The latest salvo came in early April, when user nyuuzyou scraped 12.6 million fanfics from the online repository Archive of Our Own (AO3) and uploaded the dataset to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and software. Nyuuzyou’s upload was quickly discovered by the Reddit community r/AO3, where hundreds of users posted furious reactionsFanfic writers flooded the comment section of the dataset on Hugging Face, getting into arguments with AI defenders.
Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs
With no way to stop the onslaught of AI music, the industry is taking a different approach: figuring out how to make money off of it. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery. The goal isn’t just to catch synthetic content after the fact. It’s to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system.
Source: The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs
Suno and Udio hit with class action lawsuits from independent artist
Suno and Udio have been slapped with another round of copyright litigation, this time by country musician Tony Justice, who filed class-action lawsuits against both controversial AI music generators. The complaints allege Suno and Udio used Justice’s recordings and works from “thousands of class members” without authorization to train their AI models.
Source: Suno and Udio hit with class action lawsuits from independent artist
UK Publishers Association: 2024 Audiobooks Up 31 Percent
In its newly released Industry Insights 2024 report, the United Kingdom’s Publishers Association has announced that, “Audiobooks and fiction drove publishing growth in 2024. “Audiobook revenue was £268 million (US$361.2 million)—a record high that’s 31 percent above the same figure in 2023.” In fact, digital formats are reported to have been “a key driver of growth with increased revenue across all three sectors—academic, educational, and consumer.”
Source: UK Publishers Association: 2024 Audiobooks Up 31 Percent
Deezer rolls out AI tagging system to fight streaming fraud
One way Deezer is addressing this influx of AI-generated content is by introducing what it claims to be “the world’s first” AI tagging system for music streaming. Deezer launched an AI detection tool in January after filing two patent applications for the technology in December. The company says that this tool can detect 100% AI-generated music from the “most prolific generative models” such as Suno and Udio.
Senators urge FTC to investigate Spotify’s higher-priced bundled subscription
Two U.S. senators have requested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigate Spotify due to allegations that the company bundled its music streaming and audiobook services into a more expensive subscription without obtaining user consent, while also reducing royalty payments to creators in the process.
Source: Senators urge FTC to investigate Spotify’s higher-priced bundled subscription | TechCrunch
Judge grants partial summary judgment to Anthropic, ruling training copies were fair use.
Judge William Alsup just issued his order on summary judgment. It’s a major win for the plaintiffs Bartz, even though the court ruled that the use of copies to train Anthropic’s model were fair use. Significantly, the court also ruled that Anthropic’s acquisition of pirated books from shadow libraries (Books3, LibGen, and Pirate Library Mirror) that Anthropic used to create its own general library at Anthropic was copyright infringement.
Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data
Bots harvesting content for AI companies have proliferated to the point that they’re threatening digital collections of arts and culture. Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs) say they’re being overwhelmed by AI bots according to a report issued on Tuesday by the GLAM-E Lab. The surge in bots that gather data for AI training, the report says, often went unnoticed until it became so bad that it knocked online collections offline.
Source: Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data
Why Midjourney Made the Perfect Target for Hollywood’s First AI Lawsuit
The lawsuit marks the first time major studios have sought to enforce their copyrights against an AI company. But the suit takes on one small company — Midjourney has 11 employees — for relatively egregious violations. “It just seems like the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest way to make a point,” says one exec at a rival company. At least for now, it isn’t a full-scale fight against AI.
Source: Why Midjourney Made the Perfect Target for Hollywood’s First AI Lawsuit
Up to 70% of streams of AI-generated music on Deezer are fraudulent, says report
The company said AI-made music accounts for just 0.5% of streams on the music streaming platform but its analysis shows that fraudsters are behind up to 70% of those streams. AI-generated music is a growing problem on streaming platforms. Fraudsters typically generate revenue on platforms such as Deezer by using bots to “listen” to AI-generated songs – and take the subsequent royalty payments, which become sizeable once spread across multiple tracks.
Source: Up to 70% of streams of AI-generated music on Deezer are fraudulent, says report