The National Association of Broadcasters President has pushed back against the idea of recording performance royalties for radio. LeGeyt argues that the AMFA could place financial strain on local radio stations, especially as global digital competitors with consumer subscriptions to cover royalty expenses continue to draw attention away from radio.
Source: NAB President Pushes Back on Recording Performance Royalties
OpenAI and Microsoft have been sued by another news organization for using articles to train its artificial intelligence systems, this time by the Center for Investigative Reporting. In a lawsuit filed in New York district court, the nonprofit newsroom, which produces Mother Jones and Reveal, alleges the Sam Altman-led firm “copied, used, abridged, and displayed” the Center for Investigative Reporting’s content without consent or compensation.
Source: OpenAI Sued by Center for Investigative Reporting as Media Takes Diverging Paths on Tech Giant
Vox Media’s president, Pam Wasserstein, sent her staff a Slack message and an email on May 29 detailing what the company’s journalists say was shocking news: Vox had signed a content licensing deal with OpenAI. The deal gives the AI company access to Vox’s current content, as well as the entire archive of its journalistic work. Wasserstein sent the alerts just moments before Axios published an exclusive detailing the licensing and product deal, much to the surprise of her journalists.
Source: ‘What’s in it for us?’ journalists ask as publications sign content deals with AI firms | TechCrunch
Suno CEO Mikey Shulman has issued a statement, accusing the plaintiffs of resorting to outdated legal tactics. “Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music. Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists,” Shulman said in a statement obtained by MBW.
Among AI music generators capable of creating entire songs with just a prompt, Suno and Udio are considered by many to be among the best. They are also considered by many to have used copyrighted music to train their AI models, without authorization. Now, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is coordinating lawsuits on behalf of major recording companies against the two AI companies.
Source: Major record companies sue AI music generators Suno, Udio for ‘mass infringement’ of copyright
Reps. Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff, both Democrats from California and members of the House Judiciary Committee, along with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee sent a letter to U.S. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter last week raising “serious questions” as to whether Spotify is abusing the collective licensing system for mechanical rights by bundling its previously standalone audiobook service into its premium music subscription tier. The bundling arrangement has the effect of lowering the royalty rate Spotify pays to music publishers and songwriters under the terms of the most recent rate-setting agreement adopted by the Copyright Royalty Board.
Queen’s music catalog is among the most valuable of the rock era — with classics like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Radio Ga Ga,” “39,” “Somebody to Love” and “You’re My Best Friend” as well as the perennial stadium-shakers “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” the songs are globally popular and enormously lucrative. One other player was said to be very close in the bidding, but stopped short at $900 million.
Source: Queen Catalog to Be Acquired by Sony Music for £1 Billion
Last week, AI startup Luma posted a series of videos created using its new video-generating tool Dream Machine, which the company describes as a “highly scalable and efficient transformer model trained directly on videos.” The only problem? At about 57 seconds in, the Dream Machine-generated trailer for Monster Camp features a slightly AI-smudged but still recognizable Mike Wazowski from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.
Source: An AI video tool just launched, and it’s already copying Disney’s IP
AppleInsider has learned that the company plans to label AI-generated imagery through image metadata, also known as EXIF data. This means that AI-generated images created through Image Playground would be clearly marked through that metadata. The image source, which typically displays the name and brand of the camera used to take a picture, will display “Apple Image Playground,” serving as a clear indication that the image was created by AI.
Source: How Apple plans to label AI-generated images made through its new Image Playground app
To create powerful AI models, you need mountains of good data. Amazon is going to great lengths to collect this type of valuable information. The company recently told employees to sign up for Microsoft’s GitHub software-development platform and share their accounts so Amazon can scrape data from GitHub more quickly, Business Insider has learned. This is a key step in Amazon’s efforts to train its upcoming in-house AI model.
Source: Amazon’s secret GitHub data grab