Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit after it downloaded a massive trove of pirated books to train its large language models. The settlement amounts to about $3,000 per book, and is believed to be the largest ever recovery in a U.S. copyright case, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Source: Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Book Piracy Class Action Lawsuit
Generative AI startup ProRata.ai has raised $40 million in Series B funding as it prepares to launch a new product for publishers. ProRata.ai’s product, Gist Answers, lets publishers embed custom AI search on their websites. Publishers can show AI-powered summaries and recommendations exclusively based off their own content or showcase content from ProRata.ai’s broader network of 750 publishers.
Source: ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers
Warner Bros. sued Midjourney on Thursday, becoming the third studio to accuse the AI image-generating platform of blatant copyright violations. “Midjourney thinks it is above the law,” the lawsuit states. “Without any consent or authorization by Warner Bros. Discovery, Midjourney brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own.”
Source: Warner Bros. Joins Studios’ AI Copyright Battle Against Midjourney
Anthropic is making some big changes to how it handles user data, requiring all Claude users to decide by September 28 whether they want their conversations used to train AI models. That is a massive update. Previously, users of Anthropic’s consumer products were told that their prompts and conversation outputs would be automatically deleted from Anthropic’s back end within 30 days “unless legally or policy‑required to keep them longer.”
Source: Anthropic users face a new choice – opt out or share your chats for AI training | TechCrunch
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has raised another $13 billion in funding, valuing it at $183 billion, nearly tripling its valuation in March. The funding announcement comes as Anthropic faces legal challenges over its training data practices. The company recently settled a class-action lawsuit with authors who accused it of using copyrighted books without permission to train Claude.
Source: Anthropic’s value balloons to $183bn after securing $13bn in latest funding round
Google wants to see its generative AI video tool Flow gain a foothold among creatives, and is bringing a filmmaker in-house to help it do so. The tech giant says that it has brought on filmmaker and creative director Henry Daubrez to work as a filmmaker in residence at Google Labs, where he will create new content using the company’s tools, help shape Flow as a product, and mentor other filmmakers through what the company is calling Flow Sessions.
Source: Google Hires Filmmaker in Residence as It Seeks Wider Adoption of Flow AI Video Tool
U.S. antitrust enforcers have spent years strategizing how to bring lawsuits against the nation’s biggest tech companies, with the goal of restraining their power and promoting competition. Tuesday’s ruling imposing light penalties on Google highlights fundamental challenges with that approach, even when a judge finds a company has engaged in illegal monopolization.
Source: Google Ruling Shows Antitrust Tools Struggle to Keep Up With Tech Markets
The Mechanical Licensing Collective was established to streamline digital mechanical royalty payouts. But even well-intentioned systems can be designed in ways that introduce new risks. That includes the lack of recourse for rights holders and the roll-up of unmatched royalties based on market share. But the biggest issue is the ease with which the system can be manipulated.
Source: Duplicate Works, Diverted Royalties, and What the MLC Isn’t Catching – Digital Music News
AI music is forcing a “high-stakes inflexion point” and presenting the greatest disruption to the legal underpinnings of the music industry’s economic model since Napster — but a revenue-halving overhaul and protracted, unpopular legal battles can be avoided if major music companies get out ahead of judges and lawmakers and negotiate with Suno, Udio and Anthropic, says industry veteran and investor Charles Goldstuck.
Source: Music Industry Must Work With AI Companies Rather Than Fight Them in Court: Charles Goldstuck
While most Wall Street analysts seemed to agree that Judge Mehta’s ruling was a major win for the tech industry, the judge did order some remedies that could make a difference, according to experts. For example, Google must share certain data with “qualified competitors” as deemed by the court. The judge will also allow certain competitors to display Google search results as their own in a bid to give them the time and resources they need to innovate.
Source: A let-off or tougher than it looks? What the Google monopoly ruling means