Web publishers and news organizations could be given the power to stop Google scraping their content for its AI Overviews, under measures announced by the UK competition watchdog to loosen its grip on online search. Media organizations have experienced a drop in click-through traffic to their websites – and therefore their revenue – since Google started posting AI summaries at the top of search results.
Source: UK media groups should be allowed to opt out of Google AI Overviews, CMA says
The lawsuit, filed in California federal court last Thursday (January 23), claims Meta has “willfully” infringed the copyrights of over 330 musical works – including songs by The Doors, Weezer, Styx, The Black Keys, Missy Elliott and Townes Van Zandt – after the companies’ licensing agreement expired on December 10, 2025.
Source: Wixen files $50m copyright suit against Meta, claims tech giant wants to replace songwriters with AI
A group of YouTubers who are suing tech giants for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to their list of defendants. The plaintiffs — internet content creators behind a trio of YouTube channels with roughly 6.2 million collective subscribers — allege that Snap has trained its AI systems on their video content for use in AI features.
Source: YouTubers sue Snap for alleged copyright infringement in training its AI models | TechCrunch
A.G. Sulzberger argues journalism can survive AI—if facts can still be owned. At Stanford, the NYT publisher made the case against Silicon Valley. His message was direct. The New York Times sees itself as infrastructure. Its reporting underwrites trust across politics, markets, and public life. That work costs money, produces intellectual property, and deserves protection.
Source: NY Times Publisher: AI Is Using Our Reporting Without Paying For It
As studios and agencies begin quietly modeling what AI means for long-term franchises and aging stars, Pitt represents a category that executives increasingly focus on: globally recognizable talent whose commercial value extends beyond peak physical performance. In other words, stars whose brand will outlive their on-screen output.
Source: Brad Pitt and the Economics of the Digital Double — AI In Hollywood
On Friday, a class action lawsuit filed against NVIDIA back in 2024 by several authors who claimed the company’s AI models were illegally trained on their works was amended, vastly expanding the scope of the litigation. The amended lawsuit now includes more books, authors, and infringing AI models, as well as claims involving the controversial “shadow library” Anna’s Archive.
The complaint describes Anna’s Archive as formerly known as the “Pirate Library Mirror” and accuses it of “brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings.” According to court documents, on January 2, the record labels obtained an emergency temporary restraining order, and on January 20, Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a preliminary injunction after Anna’s Archive failed to appear at a hearing or file any response to the court.
Major book publishers Hachette Book Group and Cengage Group filed a motion Thursday to intervene in an existing class action lawsuit filed last year against Google, accusing the tech giant of orchestrating “historic copyright infringement” to build its Gemini platform. The complaint alleges Google “chose to steal a massive body of content from Plaintiffs and the Class to train its AI model” rather than obtain proper licenses, engaging in deliberate infringement “at every stage” of development.
Source: Book Publishers Seek Entry Into Google AI Copyright Fight – Decrypt
Cloudflare is acquiring artificial intelligence data marketplace Human Native, the company said Thursday, as it expands its push to develop transactions between AI developers and content creators. “Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a release announcing the news.
Source: Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native
As part of its 25th birthday celebration, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of new partnerships with AI tech companies that are now customers of its commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise allows large-scale reuse and distribution of Wikipedia content, as well as content from other Wikimedia projects.