Spotify took its newest AI feature live today, affording access to both paid and ad-supported accounts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the streaming giant, the “hyper-personalized” multi-hour playlist “updates frequently between sunup and sundown,” even adopting a fresh title (generated from the included songs’ genres) with each iteration.
Source: Spotify Daylist Launches — A ‘Hyper-Personalized’ AI Playlist
Artists are among the many groups who will feel the effects of AI over the next few years, but it’s not doom and gloom for everyone. A group of artists have organized an open letter to Congress, arguing that generative AI isn’t so bad and, more importantly, the creative community should be included in talks about how the technology should be regulated and defined.
Source: Artists sign open letter saying generative AI is good, actually | TechCrunch
In a blog post, Microsoft chief legal officer Brad Smith said the company will take the heat for any potential legal risks as more copyright holders question how AI companies handle protected works. “If a third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, we will defend the customer and pay the amount of any adverse judgments or settlements that result from the lawsuit,” Smith wrote.
Source: Microsoft says it will take the heat if Copilot AI commercial users get sued
The leaders of the Senate judiciary’s subcommittee for privacy, technology and law said in interviews on Thursday that their framework will include requirements for the licensing and auditing of A.I., the creation of an independent federal office to oversee the technology, liability for companies for privacy and civil rights violations, and requirements for data transparency and safety standards.
Source: 2 Senators Propose Bipartisan Framework for A.I. Laws
A radio station made history this summer by becoming the first in the country to use an AI DJ for an entire shift. “AI Ashley” first appeared in June on Live 95.5 in Oregon, and used an artificially generated version of the voice of Ashley Elzinga, a human host based in Michigan, with her consent. At a recent radio conference in Dallas, Texas, many expressed skepticism about the presence of AI in their industry.
Source: Radio broadcasters sound off on artificial intelligence
Debate is heating up again in the UK over whether AI developers should be given an ‘exemption’ to train their models on copyrighted material. Now the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee – the same group of politicians that held inquiries into music-streaming economics and misogyny in the music – has published a report focusing on AI’s implications for the creative industries.
Source: Pressure mounts in the UK over potential AI-training exemption – Music Ally
The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject. The Copyright Office says that “over the past several years, the Office has begun to receive applications to register works containing AI-generated material.” It may use the comments to inform how it decides to grant copyright in the future.
Source: US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright
Photographers and their collaborators may find themselves increasingly displaced by artificial intelligence systems that can generate synthetic images at a fraction of the cost without having to pay assignment rates or reimburse travel costs. To add insult to injury, photographers and artists have found that these artificial intelligence systems were trained on their work which was searched out online without their permission.
The sports programmer inked an expanded collaboration with Google Cloud to use the internet giant’s generative AI technology. Fox Sports said that by using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Vision system, it can quickly search footage from more than 1.9 million videos and produce new content “in near real-time” for TV, social and marketing content.
Source: Fox Sports Taps Google Cloud for Generative AI Capabilities
Google is trialing a digital watermark to spot images made by artificial intelligence (AI) in a bid to fight disinformation. Developed by DeepMind, Google’s AI arm, SynthID will identify images generated by machines. It works by embedding changes to individual pixels in images so watermarks are invisible to the human eye, but detectable by computers.