An actress accused the director James Cameron of stealing her likeness to create an “Avatar” character in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California — a case that reflects a core fear among Hollywood performers in the artificial intelligence age: losing control of their own faces. The actress, Q’orianka Kilcher, also sued Disney, which controls the multibillion-dollar “Avatar” franchise, which started in 2009.
Source: ‘Avatar’ Suit Focuses on Hot Topic in A.I. Age: A Character’s Face
A coalition of 81 cultural and media organizations in France — spanning the music, film, publishing, and press industries — has called on the country’s National Assembly to schedule debate on a bill that would create a legal presumption that AI providers use copyrighted content. The bill was adopted unanimously by the French Senate last month. It has since been transmitted to the National Assembly, but has not yet been placed on the legislative agenda, a step the coalition says is now urgent.
Source: Bill in France would force AI firms to prove they didn’t use copyrighted content to train models
Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama
Source: Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
A group of ten music industry organizations formally opposed a proposed 43% average increase to copyright registration fees, arguing the hike would lock out independent creators out of the registration system. The filing was in response to the Copyright Office’s proposed fee schedule published in March 2026. The proposal reflects historic inflation since the last fee study in 2020 and projected inflation over the next three years, the Copyright Office said.
Source: The US Copyright Office is hiking registration fees by 43%.
For now, most established collecting societies are not representing GenAI-music creators, amid concerns over the training models of the platforms that they use – and also questions about whether their work even qualifies for copyright protection. A new organization called Aimpro is hoping to fill the gap, pitching itself as “the first PRO designed to serve creators of generative AI works, allowing AI music creators to collect royalties for their work on a global basis”.
Source: There’s now a collecting society just for AI-generated music
Udio is doubling down on its longstanding fair use arguments and defending its training-related ingestion of audio data from YouTube. “Udio admits that it obtained audio data from YouTube for use as training data,” the text reads, proceeding to elaborate that Udio “acquired some of its training data by utilizing YT-DLP,” which is reportedly a stream-ripping platform. With that, the stream-ripping sub-dispute is out in the open – with serious implications for the lengthy list of complaints against AI developers.
Source: Sony Music v. Udio Legal Battle Heats Up; AI Music Generator Admits to Obtaining Data from YouTube
The feature is currently limited to US desktop users of YouTube Studio. A global launch and rollout to Studio mobile are planned for later this year. Rather than having to remove or re-edit videos that have triggered copyright claims, creators will now have the option to swap out the offending audio for an AI-generated, royalty-free alternative — keeping the video live and potentially restoring its ability to be monetized.
Source: YouTube creators hit by music copyright claims can now replace tracks with AI
Primary Wave Music IP Fund 4 is the fourth consecutive oversubscribed fund from Primary Wave, which says the vehicle is the “largest dedicated closed-end music royalties fund raised to date in the industry”. The fund was backed by a global investor base spanning insurance companies, pension funds, endowments, and large family offices, according to a press release, which also noted that Primary Wave is a strategic partner of financial giant Brookfield Asset Management.
Source: Primary Wave raises $2.2 billion for fourth music fund
A group of independent film companies has dropped its long-running piracy liability lawsuit against U.S. Internet provider RCN. The joint stipulation, filed in a New Jersey federal court, follows the Cox Supreme Court ruling. In addition to dropping a multi-million-dollar damages claim, the requested U.S. pirate site blocking injunction is also off the table.
Source: Filmmakers Drop Piracy Liability Lawsuit Against ISP RCN
Brazil’s competition watchdog, Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE), unanimously decided Thursday to open a formal investigation into Google’s use of news content, including in its AI Overviews, without compensation to publishers. The investigation will consider whether Google’s scraping of journalistic content to feature in the ‘News’ tab and to produce AI Overviews is an anti-competitive practice and whether outlets that decide to opt-out are being penalized with less visibility.
Source: Brazil’s Competition Watchdog Opens Google Probe Over Publisher Pay