At the heart of modern data science, there is a division. On one hand, machine learning is in a race for scale. On the other hand and less loudly, a revolution is taking place in the backward direction: these are quantized models, edge inference, TinyML, and architectures that will survive on very limited resources.
Source: Silicon Darwinism: Why Scarcity Is the Source of True Intelligence | Towards Data Science
As part of its role in the Generative AI for Agriculture (GAIA) project, CABI is examining data governance issues to improve access to robust content for gen AI developers in a legal, equitable, and sustainable way. We are developing a model content license (MCL) intended as a standardized template that can be adapted to specific contexts by agritech AI developers and creators (e.g., publishers, creative copyright licensors, universities) or collective rights organizations.
Source: AI, copyright, and content licensing in digital agriculture
Sony Music Group is forming a music rights-buying joint venture with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC Pte. According to Bloomberg, Sony and GIC plan to pursue “high-quality, marquee music assets across a range of genres”. “As a long-term investor, GIC seeks to be a creative and flexible capital partner to strategic industry leaders like Sony,” Girish Karira, head of the sovereign fund’s integrated strategies group, said in a statement.
Source: Sony launches $2B music rights acquisition JV with Singapore’s GIC
Apple Music identified and demonetised up to 2bn fraudulent streams last year according to longtime exec Oliver Schusser. “Streaming manipulation on our platform is already incredibly low. We literally have systems where we check and validate every single play on Apple Music,” claimed Schusser. “When we find fraud we remove the stream counts, we remove from the charts, and we take the money and put it back into the pool so that it goes to honourable artists.
Source: Apple says it demonetised 2bn fraudulent music streams in 2025
Meta, which runs social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is not only allowing people to post AI generated content – it’s launched products to enable more of it to be made. “Soon we’ll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI,” Zuckerberg said.
Source: AI ‘slop’ is transforming social media – and there’s a backlash
A year after the launch of Deezer’s AI-music detection tool, the company is now making it commercially available, encouraging industry-wide transparency. Up to 85% of all streams on AI-generated music have been detected as fraudulent, the company says, and are demonetized and removed from the royalty pool in continued efforts to support fair payments for artists and songwriters.
Source: Deezer Offers Its AI-Detection Tool for Sale to Other Platforms
Today (January 28), the company announced it paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, which it says is “the largest annual payment to music from any retailer in history.” Spotify previously paid out “a record” $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 and $9 billion the prior year. .
Source: Spotify says it paid out over $11bn to the music industry in 2025
Web publishers and news organizations could be given the power to stop Google scraping their content for its AI Overviews, under measures announced by the UK competition watchdog to loosen its grip on online search. Media organizations have experienced a drop in click-through traffic to their websites – and therefore their revenue – since Google started posting AI summaries at the top of search results.
Source: UK media groups should be allowed to opt out of Google AI Overviews, CMA says
Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet. An overwhelming majority are also planning to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom.
Source: Publishers fear AI search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’
The lawsuit, filed in California federal court last Thursday (January 23), claims Meta has “willfully” infringed the copyrights of over 330 musical works – including songs by The Doors, Weezer, Styx, The Black Keys, Missy Elliott and Townes Van Zandt – after the companies’ licensing agreement expired on December 10, 2025.
Source: Wixen files $50m copyright suit against Meta, claims tech giant wants to replace songwriters with AI