Celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D beats an infringement lawsuit over a Miles Davis tattoo she inked in 2017. Kat Von D, celebrity tattoo artist and former cosmetics mogul, won a legal battle in federal court last week when a jury ruled that her tattoo reproducing a photo of jazz musician Miles Davis did not violate copyright law. The trial began in Los Angeles last week.
Source: Kat Von D Beats Infringement Lawsuit Over Miles Davis Tattoo
The industry is facing yet another revolution, but what sort isn’t yet clear. Is A.I. a format change in the way music is consumed, like the transition from records and cassettes to CDs, or is it a threat to the business model, as were free downloading and file-sharing? Is generative A.I. a new kind of digital workstation for making music, or is it the new radio—a platform for promoting acts and engaging with fans?
Source: Inside the Music Industry’s High-Stakes A.I. Experiments
Nightshade, a new, free downloadable tool created by computer science researchers at the University of Chicago designed to be used by artists to disrupt AI models scraping and training on their artworks without consent, has received 250,000 downloads in the first five days of its release. It’s a strong start for the free tool, and shows a robust appetite among some artists to protect their work from being used to train AI without consent.
Source: AI poisoning tool Nightshade received 250,000 downloads in 5 days: ‘beyond anything we imagined’
The Hollywood labor community is up in arms again after the Directors Guild of America (DGA) made a number of retroactive additions to its film & TV contract with the studios. The deal, which was revealed yesterday and gives directors a streaming performance bonus that matches that of the writers, has sown more discontent across town.
Source: Directors Back In The Labor Spotlight As DGA Deal Ruffles Feathers In Hollywood
The legal disputes around the development of AI are serious business. But when thinking of these suits, an old adage comes to mind: this isn’t about justice, this is about the law. And the legal questions swirling around AI in this moment are less about what’s broadly fair and more specifically about fair use—which, to many authors and publishers, is only sometimes fair.
A surge in AI-generated literature is raising concerns among some who believe this trend could undermine the authenticity and value of the reading experience. The debate is intensifying amid increasing worries about the rise of generative AI and its potential impact on jobs, especially those involving creative professionals. There is growing apprehension that AI-created content might eventually replace human-produced materials.
Experts have long warned of a future where artificial intelligence makes it impossible to tell digital fact from fiction. Now that future is here. Scientific American spoke with Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies digital forensics and media analysis. Farid has developed tools for deepfake detection that analyze audio, images and videos.
The estate of comedy legend George Carlin has filed a lawsuit against the makers of an hour-long video featuring a version of him made using artificial intelligence, accusing them of stealing “a great American artist’s work.” A voice sounding remarkably like the comedian, who died of heart failure in 2008, appears on a “comedy special” titled “George Carlin: I’m glad I’m dead,” which was uploaded to YouTube earlier this month by the Dudesy channel.
Source: George Carlin’s estate sues over AI-generated stand-up special titled ‘I’m glad I’m dead’
SoundCloud has struck partnerships with three music technology companies to allow artists to directly upload songs created with AI tools to its platform. Those three companies are Fadr, Soundful, and Voice–Swap. SoundCloud said in its announcement on Thursday (January 25) that the move “marks the latest milestone in SoundCloud’s efforts to empower artists on the platform”.
Source: AI-made music can now be easily uploaded to SoundCloud, thanks to a trio of new deals
While some of the major labels are touting YouTube as an important partner in the evolving world of music and AI, not everyone in the music industry has been as enthusiastic about these new efforts. That’s because Google trained its model on a large set of music — including copyrighted major-label recordings — and then went to show it to rights holders, rather than asking permission first.
Source: Google Trained Its AI on Copyrighted Music, Sources Say — Now It’s Trying to Make Deals