Facebook is testing a system that charges users for sharing web links, in a move that could prove to be a further blow to news outlets and other publishers. Meta, the social media platform’s owner, said it is carrying out a “limited test” in which those without a paid Meta Verified subscription, costing at least £9.99 a month, can only post two external links a month.
Source: Facebook tests charging users to share links in potential blow for news outlets
After announcing earlier this year a framework for an open AI ecosystem, the nonprofit Creative Commons has come out in favor of “pay-to-crawl” technology — a system to automate compensation of website content when accessed by machines, like AI web crawlers. In July, the organization announced a plan to provide a legal and technical framework for dataset sharing between companies that control the data and the AI providers that want to train on it.
Source: Creative Commons announces tentative support for AI ‘pay-to-crawl’ systems | TechCrunch
Disney’s three-year licensing partnership with OpenAI includes just one of exclusivity, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC. The company signed the partnership with OpenAI last week that will bring its iconic characters to the AI firm’s Sora video generator. Once that exclusive year is up, Disney is free to sign similar deals with other AI companies.
Source: Disney’s OpenAI deal is exclusive for just one year — then it’s open season | TechCrunch
AI can make podcasts sound better and cost less, industry insiders say, but the growing swarm of new competitors entering an already crowded market is disrupting the industry. Some podcasters are pushing back, requesting restrictions. Others are already cloning their voices and handing over their podcasts to AI bots. The slow encroachment of AI voices for one-off episodes, canned ad reads, sentence replacement in postproduction or translation into multiple languages has sparked anger as well as curiosity from both creators and consumers of the content.
Source: Podcast industry under siege as AI bots flood airways with thousands of programs
As the rise of artificial intelligence seems to affect most of the entertainment and tech sectors, at least podcasting remains safe, right? Wrong. Already, there are at least 175,000 AI-generated podcast episodes available on platforms like Spotify—thanks to startup Inception Point AI. The company, with just eight employees, is churning out a whopping 3,000 AI-generated podcast episodes a week.
Source: This Audio Startup Churns Out 3,000 AI Podcasts A Week
News publishers participating in the pilot program include Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Post, among others. The purpose of the new commercial partnership program is to “explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences,” Google said in a blog post. As part of the new AI pilot program, the company will work with publishers to experiment with new features in Google News.
Meta has signed AI content licensing deals with major publishers including People Inc, CNN and Fox News. The Facebook owner said the deals will help it provide a wider variety of real-time content, including global news, entertainment and lifestyle, on its Meta AI assistant. It noted it will be linking out to the publishers and “allowing you to visit these partners’ websites for more details while providing value to partners, enabling them to reach new audiences”.
Global think tank and advocacy group ORCA (Organization for Recorded Culture and Arts) has released a first-of-its-kind report revealing how independent labels generate tangible value and income for artists through long-term partnerships and investment. It shows that in 2023, these labels invested $134 million that supported 569 artists across different genres and geographies, generating a combined revenue of $239 million.
Source: Indie Labels Return 77% of Profits Back to Their Artists—STUDY
Getty CEO Craig Peters told the Financial Times that if regulators block the $3.7 billion deal, “there’s parts of these businesses that probably don’t continue to invest in the UK.” But the real story isn’t whether two large companies should be allowed to merge. It’s what their convergence reveals about the collapsing economics of visual evidence and whether anyone is building the infrastructure that makes real images valuable before the last people who know how to create them find something else to do.
Source: Why the Getty-Shutterstock Merger Is Really About Who Controls “Real” – Kaptur
In a recent study by the streaming platform Deezer and market research company Ipsos, 97% of respondents could not tell the difference between music tracks made entirely by artificial intelligence and those made by humans. At first glance, it might seem that listeners are welcoming AI-generated music with open arms and ears. But the truth is muddier. The same Deezer study found that 52% of respondents were uncomfortable about not being able to tell the difference between human and AI music.