Google says AI training is fair use and copyright should be policed on outputs, not inputs

Now, in a new policy paper outlining the company’s preferred approach to AI regulation, Google has argued that training AI models on publicly available web data should “remain protected” by fair use in the US. The paper also says copyright concerns raised by generative AI are best addressed at the level of outputs, not inputs – whether a specific piece of content copies an existing work, rather than how a model was trained.

Source: Google says AI training is fair use and copyright should be policed on outputs, not inputs

The Ghost in the Machine Wants a Cut

For a hundred years the music business ran on scarcity. A small head of hits drove most of the revenue, and the engine was simple: protect the hits, ignore the rest. Streaming did not break that. It made the head bigger. Drake alone accounts for more of Spotify than the bottom fifty thousand artists combined. Generative music breaks it for real, but not in the way the doomsayers think.

Source: The Ghost in the Machine Wants a Cut

Backstreet Boys file to trademark their voices, joining Taylor Swift and Lionel Richie

The application, made with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on June 24, covers the group saying: “Hi, we’re the Backstreet Boys.” It takes a page from Taylor Swift’s playbook, after the pop star applied to register her voice saying “Hey, it’s Taylor” in April. If the mark is granted, it would give the group an additional means of contesting AI-generated imitations of their voices online: content that has grown cheaper and easier to produce as the technology improves.

Source: Backstreet Boys file to trademark their voices, joining Taylor Swift and Lionel Richie

Google AI changes could deal further blow to publisher Discover traffic

Google has started replacing publisher links in its Discover feed with AI-written posts summarising related stories. The new feature, deployed sporadically so far, follows Discover changes which have already downgraded publisher posts in favour of content from X and Youtube. Publishers have seen a sharp drop in referral traffic from the news aggregation feed served to smartphone users.

Source: Google AI changes could deal further blow to publisher Discover traffic

TIDAL cracks down on AI music by cutting off monetization

Music streaming service TIDAL is the latest to take aim at AI-generated music with the introduction of a new policy that will prevent fully AI-generated music from making money on its platform. In addition, TIDAL will use automated tools to remove AI-generated music that attempts to impersonate an artist or a group, the company said.

Source: TIDAL cracks down on AI music by cutting off monetization

Google accepts need for ‘new value exchange’ with publishers

Google has said it is exploring new “value exchange models” with publishers and accepted the need for independent regulation of AI. The tech giant’s paper, A Pragmatic Approach to AI Governance in America, has defended the use of publicly available online content for training AI models, but said it is “piloting novel ways to partner with websites whose content meaningfully contributes to the freshness and factuality of generative AI responses”.

Source: Google accepts need for ‘new value exchange’ with publishers

Is Embedding Someone Else’s Image Copyright Infringement? Fifth Circuit May Finally Tell Us

The Copyright Act grants authors the exclusive right “to display the copyrighted work publicly,” and that right has proven remarkably resistant to resolution in the internet context. Courts across the country have been unable to agree on a deceptively simple question: when a website embeds an image that lives on someone else’s server, and that image appears on a visitor’s screen, who has displayed it?

Source: Is Embedding Someone Else’s Image Copyright Infringement? The Fifth Circuit May Finally Tell Us

Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities

US artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic has accused Chinese e-commerce and technology firm Alibaba of “brazenly” and “illicitly” extracting its Claude AI model’s capabilities. In a letter sent to two members of the US Congress, the San Francisco-based company said operators linked to Alibaba carried out almost 29 million exchanges with Claude using thousands of fraudulent accounts in what it called the largest extraction campaign of its kind.

Source: Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities

Hollywood Workers Are Training AI Models as Job Prospects Grow Slim

In 2023, concerns over the rise of generative AI animated the writers’ and actors’ strikes, with many rank-and-file workers fearful that it could put wide swaths of the entertainment industry out of work. Three years later, with those concerns still alive and well, some Hollywood workers have been moonlighting in AI training, working to help improve the tech, anyway. As the traditional film and television job market narrows, this kind of gig work is on the rise and current and former entertainment workers are taking part.

Source: Hollywood Workers Are Training AI Models as Job Prospects Grow Slim

Spotify wins dismissal of lawsuit claiming it allowed ‘billions’ of fraudulent Drake streams

A US federal judge has dismissed a proposed class action that accused Spotify of allowing billions of bot-generated fake streams to inflate the play counts of Drake and other artists. Judge Josephine Staton, of the US District Court for the Central District of California, granted Spotify‘s motion to dismiss on Monday (June 22). The case was brought by Eric Dwayne Collins, the rapper known as RBX, who claimed Spotify‘s failure to curb “mass-scale fraudulent streaming” had stripped royalties from other rights holders.

Source: Spotify wins dismissal of lawsuit claiming it allowed ‘billions’ of fraudulent Drake streams

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