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Publishers File Lawsuit Against Meta, Mark Zuckerberg

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Five of the country’s largest book and journal publishers have joined together to file a class action lawsuit against Meta and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, for willful infringement of millions of works, torrented via pirate sites, to develop Meta’s Llama large language models. The lawsuit is the first copyright infringement litigation brought against an AI firm by publishers. To date, most of the lawsuits have been brought by authors and other creatives, such as the class action lawsuit against Anthropic. 

Source: Publishers File Lawsuit Against Meta, Mark Zuckerberg

OpenAI Will Shut Down Sora Video App; Disney Drops Plans for $1 Billion Investment

OpenAI said it will discontinue Sora, the generative-AI video creation app it launched last year, without providing a reason for the decision. “We’re saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you,” OpenAI’s Sora team said in a statement Tuesday. The announcement comes just three months after Disney inked a groundbreaking deal with OpenAI.

Source: OpenAI Will Shut Down Sora Video App; Disney Drops Plans for $1 Billion Investment

UK Government backtracks on AI and copyright after outcry from major artists

The UK government has backtracked on its position on copyright and AI, stating it must take time to “get this right”. Its original position – allowing AI companies to use copyrighted works to train their models with an opt-out option – received major backlash from the likes of Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa. “We have listened,” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said on Wednesday, saying the government no longer favours that approach.

Source: UK Government backtracks on AI and copyright after outcry from major artists

AIs can generate near-verbatim copies of novels from training data

The world’s top AI models can be prompted to generate near-verbatim copies of bestselling novels, raising fresh questions about the industry’s claim that its systems do not store copyrighted works. A series of recent studies has shown that large language models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, and xAI memorize far more of their training data than previously thought.

Source: AIs can generate near-verbatim copies of novels from training data

Spotify and Universal Unveil New Deal That Improves ‘Bundling’ Payment Structure  

Spotify and Universal announced a new deal that sources say improves the payment structure for the streamer’s controversial music-audiobooks ‘bundle.’ A Spotify rep said in a separate statement, “Spotify maintains its bundle, but with this direct deal [with UMPG], it has evolved to account for broader rights, including a different economic treatment for music and non-music content.”

Source: Spotify and Universal Unveil Far-Reaching Deal That Improves ‘Bundling’ Payment Structure  

The Shutterstock-Getty Images Merger: A Bold Move in a Shifting Landscape 

The stock photo industry has been gasping for air, struggling to adapt to a market that continues to be extremely challenging. Over the past two decades, licensing prices for rights-managed (RM) images have plummeted by 20–50%, while royalty-free (RF) prices have dropped even more sharply, by 50–80%. The rise of microstock and subscription models has driven licensing fees as low as $0.27 per image.

Source: The Shutterstock-Getty Images Merger: A Bold Move in a Shifting Landscape – Kaptur

Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs AI Bills Backed by SAG-AFTRA

California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited SAG-AFTRA headquarters on Monday to sign two bills regulating the use of performances generated by artificial intelligence. The actors’ union lobbied for passage of the legislation, which builds on the protections won during the four-month actors’ strike against the major studios last year.

Source: Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs AI Bills Backed by SAG-AFTRA

DOJ antitrust chief warns AI companies that they must fairly compensate artists

The Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcer issued a warning Thursday to tech companies working in artificial intelligence, cautioning that they could face action from regulators if they don’t find a way to fairly compensate artists, entertainers and other creators.

Source: DOJ antitrust chief warns AI companies that they must fairly compensate artists

Reddit in AI content licensing deal is with Google

Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s artificial intelligence models, three people familiar with the matter said. The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources. Bloomberg previously reported Reddit’s content deal without naming the buyer.

Source: Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google

Hipgnosis Completes 20,000-Song Selloff — At a Steep Discount

Hipgnosis Songs Fund has completed a 20,000-song selloff, but the involved price tag represents a steep discount to the works’ valuation. In an announcement to the market on Monday (December 11), HSF said that “these non-core songs, which are a subset of those identified as the Second Disposal as set out in September, were bundled with the iconic Songs acquired by the Company in 2020 as part of Kobalt Fund One“.

Source: Hipgnosis Completes 20,000-Song Selloff — At a Steep Discount

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