Technology

The hammer is about to come down on some of the world’s biggest tech companies. Meta Platforms Apple, Alphabet’s Google and other large—and largely American—tech companies will by next week start facing the first of new European Union tech rules set to come into effect over coming months, marking the largest expansion in digital regulation ever in the West.

Source: America’s Tech Giants Rush to Comply With New Curbs in Europe

Something creepy this way comes — and its name is digital narration. Having invaded practically every other sphere of our lives, artificial intelligence (AI) has come for literary listeners. You can now listen to audiobooks voiced by computer-generated versions of professional narrators’ voices. You’re right to feel repulsed.

Source: Perspective | AI is coming for your audiobooks. You’re right to be worried.

Technically speaking, AI-powered tools can enhance productivity by automating tasks such as grammar checks and proofreading, allowing writers to focus more on creativity and storytelling. However, when writers use AI tools and insert their writing into it, whilst it’s analyzing the data it is also learning from it.

Source: The Rise Of AI In Writing: How Artificial Intelligence Is Driving The Writer Strikes – Universe News Network

In an environment of uncertainty and ambiguity around rights, the transparent, decentralized, and immutable nature of blockchain can counterbalance the introduction of AI-generated content by creating equitable monetary systems which protect musicians’ intellectual property. Tokenization provides a path to defining digital ownership and transparent rights distribution for musicians.

Source: How Blockchain Can Solve the Music Industry’s AI Problem (Guest Column)

Futureverse, an artificial intelligence and metaverse technology and content startup, has launched JEN 1, which it touts as a “universal high-fidelity model for text-to-music generation.” The launch came less than a month after Futureverse announced that it had raised USD $54 million in its series A funding round from backers including 10T Holdings and Ripple.

Source: After raising $54m, Futureverse unveils ‘JEN 1’ text-to-music AI generator

Artificial intelligence presents a golden opportunity for publications struggling to maintain profitability in a changing media landscape. But it also risks “fatally undermining journalism and damaging our societies”, says News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson. “This is an important moment in the history of news and knowledge with commercial and social implications and a profound impact on creativity and integrity,” the former journalist told investors on Friday Australian time.

Source: News Corp eyes huge AI potential, ‘fatal’ consequences

OpenAI claims it has implemented filters ensuring that sources behind paywalls, those collecting personally identifiable information, or any content violating OpenAI’s policies will not be accessed by GPTBot. The OpenAI docs also give instructions about how to block GPTBot from crawling websites using the industry-standard robots.txt file, which is a text file that sits at the root directory of a website and instructs web crawlers (such as those used by search engines) not to index the site.

Source: Sites scramble to block ChatGPT web crawler after instructions emerge

BandLab was the only music creation company at Ai4, a conference focused on uniting business leaders and data practitioners across all industries to facilitate the responsible adoption of AI. In a press release, BandLab said its support for the Human Artistry Campaign “reaffirms [our] dedication to an ethical approach to AI training and development that elevates both human expression and innovation”.

Source: BandLab becomes first music creation platform to support ethical AI alliance, the Human Artistry Campaign

OpenAI has released a new web crawling bot, GPTBot, to expand its dataset for training its next generation of AI systems—and the next iteration apparently has an official name. The company trademarked the term “GPT-5,” hinting at an upcoming release, while giving web publishers a heads up on how to keep their content out of its massive corpus.

Source: OpenAI to Unleash New Web Crawler to Devour More of the Open Web – Decrypt

It may be a real-life case of AI coming to take our jobs—if not our identities. Journalist, author, and professor Jane Friedman reported on Monday that Amazon has refused her request to remove books falsely attributed to her from its website, in part because she did not hold a trademark to her own name.

Source: Amazon Won’t Remove Books Listed Under a Real Author’s Name But Allegedly Written With AI – Decrypt