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
In June, the three major labels sued the generative AI music companies Udio and Suno for training their software on copyrighted music without a license. Now, GEMA, the German PRO, is also taking legal action against Suno, in a case filed today (Jan. 21) in the Munich Regional Court. In an announcement, GEMA said that it documented that the Suno system outputs content that “largely corresponds to world-famous works whose authors GEMA represents.
Source: Germany’s GEMA Sues U.S.-Based Generative AI Company Over Copyright Infringement
The report explores important aspects of the structure of CSP and AI developer collaborations, such as the equity and revenue-sharing rights retained by CSPs in these partnerships and certain consultation, control and exclusivity rights that CSPs gain by investing in AI firms. In addition, the report covers some “potential competition implications,” the FTC said. For example, the regulator said, these partnerships could affect “access to certain inputs.”
Source: FTC Issues Staff Report on AI Partnerships | PYMNTS.com
And along with the opening of the platform itself, the company is now unveiling the proprietary framework they’ve developed, AI Rights, which is at the core of the service, currently offering rights for AI model training and reference via RAG models. Adler says the team has plans to add more rights soon to the framework. “We’ve raised more funding,” he says. “The product is great shape. It’s really pretty polished and looking really good.