Apple has struck a deal to license millions of images from Shutterstock in order to train its AI models. Other tech companies have obtained similar deals from Shutterstock to help develop visual AI engines, including Google, Meta, and Amazon. News of Apple’s deal comes well after its signing in late 2022, and is expected to cost Apple up to $50 million.
Source: Apple to license images from Shutterstock to train AI models
These updates are set to empower developers with unprecedented control over AI model fine-tuning, while also offering new avenues for constructing custom models tailored to specific business needs. As OpenAI states in a blog post announcing the new API updates: “We believe that in the future, the vast majority of organizations will develop customized models that are personalized to their industry, business, or use case.”
The AI books could make studying language patterns harder. 404Media reports Google Books included several books that AI could have written. The publication searched Google Books with the term “as of my last knowledge update,” a common phrase chatbots like ChatGPT use. You can search Google Books for specific sentences or terms, and it will normally send back written works with those phrases.
Source: Google Books reportedly indexing bad AI-written works
AI is high on the agenda as IATSE looks to set a new three-year contract with Hollywood’s major studios and streamers before the July 31 expiration of its current deal. Like the other unions that have struck new contracts over the past year — the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America and the American Federation of Musicians — IATSE is seeking “guardrails” on AI use.
Source: IATSE Sees Fears and Promise of Artificial Intelligence: ‘We Want the Spoils’
On Tuesday, the Artist Rights Alliance (ARA) announced an open letter critical of AI signed by over 200 musical artists, including Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, and the estate of Frank Sinatra. In the letter, the artists call on AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to stop using AI to “infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”
Source: Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, 200 artists say AI poses existential threat to their livelihoods
SpongeBob, the title cheery yellow character, appears outside his pineapple-shaped home, while Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob’s cranky boss, is at the Krusty Krab restaurant he runs. But unlike in the show, the characters in the videos aren’t singing jolly songs about life in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Instead, they’re rapping about drugs and guns.
Source: AI’s quiet creep into music punctuated by ‘SpongeBob’ voices and a secretive artist called Glorb
In this era, where AI capabilities seem boundless, human time emerges as a finite, invaluable resource. As AI assumes responsibility for routine and complex tasks alike, the focus shifts to the essence of human input — creativity, ethical reasoning, and innovation. This recalibration signifies a deeper appreciation for human attributes, underscoring the irreplaceable nature of human time and insight in a digitized world.
Source: The Intersection Of Human Creativity And AI: A Legal Renaissance
Works that humans create belong to those humans (even if they are jotted down on a napkin). Paying every creator for the rights to their work is financially infeasible for the volumes of data we need to train even a small generative AI model. So, is it fair use for us to feed other people’s work into a training data set and create generative AI models? Let’s go over the Fair Use tests and see where we land.
When an AI company doesn’t reveal its training data sources, the best chance we have of working out those sources is to use the model and see whether we can find output that resembles copyrighted material. Output that resembles copyrighted material is a strong indicator that that material was part of the training data. I, and others, have found that Suno regularly outputs music that closely resembles copyrighted material.
Stability AI has launched Stable Audio 2.0, adding key new functions to the company’s text-to-music generator. Stable Audio 2.0 features audio-to-audio generation, allowing users to manipulate any audio sample they want using text-based AI prompts. Its terms of service, however, requires that any audio uploaded to this tool is free of copyrighted material, with the tool employing a content recognition filter to ensure compliance.
Source: Stability AI Launches Stable Audio 2.0 With Audio-to-Audio Generation Feature