LLMs can process financial reports, legal documents and scientific papers at enormous scale. But access to that material does not reproduce the judgement of someone who has spent years working in the field. Demand for specialized human input is already supporting a substantial commercial market. A fast-growing segment of companies now connects AI developers with doctors, lawyers, scientists and other specialists who can create and evaluate professional tasks.
Source: Why the next AI data race will be for human expertise and knowledge
ElevenLabs has released Music v2.5, the new model behind its ElevenMusic song-generation platform. The model went live on Friday (September 11) and is now the default “for prompted and reference generation” in ElevenMusic, the company said in a blog post.It landed a day after ElevenLabs announced a multi-year licensing agreement with Universal Music Group – a deal the company says is separate from the new model.
The Big Five have been relatively terse in their public comments about AI. What is known is that each of the Big Five is developing proprietary AI systems for internal use, as proven by the numerous AI-related job openings the companies have posted. Publishers have a strong incentive not to speak too openly about AI, as there is a risk of facing questions for which the industry does not yet have answers.
IFPI has launched the Streaming Integrity Initiative (SII), a new industry commitment to combat streaming fraud. “Streaming fraud involves the manipulation of digital music services to generate revenue from plays that are not genuine,” the organization said is a statement. “It is often happening at scale, undermining trust in streaming services and siphoning revenues away from the artists, songwriters, record labels, music publishers and others who power the music economy.”
According to the RIAA’s new report, CDs generated $171.1 million in revenue during the first half of 2026 — up 58.6% from roughly $107.9 million in the first half of 2025 — on 17.5 million units sold, up 45.7% from about 12 million units in the same period last year. The growth comes amid a surge of renewed interest in simpler tech, like so-called dumbphones, digital cameras, typewriters, landlines, and physical media like CDs and vinyl, among other categories.
Using Hollywood’s publicity-machine-ready math, this summer’s $4.76 billion estimated haul was 9 percent higher than the $4.35 billion collected in 2019, the summer before Covid upended moviegoing. Adjusted for inflation, the 2019 total rises to $5.7 billion, putting this summer 17 percent below it. Higher ticket prices disguise a deeper decline in attendance. From Jan. 1 through Aug. 16, domestic theaters sold an estimated 568.4 million tickets, down 30 percent from the same period in 2019, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The screen itself is not our enemy. It has brought extraordinary things into our lives. Never before have so many people had access to so many films, ideas and cultures other than their own. It’s clear to all of us that a screen can educate, connect and inspire. The question is how to preserve that promise while confronting what has gone wrong. We should begin by acknowledging something uncomfortable: we shaped this world, and we must take responsibility for it.
Walk into a corner of a newsroom somewhere and you can often find it affixed to a bulletin board, perhaps peeking out from behind the coffee pot: the 
Titled “An Empirical Study of the Impact of Library E-Lending on the Book Economy” and conducted by Secretariat Advisors, the report predicts that “decreases in library e-book prices or certain other changes to licensing terms, as required in recent state legislative initiatives, would cause further harm to commercial markets,” including publishers, authors, and booksellers.
A group of more than 80 performers, including actor Hugh Bonneville and singer Sandi Thom, have written to the UK government to demand greater protection against their voices being used by AI. Together, they are asking Prime Minister Andy Burnham to introduce legislation that would better protect every person in the UK against voice cloning and AI training on recordings without consent. Audiobook narrator Alice Sockett co-founded the campaign, calling voice cloning “an existential threat to our entire industry.”