The full array of patents extends beyond music to audio, video, film, animation, images, and text, as well as applications involving name and likeness, according to MIH. Digital services can license them through an online platform that MIH said is designed for widespread adoption. Meanwhile, UMG, its affiliates, artists and songwriters – plus other participating rightsholders – will be able to use the portfolio to protect their works against unlicensed and unauthorized generative AI uses.
Source: UMG-backed Music IP Holdings unveils AI music patent portfolio
In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Dre and Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine spoke about artificial intelligence’s recent foray into music production, with the producer characterizing those who oppose AI song generation tools as “afraid of learning new things.” “I don’t see it as a threat. I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating,” Dr. Dre said.
When an artificial intelligence image generator produces a portrait, whose work went into it? The question sits at the center of lawsuits, licensing deals, and proposed regulations worldwide. Artists want credit. Companies want clarity. Policymakers want a way to assign responsibility. New work from a team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) suggests that for models trained on large datasets, the question may often have no answer.
Shortly after scoring a multimillion-dollar book deal for a debut author, the novelist’s agents pulled the plug. They couldn’t verify that the book had been wholly written by their client. The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. But nobody can seem to agree who exactly is responsible for solving this problem, or even how much a problem it actually is.
According to Gallup, seven in 10 Americans now say they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, up from 64% in 2024. But as familiarity has grown, so has skepticism. More Americans now believe AI does more harm than good, expect it to reduce the number of U.S. jobs over the next decade, and are less likely to trust businesses to use the technology responsibly.
“Everybody’s on their phone at my program!” jokes Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia. He’s just asked his audience to pull out their phones so that he can walk them through the steps of disabling Apple Intelligence and Gemini. “I was inspired by the feeling of people’s frustration with AI tools being kind of forced onto them, and feeling like AI tools we didn’t ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives,” Bailey told TechCrunch.
Although few places are better than Hollywood at crafting a narrative and concealing what happens off-frame, a Los Angeles Times survey of job postings sheds light on what is happening offstage. Among hundreds of job postings in late June, more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The top studios’ public postings suggest they have been recruiting people to build AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use.
