As SAG-AFTRA been pushing for protections against AI, the studios have been reluctant to support any legislation that might crack down on its uses too broadly. But now, it appears that the parties are on the same page as they’ve both thrown their support behind a newly introduced bipartisan Senate bill. The NO FAKES Act finally received support from the studios via the Motion Picture Association on Wednesday, after the group had warned of potential First Amendment violations earlier this year.
Songwriters Are Getting Screwed by Streaming Even Worse Than They’d Thought
It is no secret that songwriters are at the bottom of the streaming economy. But a new report shows they receive 9.5% of the average $.004 per stream. Of the over 300 songwriters surveyed for the study, only 10% earn more than $30,000 annually, while over half (54%) earn between $0 and $1,000. Some 67% of the respondents said the “lack of meaningful streaming income” is their primary challenge.
Source: Songwriters Are Getting Screwed by Streaming Even Worse Than They’d Thought, New Study Shows
Senators want to prevent the next Scarlett Johansson AI voice fiasco
Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday are formally introducing an updated version of the Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe Act, or No Fakes Act, a major entry in the congressional debate over AI guardrails. The bill, initially unveiled as a discussion draft late last year, would give people a federal property right to approve the use of their voice, appearance or likeness — and expose those who create or distribute an unauthorized replica to legal liability.
Source: Analysis | Senators want to prevent the next Scarlett Johansson AI voice fiasco
Copyright Office Calls for Federal Digital Replica Law
Given the gaps in existing legal protections, the Office recommends that Congress enact a new federal law that protects all individuals from the knowing distribution of unauthorized digital replicas. The Office also offers recommendations on the elements to be included in crafting such a law.
AI’s search quake shakes media landscape
Negotiations between the tech and news industries over AI have mostly focused on providing data for the broad training of large language models (LLMs) — but now, deal talks are shifting to address narrower use cases, where news publishers may have more leverage.
Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers
Hundreds of websites trying to block the AI company Anthropic from scraping their content are blocking the wrong bots, seemingly because they are copy/pasting outdated instructions to their robots.txt files, and because companies are constantly launching new AI crawler bots with different names that will only be blocked if website owners update their robots.txt.
Source: Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)
In Praise of Collective Licensing
Ask almost any publishing CEO his or her sales, sales growth, net profit, returns percentage, advance write-offs, marketing expenditure, and much else, and they’ll know the answers. But ask how much a company has earned worldwide from collective licensing income through reproduction rights organizations (RROs), and that CEO won’t have a clue—and may not even know what an RRO is.
Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot
Perplexity AI will soon start sharing advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a user query, a move that appears designed to assuage critics that have accused the startup of plagiarism and unethical web scraping. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s head of business, told TechCrunch that the company was actually exploring the program in January, before publishers started leveling accusations.
Source: Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot
Artists sue SEC over confusing security status of NFTs
Two artists have sued the United States securities regulator to determine whether non-fungible tokens fall under the commission’s authority. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs — law professor and filmmaker Brian Frye and songwriter Jonathon Mann — sought clarification on which acts could trigger US securities laws when creating and selling NFT art.
Source: Artists sue SEC over confusing security status of NFTs
Phantom data could show copyright holders if their work is in AI training data
In a new paper from Imperial College London experts, researchers propose a mechanism to detect the use of data for AI training. They hope that their proposed method will serve as a step towards greater openness and transparency in a rapidly evolving field of Generative AI, and will help authors better understand how their texts are used.
Source: Phantom data could show copyright holders if their work is in AI training data