A recently published research paper co-authored by Boaz Barak, a scientist on OpenAI’s Superalignment team, proposes a framework to compensate copyright owners “proportionally to their contributions to the creation of AI-generated content.” How? Through cooperative game theory.
Source: This Week in AI: Generative AI and the problem of compensating creators | TechCrunch
It has never been resolved what exactly IP means in such a context, nor to what extent NFT projects can bestow IP rights onto their holders. Those unanswered questions bubbled back to the surface this week, when Yuga Labs—the multi-billion dollar company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club—announced that it planned to bestow exclusive commercial rights onto holders of Moonbirds.
Source: Moonbirds Copyright Controversy Exposes Flaws in Crypto’s IP Obsession – Decrypt
A group of newspapers is suing OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of effectively stealing—and profiting from—journalists’ work. This could well be an existential legal fight. Some of Silicon Valley’s tech barons are openly hostile to journalism, dreaming of the day when it can be “disrupted” or rendered obsolete. To do so, however, they may have to get through copyright law first.
SAG-AFTRA will license Nielsen‘s streaming content data, which the union will to enforce the terms of its 2023 contract with Hollywood studios. Under the deal for Nielsen’s Streaming Content Ratings, SAG-AFTRA will have “an objective source of domestic viewership data for original streaming programming,” the parties announced.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Will Use Nielsen Data as Part of Enforcing Studio Pact on Streaming Content
Today’s big news: Universal Music Group and TikTok, by way of a joint announcement, have confirmed that they have struck a new licensing deal – three months after UMG pulled its recordings catalog from the service. What does this new deal mean for UMG and its artists and songwriters? Standout headline: More money. Reminder: according to Universal, TikTok’s royalty payouts to UMG prior to this new deal constituted just 1% of UMG’s total revenues.
The report calls for the UK to pass new laws that would protect artists’ personalities from being copied by AI without permission; mandate transparent labelling of AI-generated content; and require AI developers to gain permission from copyright holders to use their materials for training, among other things.
Source: UK lawmakers call for AI legislation to protect artists from deepfakes, copyright infringement
While the newspapers’ publishers have spent billions of dollars to send “real people to real places to report on real events in the real world,” the two tech firms are “purloining” the papers’ reporting without compensation “to create products that provide news and information plagiarized and stolen,” according to the lawsuit in federal court.
Source: Mercury News and other papers sue Microsoft, OpenAI over the new artificial intelligence
Google has been hit with a new copyright lawsuit in California federal court by a group of visual artists who claimed the Alphabet opens new tab unit used their work without permission to train Imagen, its artificial-intelligence powered image generator. The case is one of many potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta over the data used to train their generative AI systems.
Earlier this month, US publishing body the NMPA lobbed some brickbats at Spotify over its new music and audiobooks bundle, which (under the current US royalty rates agreement) would generate lower mechanical royalties for publishers. Now another body, the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) has backed the NMPA’s stance.
Source: Indie publishing body AIMP criticises Spotify bundle strategy
The Financial Times has struck a deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI that allows its content to be used in training artificial intelligence systems. The FT will receive an undisclosed payment as part of the deal, which is the latest to be agreed between OpenAI and news publishers.
Source: OpenAI to use FT journalism to train artificial intelligence systems