Marketplace

Writers Guild Withdraws Support From Film Festival Over A.I.

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 In a letter sent to staff and supporters, Urbanworld’s founder, Stacy Spikes, said the guild had “withdrawn its sponsorship and participation in this year’s festival” over his decision to add films made with A.I. tools.

Google’s AI search is rapidly becoming the default, new data shows

AI search is rapidly becoming the default, whether users like it or not. In just a year’s time, Google’s AI-generated answers in search, known as AI Overviews, have gone from appearing in 15% of searches to 43%, according to a new report, driving a shift in how web users consume information online. In a recent analysis of the generative landscape, market intelligence firm Similarweb noted that what began as an AI layer on top of search has become an integral part of the search journey itself.

Source: Google’s AI search is rapidly becoming the default, new data shows

Music streamer Deezer says more than 50% of daily uploads are AI-generated

Music streaming company Deezer has been tracking the number of AI-generated tracks uploaded on the platform since last year, and the number has constantly gone up. Today, the company said that AI music now represents more than 50% of downloads. Deezer said that AI-generated track uploads were at a peak in June 2026, representing a monthly average of 90,000 tracks per day.

Source: Music streamer Deezer says more than 50% of daily uploads are AI-generated

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop

As AI companies search for more training data to improve their models, one company is offering old, printed books as an ideal source because they are guaranteed to be free of the very AI slop AI companies are producing. “The world’s best AI training data is sitting on a shelf,” ISBNdb, a company that produces what it claims is “the world’s largest book database,” says on its site. 

Source: AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop

Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027

Search referral traffic is in decline due to increasing usage of AI. This has been common knowledge among online publishers since the proliferation of chat interfaces and generated summaries in search results, and we now have concrete data to prove it with the AOP’s newly launched “Artificial Intelligence Publisher Impact Study”.

Source: Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027

Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed

For publishers, businesses, banks and others that relied on Google to funnel its billions of users to their websites, the impact has been unmistakable as the company has increasingly incorporated A.I. into search. Google’s users are no longer leaving Google after a search and are just reading its A.I.-generated answers, they said, which means fewer people are coming to their websites and search traffic has dropped.

Source: Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed

Why dedicated fans are trading infinite choice for trusted curation

Streaming’s real innovation wasn’t just access, it was the playlist as the primary unit of consumption, which has a cost in context collapse. A song’s meaning shrinks to whatever sits before and after it in an algorithmically assembled sequence. Compare that to the relationship between an artist and a radio programmer. Getting a song onto a show implied editorial investment. 

Source: Why dedicated fans are trading infinite choice for trusted curation

Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Proves Hollywood’s Top Directors Are Franchises Now

Nolan’s brand power and commercial track record got Comcast’s Universal Pictures to say yes to a roughly $250 million, R-rated adaptation of an ancient Greek poem shot across Europe with largely practical visual effects, including a 35-foot tall Trojan Horse. According to data from Rentrak provided by Universal, 53% of “The Odyssey” attendees said the director was their No. 1 reason for attending.

Source: Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Proves Hollywood’s Top Directors Are Franchises Now

Surprise: Many People Prefer AI Audiobooks, New Study Finds

A new Edison Research at SSRS study commissioned by Spoken, an AI audiobook company, revealed that the company’s multi-voice productions achieved a higher favorability rating than human-narrated productions. “There’s opinions good and bad for AI among the American consumer, right, so we wanted to just purely get the reaction,” Edison Research vice president Megan Lazovick said. “That was what was really fascinating, was the response that people were open to AI and thought it enhanced their experience.”

Source: Surprise: Many People Prefer AI Audiobooks, New Study Finds

Band Wakes Up to Find AI Has Stolen 94% of Their Spotify Royalties

Musician Owen Lyman-Schmidt found out that his work had been stolen when a longtime fan of his band, Makeshift Hammer, messaged him to let him know an album on Spotify sounded as if someone had taken his music and “distorted it a bit.” They sent a link to an album called Blue Road by an artist named Carey Dupont. “I had never heard of Carey Dupont,” Lyman-Schmidt wrote. “Dupont had no other releases that I could find and was seemingly otherwise unknown to the internet.”

Source: Band Wakes Up to Find AI Has Stolen 94% of Their Spotify Royalties 

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