Google has begun giving publishers a prominent “Top Stories” plug above many news-based queries which generate an AI Overview summary. While the move could lead to more referral traffic for publishers, they could lose the opportunity to feature in these snippets if they opt out of allowing their content to be used in AI Overviews.
Source: Google adds Top Stories links to many news-related AI summaries
After the Supreme Court’s Cox ruling reshaped ISPs piracy liability, the record labels behind a $46.8 million verdict against Grande Communications are ready to walk away from the case entirely. Grande won’t let them, however. The Internet provider is holding out for a formal win and the millions in bond costs it says the appeal ran up.
Source: Record Labels Offer to Abandon $46.8 Million Piracy Case Against Grande
On Friday, a judge largely denied a motion to dismiss from a web scraper, SerpApi, which is accused of conspiring with Perplexity AI to illegally scrape copyrighted Reddit content from Google search results. In his opinion, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that at this early stage, Reddit has plausibly pleaded that there was a conspiracy, with SerpApi providing a product to circumvent Google access controls and Perplexity AI paying for it.
Source: Reddit keeps its strange DMCA fight over Google search results alive
Germany’s GEMA has notched another AI legal victory – this time over Suno, which the Munich Regional Court has reportedly ordered to disclose its revenue and pay damages. Meanwhile, the music-generation startup is set to appeal. GEMA touted its “groundbreaking success” today, after suing Suno closer to 2025’s start. Additionally, although legal documents themselves aren’t usually made available to the public in Germany, the Munich Regional Court provided a detailed breakdown of its decision.
Source: GEMA Notches a Major Legal Win Over Suno in High-Stakes Infringement Case
Just as printed letters can be scanned and converted into digital text, emerging technology can transform sheet music into sound. A new effort is underway to use optical music recognition (OMR) to bring to life music in the public domain for all to listen and access through the Internet Archive. Nearly 200 public domain songs have been uploaded to the Internet Jukebox—from John Philip Sousa marches to children’s folk songs and piano concertos by Frederic Chopin—and the collection is growing.
Source: Bringing Forgotten Music Back to Life with Optical Music Recognition
Article 50 of the EU AI Act has entered into force. Enterprises running generative AI tools now have to comply with Article 50, which requires providers and deployers of certain AI systems to tell people when they’re interacting with a machine, and to mark AI-generated content so it can be flagged as such. Providers of systems generating synthetic audio, image, video, or text face a separate duty under Article 50. Marking is the mechanism. The output needs a machine-readable mark, detectable as artificially-generated or manipulated.
On July 30, nine days after 404 Media’s reporting, ISBNdb added a note to its homepage and an update on its news page about the change. “We’ve seen the recent coverage about a marketing landing page on our site, and we understand the concern it raised. The facts: ISBNdb has never purchased, scanned, or sold a book — for AI training or anything else,” ISBNdb wrote. “We don’t train AI models, and we never have. The page was a test of market interest; no such service was ever brought to life.
Source: Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
Suno has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over a data breach that reportedly exposed the personal information of 55.3 million users. The suit was filed on Friday (July 24) in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, where Suno is headquartered. The named plaintiff is Alec Pilavian, a Florida resident and Suno customer who is seeking to represent everyone in the United States whose data was compromised in the breach.
Source: Suno faces proposed class action lawsuit over data breach
The dispute involves Urbanworld, a New York festival that showcases Black and multicultural films, and the Writers Guild of America East, a 6,000-member union that represents movie, television, podcast and digital news writers. In a letter sent to staff and supporters, Urbanworld’s founder, Stacy Spikes, said the guild had “withdrawn its sponsorship and participation in this year’s festival” over his decision to add films made with A.I. tools.
Source: Writers Guild Withdraws Support From Film Festival Over A.I.
The “first tremors in an earthquake” hitting the news industry from AI answers and audience habit changes can be seen in the latest snapshot of digital publishing revenue. Following four consecutive quarters of growth among UK publishers taking part in the Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index, Q1 2026 saw a swing back into decline. Among 13 publishers (nine B2C and four B2B) surveyed by the Association of Online Publishers and Deloitte, total digital revenue dropped by 4.55% in the first three months of this year.
Source: ‘First tremors’ of AI earthquake showing in digital revenue hit