Technology

It’s not that artificial intelligence will fundamentally replace human artists. It’s that AI will lower the barrier to entry in terms of skill, and give the world access to more creative minds because of what can be easily achievable using digital tools. Art will still require a human vision, however, the way that vision is executed will become easier, more convenient, less taxing, and so on.

Source: Will the next Mozart or Picasso come from artificial intelligence? No, but here’s what might happen instead

Stephen Phillips, CEO of Australian startup Popgun, thinks that the early business models in this sector – AI-music as a replacement for production music, for example – are just a sliver of the ultimate potential for this technology. “There isn’t this place in the world where teenagers come together to make music for each other. That place does not exist, and that’s nuts!”

Source: What’s the real end-game for AI music? Popgun’s CEO has some ideas…

Artists have long been used to work being copied and passed off as somebody else’s, but this situation is a much more programmatic nuisance to bear. Select a bunch of popular artists, feed their streams as a source of data for bots designed to extract imagery, and then feed this data to open-source platforms where the image is used as a template for made on-demand merch.

Source: Artists are fighting back against bots who are stealing their work to sell

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing to strip out sweeping legal protections for online content in the new trade pact with Mexico and Canada, in what would be a blow for big technology companies. Internet firms lobbied hard to include the immunity language in the trade agreement, seeing it as a way to extend to Mexico and Canada the broad umbrella of legal protection they enjoy in the U.S.

Source: WSJ News Exclusive | Nancy Pelosi Pushes to Remove Legal Protections for Online Content in Trade Pact

When most people think about the potential legal issues around AI-created music, they tend to think about the output – the music itself, and questions like whether an AI-generated track can attract copyright protection. Sophie Goossens, counsel at law firm Reed Smith, thinks that just as much attention should be paid to the input.

Source: We need to talk more about the legal issues around training musical AIs

The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has been lobbying for all states to implement protections on the use of images of celebrities after they die. “I think that’s a concern for the actor’s union, that this could be abused – though it hasn’t yet – in a way that would replace rehiring actors,” says Rothman. “And that’s concerning for the living.”

Source: The messy legal scrap to bring celebrities back from the dead

The robots aren’t taking over journalism jobs, but newsroom should adapt artificial intelligence technologies and accept that the way news is produced and consumed is changing, according to a new report by Polis, the media think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Source: Artificial intelligence won’t kill journalism or save it, but the sooner newsrooms buy in, the better

The company recently announced an agreement with cartoon and comics publishing syndicate Andrews McMeel Universal, which will use ImageRights’ search and copyright enforcement services to protect AMU-licensed comics and cartoon materials. AMU publishes and syndicates such comic strips as Peanuts, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes.

Source: ImageRights Uses AI to Fight Copyright Infringement

Spotify is testing a new feature in its mobile app within select markets that provides real-time lyrics in sync with the music it is playing. The feature, which is powered by Musixmatch, scrolls a song’s lyrics in time with the music. The company is testing it in select, yet unnamed international markets, which are said to include Canada, Mexico and Indonesia.

Source: Spotify Is Actively Testing Realtime Lyrics in Certain Markets

Mainstream media outlets have already jumped on the blockchain bandwagon. Under its News Provenance Project,  The New York Times is using Hyperledger Fabric permissioned blockchain to guarantee the provenance of digital files, starting first with image and video files.  Through Civil, a blockchain journalism network, Forbes is publishing stories on the blockchain, where the information cannot be altered by third parties.

Source: Can Blockchain Save Media?