The Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcer issued a warning Thursday to tech companies working in artificial intelligence, cautioning that they could face action from regulators if they don’t find a way to fairly compensate artists, entertainers and other creators.
Source: DOJ antitrust chief warns AI companies that they must fairly compensate artists
Pandora is the latest music-streaming service to raise the price of its monthly subscription. The company confirmed the news on its community forum in response to a post by someone on its discounted $7.99-a-month plan for people in the military services, noting that it was going up to $8.99.
Source: Pandora raises subscription prices citing ‘licensing costs’
The European Union has taken the wraps off the structure of the new AI Office, the ecosystem-building and oversight body that’s being established under the bloc’s AI Act. The risk-based regulatory framework for artificial intelligence is expected to enter into force before the end of July — following the regulation’s final approval by EU lawmakers last week. The AI Office will take effect on June 16.
Source: With the EU AI Act incoming this summer, the bloc lays out its plan for AI governance | TechCrunch
Senators are pushing to introduce a bill as early as June that would set rules governing the use of AI in the music and movie industries, an effort that coincides with new AI tensions roiling Hollywood. The NO FAKES Act — which stands for Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe — is a bipartisan proposal that would stop individuals or companies from using AI to produce an unauthorized digital replica of their likeness or their voice.
Source: Washington pushes for new AI rules protecting artists as Hollywood backlash mounts
The Web3 Music Association (W3M), a new global music industry trade body that aims to “facilitate industry-wide research and development” has officially launched. W3M brings together prominent entities from the music, finance and technology sectors to “collaborate, explore and harness advanced technologies” including artificial intelligence, blockchain and mixed reality.
Source: New music industry trade body The Web3 Music Association launches
After years of Meta steadily walking away from news on its platforms, the company’s new AI tool is now using the work of those outlets for content. Meta’s new chatbot, Meta AI, is happy to scan news outlets and summarize their latest stories and headlines for anyone who asks. It’s even doing it in Canada, where the company banned links to news sources on Facebook and Instagram in August to get around a law that could require it to pay publishers.
Source: Meta walked away from news. Now the company’s using it for AI content
If giving people money encourages them to create, then surely giving them more money would encourage them to create more music, right? As one of us has documented empirically, the answer is actually no. Throughout music history, copyright’s incentive has often been dialed up too high and, counterintuitively, has led to less creativity.
Source: How copyright is killing creativity — except Taylor Swift’s
European Union member states on Tuesday gave final agreement to the world’s first major law for regulating artificial intelligence, as institutions around the world race to introduce curbs for the technology. The EU Council said it had approved the AI Act — a groundbreaking piece of regulatory law that sets comprehensive rules surrounding artificial intelligence technology.
Source: World’s first major law for artificial intelligence gets final EU green light
The tech giant is rolling out AI-generated answers that displace links to human-written websites. The product, dubbed “Search Generative Experience,” or SGE, directly answers queries with complex, multi-paragraph replies that push links to other websites further down the page, where they’re less likely to be seen. The shift stands to shake the very foundations of the web.
Source: Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers
Earlier this year, Spotify released its annual Loud & Clear report which rounded up global royalties data. Now, Spotify has unveiled UK-specific equivalent data. The UK figures include the overarching (royalties generated by UK artists from Spotify exceeded £750M in 2023) and drill down to artist-level (the number of UK artists who generated over £10,000 and £50,000 in royalties from Spotify in 2023 has doubled since 2017).
Source: Spotify reveals UK-specific streaming royalties data