Independent songwriters and composers have heard this song before; Bloomberg reports that major multi-national record labels are engaged in closed-door meetings with yet another group of tech companies over AI negotiations and copyright infringement liability. Unsurprisingly, independent music creators may as well be invisible in these discussions.
Source: Indie Songwriters Bristling Over Major Label AI Negotiations
The AI armageddon is here for online news publishers. Chatbots are replacing Google searches, eliminating the need to click on blue links and tanking referrals to news sites. As a result, traffic that publishers relied on for years is plummeting. Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at the Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb.
Source: News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools
Youtube channels are using AI to steal words and photographs from paywalled news content and reproduce articles wholesale without the consent of publishers. The practice has been highlighted by freelance journalist Rob McGibbon after a first-person account of his estrangement from his late father written for the Daily Mail was lifted wholesale and reproduced by the Youtube Channel: “The World News.”
Source: Google ‘handling stolen goods’ with Youtube theft of paywalled news articles
Fraudsters are flooding Spotify, Apple Music and the rest with AI-generated tracks, to try and hoover up the royalties generated by people listening to them. These tracks are cheap, quick and easy to make, with Deezer estimating in April that over 20,000 fully AI-created tracks – that’s 18% of new tracks – were being ingested into its platform daily, almost double the number in January.
Source: AI, bot farms and innocent indie victims: how music streaming became a hotbed of fraud and fakery
Last month, Google announced SynthID Detector, a new tool to detect AI-generated content. Google claims it can identify AI-generated content in text, image, video or audio. But there are some caveats. The main catch is that SynthID primarily works for content that’s been generated using a Google AI service. If you try to use Google’s AI detector tool to see if something you’ve generated using ChatGPT is flagged, it won’t work.
Before the proliferation of A.I. music generators, before the emergence of Spotify and the advent of the iPod, before Brian Eno had even coined the term “generative music,” Mr. Cope had already figured out how to program a computer to write classical music. It was 1981 and, struggling with writer’s block after being commissioned to compose an opera, he was desperate for a compositional partner. He found one in a floppy disk.
Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music are in talks with Udio and Suno to license their music to the artificial intelligence startups, Billboard has confirmed, in deals that could help settle blockbuster lawsuits over AI music. A year after the labels filed billion-dollar copyright cases against Udio and Suno, all three majors are discussing deals in which they would collect fees and receive equity in return for allowing the startups to use music to train their AI models.
Source: Major Labels in Licensing Talks With A.I. Companies Suno & Udio Amid Blockbuster Lawsuit
The major music companies are reportedly in licensing talks with controversial AI music generators Udio and Suno. That’s according to Bloomberg, which reported on Sunday (June 1), citing people familiar with the discussions, that Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment are seeking license fees from the platforms plus “a small amount” of equity in both Suno and Udio.
Source: Labels in licensing talks with AI music generators Suno and Udio (report)
Netflix chairman Reed Hastings joined the board of directors of Anthropic, an AI company whose backers include Amazon. “Anthropic is very optimistic about the AI benefits for humanity, but is also very aware of the economic, social and safety challenges,” Hastings said in a statement. “I’m joining Anthropic’s board because I believe in their approach to AI development, and to help humanity progress.”
Source: Netflix’s Reed Hastings Joins Board of AI Company Anthropic, a Rival to OpenAI
Buried in the Republican budget bill is a proposal that will radically change how artificial intelligence develops in the U.S., according to both its supporters and critics. The provision would ban states from regulating AI for the next decade. Opponents say the moratorium is so broadly written that states wouldn’t be able to enact protections for consumers affected by harmful applications of AI, like discriminatory employment tools, deepfakes, and addictive chatbots.
Source: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act would ban states from regulating AI