TikTok is forming an in-house Music Content Investment Team based in Los Angeles, New York, and San Jose, focusing on “partnership or acquisition opportunities in the music content space on a global level.” In other words, TikTok is moving into the competitive music M&A market. Tellingly, it’s looking to the world of investment banking and private equity to find the execs who will lead this charge.
Source: TikTok is forming an investment team to acquire music content and companies
Queen’s music catalog is among the most valuable of the rock era — with classics like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Radio Ga Ga,” “39,” “Somebody to Love” and “You’re My Best Friend” as well as the perennial stadium-shakers “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” the songs are globally popular and enormously lucrative. One other player was said to be very close in the bidding, but stopped short at $900 million.
Source: Queen Catalog to Be Acquired by Sony Music for £1 Billion
Last week, AI startup Luma posted a series of videos created using its new video-generating tool Dream Machine, which the company describes as a “highly scalable and efficient transformer model trained directly on videos.” The only problem? At about 57 seconds in, the Dream Machine-generated trailer for Monster Camp features a slightly AI-smudged but still recognizable Mike Wazowski from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.
Source: An AI video tool just launched, and it’s already copying Disney’s IP
Startups need large amounts of data, storage and chip capacity to be able to train their AI chatbots, which is where regulators believe the tech giants hold too much power. There is some evidence that smaller players are being forced into exclusive, opaque deals to run technology from Nvidia, Microsoft and their rivals, which can give the already dominant players an even bigger advantage.
Officially launching this summer, MicDrop is a real-time (AU, VST3, AAX) plug-in compatible with all major digital audio workstations (DAWs). UMG and SoundLabs’ collaboration will enable UMG artists to create custom vocal models that will be available for their exclusive creative use cases, and not available to the general public.
Source: SoundLabs and UMG Announce Agreement for AI Voice Modeling
AppleInsider has learned that the company plans to label AI-generated imagery through image metadata, also known as EXIF data. This means that AI-generated images created through Image Playground would be clearly marked through that metadata. The image source, which typically displays the name and brand of the camera used to take a picture, will display “Apple Image Playground,” serving as a clear indication that the image was created by AI.
Source: How Apple plans to label AI-generated images made through its new Image Playground app
Suno recently said 12 million people have used its platform in the less than a year that it’s been available. Now the company is taking a major step towards building a community – and towards making music creation on its platform commercially viable for its users: it’s launched a program to pay out its most popular music creators.
Source: After raising $125m, AI music generator Suno is now paying its most popular creators
In a post on its official blog, DeepMind says that it sees the tech, V2A (short for “video-to-audio”), as an essential piece of the AI-generated media puzzle. “Video generation models are advancing at an incredible pace, but many current systems can only generate silent output,” DeepMind writes. “V2A technology [could] become a promising approach for bringing generated movies to life.”
Source: DeepMind’s new AI generates soundtracks and dialogue for videos | TechCrunch
To create powerful AI models, you need mountains of good data. Amazon is going to great lengths to collect this type of valuable information. The company recently told employees to sign up for Microsoft’s GitHub software-development platform and share their accounts so Amazon can scrape data from GitHub more quickly, Business Insider has learned. This is a key step in Amazon’s efforts to train its upcoming in-house AI model.
Source: Amazon’s secret GitHub data grab
For a hot second there, Adobe enjoyed a unique niche within the generative AI industry thanks to its Firefly AI and Stock image hosting platform, which was trained on the company’s proprietary and “commercially safe” dataset of licensed images. Now, Getty Images is getting in on the game and launching a rival model. PicsArt, the AI-powered online image and video-editing service, announced that it will be partnering with Getty to build and train a generative AI based on Getty’s exclusive library of photo and video content.
Source: Adobe’s Firefly AI is getting competition at the worst time | Digital Trends