Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the world is three to five years away from “artificial general intelligence” that will be equal to, if not better, than any human thinkers or creators today. It’s a prediction that, if true, could have tremendous consequences for music and other creative industries. “What happens when every single one of us has the equivalent of the smartest human [working] on every problem in our pocket?” he asked.
Technology
Pex acquired by copyright protection and content monetization company Vobile
Los Angeles-based Pex, an audio content identification platform, has been acquired. Pex’s new owner is a company called Vobile, which offers digital content protection and transaction services for entertainment companies, platforms, sports leagues, music labels, and publishers. Vobile has confirmed that Pex COO Amadea Choplin has joined the company as Head of Music Business, while founder Rasty Turek, formerly CEO, will act as a consultant to Vobile going forward.
Source: Pex acquired by copyright protection and content monetization company Vobile
The real argument artists should be making against AI
The strongest argument artists can make is that the unfettered advance of AI technologies that experts can neither understand nor control won’t greatly benefit humanity on balance — it’ll harm us. And for that reason, forcing artists to be complicit in the creation of those technologies is inflicting something terrible on them: moral injury. Moral injury is what happens when you feel you’ve been forced to violate your own values.
Source: The real argument artists should be making against AI
BBC study revealing scale of AI-generated news inaccuracies is ‘crucial checkpoint’
The BBC’s recent study into AI-generated news summaries is a sobering reminder of the potential and profound limitations of generative AI. While artificial intelligence is often lauded as the inevitable next step in media evolution, the findings from this trial expose a more unsettling truth: AI, in its current form, is incapable of reliably processing and presenting accurate news.
Deepfake Detection Startup Loti AI Secures Additional $16.2 Million in Series A Funding
Deepfake detection and takedown service Loti AI has secured an additional $16.2 million in series A funding led by Khosla Ventures with additional investments from FUSE, Bling Capital, and Ensemble. This brings the startup’s total raised to date to $23 million. Loti AI is working to drive development and market expansion of its likeness protection technology, which initially launched for public figures and celebrities.
Source: Deepfake Detection Startup Loti AI Secures Additional $16.2 Million in Series A Funding
‘Catastrophic overtraining’ could harm large language AI models
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton are challenging one of AI development’s accepted core beliefs – that the more pre-training data the better the performance. As reported by HPCwire, a new paper discuses the concept of “catastrophic overtraining,” whereby extended pre-training can harm a model’s performance after fine-tuning.
Eternal Celebrities: The Multi-Billion Opportunity Coming
Late last month, Hollo, a conversational AI company, and Realbotix, which makes customizable humanoid robots, unveiled a version of the late actress. This synthetic twin is designed to mimic Suzanne Somers’ voice, personality and facial expressions. It’s loaded with a database of her performances. Alan Hamel, her widower and partner in buying and popularizing ThighMaster, claimed that they discussed this kind of idea before her death.
Source: Eternal Celebrities: The Multi-Billion Opportunity Coming
IETF building tech to tell AI scrapers what authors want
The Internet Engineering Task Force has chartered a group it hopes will create a standard that lets content creators tell AI developers whether it’s OK to use their work. Named the AI Preferences Working Group (AIPREF), the AIPREF charter suggests “attaching preferences to content either by including preferences in content metadata or by signaling preferences using the protocol that delivers content” as the ways to get this done.
Source: IETF building tech to tell AI scrapers what authors want
Europe unveils plan to become ‘AI continent’ with simpler rules, more infrastructure
Among the ways Europe plans to bolster regional AI developments are a commitment to build a network of AI factories and “gigafactories” and create specialized labs designed to improve the access of startups to high-quality training data. The bloc will also create a new AI Act Service Desk to help regional firms comply with its landmark AI law.
Source: Europe unveils plan to become ‘AI continent’ with simpler rules, more infrastructure
Google’s enterprise cloud gets a music-generating AI model
Lyria, Google’s text-to-music model, is now available in preview for select customers, and the company’s Veo 2 video creation model has been enhanced with new editing and visual effects customization options. The company has also launched a voice-cloning feature powered by Chirp 3, Google’s audio understanding model, for “allow-listed” users.
Source: Google’s enterprise cloud gets a music-generating AI model | TechCrunch