The RIAA and several other organizations condemn AI startup Anthropic for allegedly flaunting copyright law. The criticism appears in an amicus brief in support of a court injunction requested by music publishers, who want the AI company to stop using lyrics without permission. According to the RIAA, Anthropic’s defense relies on the same rhetoric as Napster once did.
Source: RIAA Backs AI Copyright Lawsuit Against Anthropic, Sees Similarities with Napster * TorrentFreak
A new AI start-up has signed deals with several major global news publishers convinced by its plan to share revenue each time their content is used to generate an answer – before it has even launched. The Financial Times, Fortune, Axel Springer and The Atlantic have all agreed to license their content to Prorata.ai.
Source: FT, Atlantic, Axel Springer and Fortune get behind AI start-up’s per-use compensation plan
Associations worldwide representing authors’ collective management organizations in the music and visual arts sectors — including CISAC, EVA, IFRRO, GESAC, and the SAA — have responded to Finland’s recent cut to its private copying compensation plan, urging the country to reverse the decision. The organizations have joined forces to express “great concern on behalf of both the Finnish authors and all European/international authors.
Source: Finland Slashes Its Private Copying Compensation Plan
It was 2022. Layoffs, cost-cutting and what appeared to be an inevitable strike from writers was looming and the industry was in flux. That fall, OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT in what became the first momentous moment of the tech entering the public consciousness. Everything changed, starting with “Heart on my Sleeve,” a song that used AI versions of voices from Drake and the Weeknd.
Source: Hollywood’s Divide on Artificial Intelligence Is Only Growing
ProRata.ai has invented tech that it claims enables gen AI platforms to accurately attribute and share revenues on a per-use basis with content owners. ProRata has raised$25 million in a Series A round for its tech, for which it has several pending patents. The company’s early investors include Revolution Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, Mayfield and Technology incubator Idealab Studio.
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) has announced a new collaboration with Beatdapp to “complement and enhance” The MLC’s existing streaming fraud detection capabilities. Beatdapp, a music streaming fraud detection company, announced a USD $17 million funding round in January. Beatdapp has previously said that its technology analyzes massive datasets to identify fraudulent streams, ensuring rightful payouts for artists and rights holders.
Source: The MLC partners with Beatdapp for streaming fraud detection services
In a ruling that could have sweeping impact in the digital ad market, a federal judge sided with the government in a landmark antitrust case over allegations that competitors were sidelined and customers got a lower-quality experience on the internet due to the tech giant’s dominance in search. The court pointed to exclusive deals with other companies, like Apple and Samsung, to have Google as the default search engine on their phones and browsers.
Source: Google’s Search Business Violates Antitrust Laws, Court Finds In Major Ruling
In the latest example of a troubling pattern in the tech industry, Nvidia appears to have scraped troves of copyrighted content for AI training. The $2.4 trillion company reportedly asked workers to download videos from YouTube, Netflix and other datasets to develop commercial AI projects. The training was reportedly to develop models for products like its Omniverse 3D world generator, self-driving car systems and “digital human” efforts.
Source: NVIDIA’s AI team reportedly scraped YouTube, Netflix videos without permission
OpenAI appears to be holding back a new “highly accurate” tool capable of detecting content generated by ChatGPT over concerns that it could be tampered with or cause non-English users to avoid generating text with artificial intelligence models. The company mentioned it was working on various methods to detect content generated specifically by its products in a blog post back in May.
Source: OpenAI has a ‘highly accurate’ tool to detect AI content, but no release plans
Ziff Davis, a digital media giant that owns other technology-focused brands like Mashable, PCMag and Lifehacker, is buying the company from Red Ventures, Ziff Davis’s chief executive, Vivek Shah, said on Tuesday. Ziff Davis paid more than $100 million for CNET, according to a person familiar with the matter. Red Ventures declined to comment on the deal.
Source: CNET to Be Sold to Ziff Davis in Sign of Possible Media Deals to Come