Finance

MPA Europe Chief Talks Hollywood’s Concerns as New EU Parliament Takes Charge

Following recent European Union elections held in June that saw far-right parties made significant gains, Hollywood is making moves to ensure that the new EU regime doesn’t draft new legislation that would be detrimental for studios and streamers. “We are at a moment when [EU] policies are not set in stone yet,” said Stan McCoy, who is the Motion Picture Assn.’s chief for Europe, speaking at the Venice Film Festival.

Source: MPA Europe Chief Stan McCoy Talks Hollywood’s Concerns as New EU Parliament Takes Charge

Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses

When Apple won a bidding war in 2021 for the rights to make the action comedy “Wolfs” with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, it did so in part because it promised the stars it would put the movie into a large number of movie theaters. But this month, just six weeks before the film was set to show up in thousands of theaters around the United States, Apple announced a significant change in plans.

Source: Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses

California announces new deal with tech to fund journalism, AI research

California will be the first U.S. state to direct millions of dollars from taxpayer money and tech companies to help pay for journalism and AI research under a new deal announced Wednesday. Under the first-in-the-nation agreement, the state and tech companies would collectively pay roughly $250 million over five years to support California-based news organization and create an AI research program.

Source: California announces new deal with tech to fund journalism, AI research

How Much Should AI Giants Pay Hollywood? 

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

Startup using blockchain to prevent copyright theft by AI valued over $2 billion after fresh funding

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.

Source: Startup using blockchain to prevent copyright theft by AI is valued over $2 billion after fresh funding

AI initiatives would get $40M annually in draft California journalism bill deal

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

Judge Bars Disney, Warner, Fox From Launching Sports Streamer Venu

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

Publishers report ‘negligible’ traffic impact of Google AI Overviews

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 AI Encroaches on Hollywood, Animators Say This Is An Existential Moment

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 publishers face a dilemma: Allow AI scraping from Google or lose search visibility

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

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