Technology

AI bots bombard publisher websites with ‘no meaningful value exchange’

Chris Dicker, chief executive of Candr Media Group and board member of the Independent Publishers Alliance, said that the publisher’s Trusted Reviews website was taken down multiple times on 16 August when it was scraped 1.6 million times in a day. This was up from a previous record of 1.2 million scrapes on the site a day earlier. He said the average level of AI scraping for Trusted Reviews is running at between approximately 70,000 and 100,000 times a day.

Source: AI bots bombard publisher websites with ‘no meaningful value exchange’

Reese Witherspoon Says Women Need to Be Involved in AI: It’s the ‘Future of Filmmaking’

Speaking to Glamour magazine to promote the upcoming fourth season of her Apple TV+ series “The Morning Show,” the Oscar winner said she has made it a priority in her career as a producer to always be “looking forward to how media is evolving and how I can help be part of bringing women along in those emerging industries. And now we’re doing it with AI.”

Source: Reese Witherspoon Says Women Need to Be ‘Involved in AI’ Because It’s the ‘Future of Filmmaking’: ‘You Can Lament It All You Want, but the Change Is Here’

Google is training its AI tools on YouTube videos. These creators aren’t happy

YouTube’s parent company, Google, is using a subset of the platform’s videos to train AI applications, including its text-to-video tool Veo. That includes videos made by users who have built their livelihoods on the service, helping turn it into the biggest streaming entertainment provider in the U.S. The move has sparked deep tensions between the world’s biggest online video company and some of the creators who helped make it a behemoth.

Source: Google is training its AI tools on YouTube videos. These creators aren’t happy

The new Hollywood: Runway’s AI models edge closer to simulating reality

When Runway ML started in 2018, the company’s founders envisioned using AI to aid in the creation of art. The company’s AI models were among the first to generate synthetic video for movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once. But as Runway’s models have improved, they’ve begun to do something unexpected: model the laws of physics simply by observing two-dimensional video.

Source: The new Hollywood: Runway’s AI models edge closer to simulating reality

The EU Is Trying to Build Guardrails on AI. Experts Say It Hasn’t Gone Far Enough

The “tsunami” of AI use cases and the risks for creators and copyright protections that it brings with it were in the spotlight at the CineLink industry section of the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival on Thursday. “Everybody’s using AI, and I’m wondering how much this AI super brain is giving directions on creativity.”

Source: The European Union Is Trying to Build Guardrails on AI. Experts Say It Hasn’t Gone Far Enough

Fraudsters Are Releasing AI Music Under Real Musicians’ Names

Usually when AI-generated music rears its head, it usually appears under fake names, or tries to imitate major artists but without actually appearing on their official channels. However, there’s a steadily growing trend of established (but notably not “superstar”) artists being targeted by fake music appearing on their official streaming pages. Even artists who have long since passed away are suddenly having “new” material, generated by AI, appearing on their catalogs.

Source: Fraudsters Are Releasing AI Music Under Real Musicians’ Names

Will AI make language dubbing easy for film and TV?

The audio and video of a recent film, Watch the Skies, a Swedish sci-fi film, was fed into a digital tool called DeepEditor. It manipulates the video to make it look like actors are genuinely speaking the language the film is made into. The English version of Watch The Skies was released in 110 AMC Theatres across the US in May. “To contextualise this result, if the film were not dubbed into English, the film would never have made it into US cinemas in the first place,” says Mr Cottray.

Source: Will AI make language dubbing easy for film and TV?

Publishers issue warning on AI-created books imitating sports autobiographies

Sky News has spent months tracking apparent AI recreations, particularly sports books, that have been sold on Amazon as Kindle e-books, as well as printed versions. “AI created books are an increasing problem for us,” Publishers Association chief executive Dan Conway told Sky News. “It is incredibly easy using these new, amazing tools to create content.

Source: Publishers issue warning on AI-created books imitating sports autobiographies

Cornell Researchers Develop Light-Based Watermark

Cornell’s latest innovation introduces a method to watermark video with imperceptible codes hidden in light sources used during recording. Developed by graduate student Peter Michael and conceptualized by assistant professor Abe Davis, the technique embeds unique, nearly invisible fluctuations in the lighting on-set. These minute variations can’t be seen by the human eye but are recognized by forensic analysis tools once the footage is recorded.

Source: Cornell Researchers Develop Light-Based Watermark

Meta Acquires WaveForms to Boost AI Audio Capabilities

Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms to advance emotional voice synthesis and integrate tech into Superintelligence Labs. WaveForms’ main focus is the ‘Speech Turing Test,’ a challenge to create AI-generated speech that is indistinguishable from human voices. The platform incorporates what it calls ‘emotional general intelligence’—software designed to replicate the emotional nuance of human speech within generated speech.

Source: Meta Acquires WaveForms to Boost AI Audio Capabilities

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