Rights

Creative bodies press EC on regulation of AI and copyright

A group of organisations representing musicians, authors, visual artists, filmmakers and other creatives have written to the EC’s executive vice-president Henna Virkkunen and commissioner Glenn Micallef to reiterate their key lobbying points on AI. The letter outlines some of the gaps they see in current legislation – for example the ability for rightsholders to reserve their rights when it comes to AI training – and calls for further steps beyond this year’s EU AI Act.

Source: Creative bodies press EC on regulation of AI and copyright

Aptos co-founder: AI training consent a ‘perfect use case’ for blockchain 

Giving artificial intelligence models consent to use content for training is a “perfect use case” for blockchain technology, according to Avery Ching, co-founder and chief technology officer of Aptos. He highlighted the potential for blockchain to provide clear consent mechanisms for determining whether specific content can be used for AI training.

Source: AI training consent a ‘perfect use case’ for blockchain — Aptos co-founder

Amazon eyes news partners for revamped AI Alexa voice assistant

Amazon is reaching out to news publishers about opportunities to license their content for the next generation of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, slated to debut next year, Axios has learned. The company plans to debut a new, smarter version of Alexa, using generative AI to power customized responses to real-time user queries about the news.

Source: Amazon eyes news partners for revamped AI Alexa voice assistant

Musical AI and Beatoven.ai to launch ‘first fully licensed’ AI music generator

Musical AI and Beatoven.ai’s collaborative project, set to launch in the second half of 2025, aims to “ensure rights holders are compensated for every use of their repertoire.” The platform will be built on Beatoven.ai’s technology, training on a catalog of over3 million songs, loops, samples, and sounds. Musical AI will provide data licensing, attribution of generated outputs, and payments to rightsholders.

Source: Musical AI and Beatoven.ai to jointly launch what they claim to be the ‘first fully licensed’ AI music generator

Are Spotify’s changes to third-party developer access meant to combat AI scraping?

Spotify has limited third-party developers’ access to its internal data, sparking speculation that the move is meant to prevent user and music data from being used to train AI models. In a Spotify for Developers blog post, the streaming service announced that third-party developers will no longer be able to access certain kinds of data from Spotify.

Source: Are Spotify’s changes to third-party developer access meant to combat AI scraping?

GoldState Music Reportedly Buys $200 Million Worth of Music IP

Nearly three-year-old GoldState just recently confirmed the sizable song-rights purchases (but not the exact value thereof) via its website. Said website also bills Create Music Group as part of GoldState’s growth portfolio; Flexpoint and Goldstuck injected $165 million into Create over the summer, but the corresponding announcement didn’t mention GoldState by name.

Source: GoldState Music Reportedly Buys $200 Million Worth of Music IP

OpenAI sued by Canada’s biggest media outlets

A host of Canadian media companies filed a lawsuit against OpenAI today, alleging “inappropriate and illegal” use of their journalism to power the company’s GPT model, Reuters reports. It’s the latest salvo fired by the media in its fight against AI companies that have scraped large swaths of the open web to train their large-language models.

Source: OpenAI sued by Canada’s biggest media outlets

UMG: Fred Durst’s $200m lawsuit over alleged unpaid royalties is ‘based on a fallacy’ 

Durst and Limp Bizkit sued UMG last month, claiming that the major music company “designed and implemented royalty software and systems that were deliberately designed to conceal artists’ (including Plaintiffs’) royalties and keep those profits for itself.” In a motion to dismiss filed in California on Friday (November 22), UMG writes that Durst et al.’s “complaint is based on a fallacy” and “should be dismissed with prejudice”.

Source: Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit’s $200m lawsuit over alleged unpaid royalties is ‘based on a fallacy’ says Universal Music, in motion to dismiss

The Art of Attribution and Three Unlikely Theories of AI Authorship

The oral arguments in Thaler explored the contours of “traditional authorship” through two illuminating hypotheticals posed by Judge Millett: the Kodak camera and the printer malfunction. These examples help map a spectrum of human involvement in creative works and highlight the challenges in placing AI-generated works within existing doctrine.

Source: The Art of Attribution and Three Unlikely Theories of AI Authorship

Hollywood unions are facing an uphill battle against Trump, AI and the slowdown

SAG-AFTRA and the video game companies are resuming contract negotiations for the first time since video game actors went on strike. SAG-AFTRA is seeking a contract that will require game developers to obtain informed consent and compensate video game performers when using the technology to digitally replicate their voices, movements or likenesses.

Source: Hollywood unions are facing an uphill battle against Trump, AI and the slowdown

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