Music streaming service Audiomack has partnered with royalty tracking platform Mogul to enable half a million active creators to manage their Audiomack royalties alongside other revenue streams. The collaboration is designed to help independent artists track and collect the royalties they’re owed more accurately, according to a joint release,
Source: Audiomack teams up with Mogul to bring royalty tracking to its creators
Google and the Department of Justice are facing off again, this time in a trial about whether Google has a monopoly in advertising technology markets. The trial kicks off on September 9th in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The DOJ argues that Google has unfairly locked up the market for ad tech tools that publishers and advertisers rely on to monetize their websites and market their goods.
Source: US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial
Perplexity, an AI “answer” engine startup, made headlines in July when it unveiled a revenue-sharing program, partnering initially with Fortune, Der Spiegel, Texas Tribune, and WordPress. The tech platform aims to expand its collaborations, particularly with international media outlets, by year’s end. The idea of working with publishers came before a recent wave of criticism and accusations of plagiarism from Forbes and Wired – which Shevelenko attributes to a misunderstanding of how the product works.
Source: How AI ‘answer’ engine Perplexity plans to collaborate with publishers
Video game performers have reached a turning point in their strike against developers with 80 individual video games signing agreements with the performers’ union and accepting artificial intelligence provisions they have been seeking. SAG-AFTRA announced the agreements with the 80 individual video games on Thursday. Performers impacted by the work stoppage can now work on those projects.
Source: Video game performers reach agreement with 80 video games on AI terms
Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft are in talks to invest in OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, at precisely the moment when it’s become apparent that the company will face tougher competition than ever in the burgeoning artificial-intelligence market. Much of that new competition is coming from startups that promise to undercut OpenAI’s services with ones that could be cheaper to use, and also better at certain narrow tasks.
Source: The Threat to OpenAI Is Growing
A slew of major news publishers and top social media websites are blocking Apple from scraping their websites for AI training purposes. Per the report, media companies that have altered their robots.txt files to lock Applebot out include The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Gannett, Vox Media, and Condé Nast. On the social media side, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr all confirmed that they’ve blocked Apple from scraping their sites, as did the enduring internet elder Craiglist.
Source: No One Wants Apple To Scrape Their Websites for AI Training
OpenAI is in talks to raise several billion dollars in a new funding round that would value the startup behind ChatGPT above $100 billion. The new funding round would be the biggest infusion of outside capital into OpenAI since Microsoft invested around $10 billion in January 2023. Since then, an arms race has developed in Silicon Valley to build the most advanced artificial-intelligence systems in an effort to dominate an industry many say will revolutionize the economy.
Source: OpenAI in Talks for Funding Round Valuing It Above $100 Billion
Once upon a time, the industry had a reliable growth engine and consolidated content offering in the form of the cable bundle that came with 40 percent-plus profit margins. Then the streaming wars began in earnest as Disney+, Paramount+, Max, Peacock and more jumped into the space occupied by Netflix. That has left Hollywood companies in dire financial straits.
Source: Hollywood Stocks Are Difficult Investments. What Could Make Them More Investable Again?
Companies are “struggling” to find value in the generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) projects they have undertaken and one-third of initiatives will end up getting abandoned, according to a recent report by analyst Gartner. “After last year’s hype, executives are impatient to see returns on Gen AI investments, yet organizations are struggling to prove and realize value.
Source: A third of all generative AI projects will be abandoned, says Gartner
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