobooks.
Spotify has launched Spotify for Authors, an analytics and promotion platform for its audiobook division, which currently hosts more than 300,000 titles. The platform, modeled after Spotify’s existing tools for musicians and podcast creators, aims to provide publishers and authors with data-driven insights about their audiobook performance.
Source: Spotify Launches Analytics Platform for Audiobook Publishers, Authors
A new publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence (AI). Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books.
Source: New publisher Spines aims to ‘disrupt’ industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone
AI music startup Soundverse AI has attracted more than 200,000 creators to its service, who have made more than 500k tracks so far. The startup revealed the figures in an announcement that also stressed its “ethically trained AI model”, with the company saying it has only trained its technology “by securing explicit artist consent and compensating contributors”.
Source: Soundverse AI attracts 200k creators with ‘ethical practices’
Source: Nvidia shows AI model that can modify voices, generate novel sounds
Even as it faces a lawsuit from the recording industry for using countless copyrighted songs to train its music-generating AI model, Suno has become the fifth most-used generative-AI service in the world — and the company is still pushing its technology forward. A new, notably more realistic model, V4, is available today to paid subscribers, and will eventually reach all users.
Source: AI Music Is More Realistic Than Ever: Meet Suno’s New Model
Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has made a “significant investment” in Prorata.ai, a generative artificial intelligence platform that plans to share revenue with publishers each time their content is used to answer a user query. The deal gives Prorata access to DMG Media’s content, which includes the archives of the Mail, Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist.
Source: DMG Media invests in publisher-friendly generative AI start-up Prorata
Many publishers struggle to fully capitalise on the revenue potential of their digital audiences despite having various monetisation opportunities at their disposal. This shortfall stems from the internal disruption caused by digital transformation to their legacy product strategy, organisational structure, and technology infrastructure. It’s not the lack of opportunity that is holding publishers back.
Source: Monetising digital audiences: A call for alignment across strategy, teams, and tech
SoundCloud users will have access to six new assistive AI tools, including Tuney, Tuttii, AIBeatz, TwoShot, Starmony and ACE Studio. The company is also using Audible Magic and Pex to ensure that these new AI integrations are backed up by strong content identification tools that provide rights holders with proper credit and compensation.
Source: SoundCloud Expands AI Integrations With Tuney, Pex, Audible Magic Partnerships