Why haven’t any of Hollywood’s major studios pulled the trigger yet on a licensing deal with the tech giants looking to train their AI models? It turns out there are many reasons. Factors range from considerable legal risks to fears of repeating a grave strategic error Hollywood made in its first dealings with Netflix. But one of the biggest concerns is a simple one: price.
Source: How Much Should AI Giants Pay Hollywood? What Insiders Say Has Stalled Any Licensing Deals
San-Francisco-based startup Story said Wednesday that it raised $80 million of funding for a blockchain designed to prevent artificial intelligence makers like OpenAI from taking creators’ intellectual property without permission. Story said that it raised the funds in a Series B round — typically the third major round of funding in a private startup’s growth journey after seed and Series A — led by Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as a16z.
The draft proposal, dated Saturday afternoon, would see California form a public-private partnership with Google and news publishers to fund in-state newsrooms and AI over five years. The partnership would provide over $300 million across five years, including at least $40 million annually for an unspecified “AI Innovation Accelerator” program managed by a “yet-to-be finalized” nonprofit.
Source: AI initiatives would get $40M annually in draft California journalism bill
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett in federal court in Manhattan barred the three companies on Friday from launching Venu, deciding that the FuboTV sports streaming service would likely prevail on claims that the new broadband entity would “substantially lessen competition and restrain trade.” Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming.
Source: Judge Bars Disney, Warner, Fox From Launching Sports Streamer Venu
Dotdash Meredith and Ziff Davis tell shareholders that they haven’t seen any significant traffic changes due to Google’s AI Overviews. “Now that the AI Overview experience is in full circulation, we wanted to revisit the analysis we did in Q3 of 2023 relating to the frequency of AI overviews being presented to users,” Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah said on the company’s earnings call. “At this point, we don’t see it as a significant change to the search experience.”
Source: Publishers report ‘negligible’ traffic impact of Google AI Overviews
As the 5,000-strong Animation Guild starts negotiations with studios, outsourcing jobs and AI are the major points of contention. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks and former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, has predicted that generative AI could eradicate 90 percent of animation artist jobs. The word that some negotiators at the union are using to describe this moment is “existential.”
Source: As AI Encroaches on Hollywood, Animators Say This Is An Existential Moment
Online publications increasingly face a lose-lose dilemma: allow Google to use their published content to produce inline AI-generated search “answers” or lose visibility in the company’s search engine. The crux of the problem lies in the Googlebot, the crawler that scours and indexes the live web to produce the results you see when you enter search terms.
Source: Online publishers face a dilemma: Allow AI scraping from Google or lose search visibility
On Tuesday (August 13), UnitedMasters confirmed the DEBUT+ tier is now available immediately in “priority markets” including the US, UK, Canada, Nigeria and Brazil. “Making it in music has never been more possible for independent artists, but it still requires the right partner. Founder and CEO Steve Stoute said.
SAG-AFTRA has struck a deal with AI startup Narrativ for audio voice replicas in digital advertising that the union asserts sets “a new standard” for ethical use of the technology and also makes it easy for performers to give consent and get paid. The New York-based Narrativ operates an online marketplace that offers tools to advertisers to create audio spots using AI tools.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Strikes Groundbreaking AI Digital Voice Replica Pact With Startup Firm Narrativ
The parade of second quarter earnings reports for major showbiz conglomerates made it crystal-clear that there is no more avoiding the 800-pound gorilla on the balance sheets of Big Media. It’s been a long time coming that the valuations long applied to old-fashioned cable channels have to be slashed by double digits.
Source: Hot August Write-Downs: Big Media Can’t Hide From Hard Decisions on Cable Valuations Any More