Technology

AI ‘Band’ the Velvet Sundown Officially Confirm They’re AI — and a ‘Provocation’

The AI band The Velvet Sundown, who currently have over 900,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, have officially admitted — in a new revision to their Spotify bio — what was obvious to experts and non-experts alike: their music is, in fact, AI-generated. “The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” the band bio now reads.

Source: AI ‘Band’ the Velvet Sundown Officially Confirm They’re AI — and a ‘Provocation’

Urgent bid lodged with UK regulator to stop Google AI Overviews ‘stealing journalism’

A legal complaint has been submitted to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority over the impact of Google AI Overviews on news publishers. A collaboration between tech justice non-profit Foxglove, the Independent Publishers Alliance and the campaign group Movement for an Open Web aims to “stop Google stealing the work of British journalists”.

Source: Urgent bid lodged with UK regulator to stop Google AI Overviews ‘stealing journalism’

UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

Internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare is now blocking all AI scrapers accessing content by default in an industry first. The move has been backed by more than a dozen major news and media publishers including the Associated Press, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Conde Nast, DMGT, Dotdash Meredith, Fortune, Gannett, The Independent, Sky News, Time and Ziff Davis. Cloudflare said its default setting for new domains is now to block AI crawlers that don’t have permission or provide compensation.

Source: UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping

Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relationship between website owners and AI companies — ideally giving publishers greater control over their content. It’s called Pay per Crawl, and Cloudflare is launching the “experiment” in private beta on Tuesday.

Source: Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping | TechCrunch

The AI music problem on Spotify (and other streaming platforms) is worse than you think

Outlaw country artist Aventhis is verified on Spotify – where just over a million (1.072M) listeners absorb his work each month. He’s even popular enough to have one of those official Spotify-generated ‘THIS IS… Aventhis’ playlists under his name. And his music? It’s gaining traction, with the blues-soaked, 2025-released Mercy On My Graver racking up more than 2 million plays. Aventhis isn’t real. Neither is his voice. He, and it, are both AI-generated.

Source: The AI music problem on Spotify (and other streaming platforms) is worse than you think

Hollywood Confronts AI Copyright Chaos in Washington, Courts

The battle between technology heavyweights and many of the country’s most famous creative companies and artists is playing out in Washington and in court. At stake are billions of dollars and precedents that could shape the future of AI and U.S. copyright law. While the fight is far from over, some in creative industries fear it might be too late to stop the advance of AI as it roils their professions.

Source: Hollywood Confronts AI Copyright Chaos in Washington, Courts

Udio launches AI ‘visual editing workstation’

The tool called ‘Sessions,’ available to Standard and Pro-tier subscribers, allows users to manipulate song structures by moving, extending or replacing sections within tracks.  Udio explains in a press release that Sessions automatically identifies musical elements like choruses and bridges from audio waveforms, allowing for the editing of lyrics and sound through a “visual workstation”.

Source: Udio, still battling copyright lawsuit from music majors, launches AI ‘visual editing workstation’

Authors call on publishers to limit their use of AI 

An open letter from authors calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators. The letter argues that authors’ work has been “stolen” by AI companies: “Rather than paying writers a small percentage of the money our work makes for them, someone else will be paid for a technology built on our unpaid labor.”

Source: Authors call on publishers to limit their use of AI | TechCrunch

Getty drops key copyright claims against Stability AI, but UK lawsuit continues 

Getty Images dropped its primary claims of copyright infringement against Stability AI on Wednesday at London’s High Court, narrowing one of the most closely watched legal fights over how AI companies use copyrighted content to train their models. Getty sued Stability AI — the startup behind AI image generator Stable Diffusion — in January 2023 after alleging that Stability used millions of copyrighted images to train its AI model without permission.

Source: Getty drops key copyright claims against Stability AI, but UK lawsuit continues | TechCrunch

What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits?

The use of copyrighted works to train models is at the heart of a bitter battle between tech companies and content creators. That battle is playing out in technical arguments about what does and doesn’t count as fair use of a copyrighted work. But it is ultimately about carving out a space in which human and machine creativity can continue to coexist.

Source: What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits?

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