Publishers – already under financial pressure from soaring costs, falling advertising revenues, the decline of print and the wider trend of readers turning away from news – argue that they are effectively being forced by Google to either accept deals, including on how content is used in AI Overview and AI Mode, or “drop out of all search results”, according to several sources.
Source: ‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model
OpenAI wants to prove that generative artificial intelligence can make movies faster and cheaper than Hollywood does today. The startup is lending its tools and computing resources to the creation of a feature-length animated movie made largely with AI that is expected to be released in theaters globally next year.
Chris Dicker, chief executive of Candr Media Group and board member of the Independent Publishers Alliance, said that the publisher’s Trusted Reviews website was taken down multiple times on 16 August when it was scraped 1.6 million times in a day. This was up from a previous record of 1.2 million scrapes on the site a day earlier. He said the average level of AI scraping for Trusted Reviews is running at between approximately 70,000 and 100,000 times a day.
Source: AI bots bombard publisher websites with ‘no meaningful value exchange’
Publishers have welcome a ruling from the European Commission fining Google £2.5bn and ordering it to stop abusing its dominant position in the world of adtech. Daily Mail publisher DMGT is among those to have previously argued Google has been guilty of “punishing publishers that do not submit to its practices” by effectively rigging ad auctions. It filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in the US in 2021.
Source: Publishers welcome EU move to break up Google adtech monopoly
The federal judge overseeing Anthropic PBC’s proposed $1.5 billion copyright settlement is concerned class lawyers are striking a deal behind the scenes that will be forced “down the throat of authors.” Judge William Alsup at the hearing said the motion to approve the deal was denied without prejudice, but in a minute order after the hearing said approval is postponed pending submission of further clarifying information.
Source: Anthropic Judge Blasts $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement (2)
Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit after it downloaded a massive trove of pirated books to train its large language models. The settlement amounts to about $3,000 per book, and is believed to be the largest ever recovery in a U.S. copyright case, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Source: Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Book Piracy Class Action Lawsuit
Generative AI startup ProRata.ai has raised $40 million in Series B funding as it prepares to launch a new product for publishers. ProRata.ai’s product, Gist Answers, lets publishers embed custom AI search on their websites. Publishers can show AI-powered summaries and recommendations exclusively based off their own content or showcase content from ProRata.ai’s broader network of 750 publishers.
Source: ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers
Warner Bros. sued Midjourney on Thursday, becoming the third studio to accuse the AI image-generating platform of blatant copyright violations. “Midjourney thinks it is above the law,” the lawsuit states. “Without any consent or authorization by Warner Bros. Discovery, Midjourney brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own.”
Source: Warner Bros. Joins Studios’ AI Copyright Battle Against Midjourney
Anthropic is making some big changes to how it handles user data, requiring all Claude users to decide by September 28 whether they want their conversations used to train AI models. That is a massive update. Previously, users of Anthropic’s consumer products were told that their prompts and conversation outputs would be automatically deleted from Anthropic’s back end within 30 days “unless legally or policy‑required to keep them longer.”
Source: Anthropic users face a new choice – opt out or share your chats for AI training | TechCrunch
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has raised another $13 billion in funding, valuing it at $183 billion, nearly tripling its valuation in March. The funding announcement comes as Anthropic faces legal challenges over its training data practices. The company recently settled a class-action lawsuit with authors who accused it of using copyrighted books without permission to train Claude.
Source: Anthropic’s value balloons to $183bn after securing $13bn in latest funding round