Technology

One company’s devious plan to stop AI web scrapers from stealing your content

Cloudflare, a global network service that helps some of the biggest websites in the world deliver content to users, has devised a new plan to deal with AI companies’ web scrapers. And the idea is as positively devious as it is ingenious. Basically, bots that don’t follow the rules laid out for them via protocols such as robots.txt, a simple text file that lays out what web crawlers are allowed to do on a site, will be messed with in order to waste the time and resources of the company in charge of the bot.

Source: One company’s devious plan to stop AI web scrapers from stealing your content

Independent launching AI-powered news service for ‘time-poor audiences’

The Independent is to launch a news service which it said will use Google AI tools to summarise its journalism for “time-poor audiences”. The publisher says all content written for the service, named Bulletin, will be “reviewed and checked” by journalists before publication and seven people have been hired to staff it. The service will use Google‘s Gemini AI model to re-write the Independent’s own articles, the publisher said, alongside its own “in-house data and development teams”.

Source: Independent launching AI-powered news service for ‘time-poor audiences’

400+ Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works

More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies. “We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,” the letter says in part.

Source: Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo and More Than 400 Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works

Is a Blanket Music Licensing System Ahead for GenAI?

The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), and Music Creators North America (MCNA) have released a joint statement addressing request for comments on the proposed AI Action Plan by the Trump administration. Together, they propose a legislative solution that would include establishing sui generis rights for music creators to control the use of their works on generative AI platforms.

Source: Is a Blanket Music Licensing System Ahead for GenAI?

US Appeals Court Rejects Copyrights for AI-Generated Art Lacking ‘Human’ Creator

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler’s AI system “DABUS” was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted.

Source: US Appeals Court Rejects Copyrights for AI-Generated Art Lacking ‘Human’ Creator

Performing arts leaders issue copyright warning over UK government’s AI plans

More than 30 performing arts leaders in the UK, including the bosses of the National Theatre, Opera North and the Royal Albert Hall, have joined the chorus of creative industry concern about the government’s plans to let artificial intelligence companies use artists’ work without permission. They also urged the government to support the “moral and economic rights” of the creative community in music, dance, drama and opera.

Source: Performing arts leaders issue copyright warning over UK government’s AI plans

AI: Publishers Warn of ‘a Bloated Fair-Use Defense’ and ‘Unworkable Opt-Out Regime’

On London Book Fair’s opening day, Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said the AAP would be filing its response imminently in response to the Trump administration’s call for public input. And in the same session, Dan Conway,  CEO of the UK’s Publishers Association, told us that there’s no result known as yet from the consultation period, nor a sense for how long an outcome may be in coming.

Source: AI: Publishers Warn White House of ‘a Bloated Fair-Use Defense’ and an ‘Unworkable Opt-Out Regime’

Publishers Adopt AI Tools to Bolster Research Integrity

The $19 billion academic publishing industry is adopting AI-powered tools to improve the quality of peer-reviewed research and speed up production. The latter goal yields “obvious financial benefit” for publishers, one expert said. Since the start of the year, Wiley, Elsevier and Springer Nature have all announced the adoption of generative AI–powered tools or guidelines, including those designed to aid scientists in research, writing and peer review

Source: Publishers Adopt AI Tools to Bolster Research Integrity

OpenAI urges U.S. to allow AI models to train on copyrighted material

OpenAI is asking the U.S. government to make it easier for AI companies to learn from copyrighted material, citing a need to “strengthen America’s lead” globally in advancing the technology. The proposal is part of a wider plan that the tech company behind ChatGPT submitted to the U.S. government on Thursday as part of President Donald Trump’s coming “AI Action Plan.”

Source: OpenAI urges U.S. to allow AI models to train on copyrighted material

People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images

People appear to be using Google’s new Gemini model to remove watermarks from images, according to reports on social media. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit image content. It’s a powerful capability, by all accounts. But it also appears to have few guardrails.

Source: People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images | TechCrunch

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