The leading AIs from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic essentially teach themselves from the ground up with huge amounts of raw data—a process that typically takes many months and tens of millions of dollars or more. By drawing on the results of such work, distillation can create a model that is almost as good in a matter of weeks or even days, for substantially less money.
Source: Why ‘Distillation’ Has Become the Scariest Word for AI Companies
As of Feb. 2, the first few requirements of the E.U. AI Act are now legally binding, and businesses operating in the region that do not abide by them are at risk of a fine. The next milestone for the AI Act will come at the end of April, when the European Commission will likely publish the final Code of Practice for General Purpose AI Models, according to Rulf. The code will become effective in August, as will the powers of member state supervisory authorities for enforcing the Act.
Source: EU AI Act: First Requirements Become Legally Binding
DeepSeek’s emergence is changing the landscape for AI, offering companies access to the technology at a fraction of the cost, according to interviews with more than a dozen startup executives and investors. It also has the potential to push other AI companies to improve their models and bring down prices. Europe’s tech startups had struggled to adopt the new technology at the same rate as U.S. rivals, which have easier access to funding.Source: DeepSeek gives Europe’s tech firms a chance to catch up in global AI race
Bookshop.org and Libro.fm have emerged as alternatives to Amazon, sharing a cut of sales with independent bookstores around America. But for e-book readers, it’s been challenging to buy new titles without going through Amazon’s ecosystem. Bookshop.org’s expansion into e-books gives consumers a long-awaited option to buy these digital books while also supporting small businesses.
Source: Bookshop.org challenges Amazon with new e-book platform | TechCrunch
The U.S. Copyright Office declared Wednesday that the use of artificial intelligence tools to assist in the creative process does not undermine the copyright of a work. In a 41-page report, the Copyright Office also reiterated that human authorship is essential to copyright, and that merely entering text prompts into an AI system is not enough to claim authorship of the resulting output.
Source: Copyright Office Offers Assurances on AI Filmmaking Tools
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group of digital news publishers in India have filed an intervention in the Delhi High Court, joining an ongoing proceeding against OpenAI for improperly using copyright content. The intervention was filed by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), along with some of its members, which include The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and NDTV.
Source: Usage of copyright content: Digital news publishers join legal battle against OpenAI
Sony has announced that it will cease production of Blu-ray media discs in February 2025, bringing an end to the format’s nearly two-decade run. This decision marks a significant milestone in the decline of physical media, as streaming services continue to dominate the entertainment landscape and cloud storage replaces the need for physical recordable discs.
Indian book publishers and their international counterparts have filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in New Delhi, a representative said on Friday, the latest in a series of global cases seeking to stop the ChatGPT chatbot accessing proprietary content. The New Delhi-based Federation of Indian Publishers told Reuters it had filed a case at the Delhi High Court, which is already hearing a similar lawsuit against OpenAI.
Source: OpenAI faces new copyright case, from global book publishers in India
A team at AI dev platform Hugging Face has released what they’re claiming are the smallest AI models that can analyze images, short videos, and text. The models, SmolVLM-256M and SmolVLM-500M, are designed to work well on “constrained devices” like laptops with less than around 1GB of RAM. The team says that they’re also ideal for developers trying to process large amounts of data very cheaply.
Source: Hugging Face claims its new AI models are the smallest of their kind
Music AI, the “AI-first” company behind the increasingly popular Moises music creation platform, has announced it has raised USD $40 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Connect Ventures – an investment partnership between entertainment and sports agency CAA and venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) – along with Brazilian investor monashees.
Source: Music AI raises $40m in Series A round, as its Moises platform hits 50m users