News/Copyright
Video Game Actors Strike, Demanding AI Protections
The video game industry faces a crisis as voice actors and motion capture artists strike over AI protections, marking a significant labor action that could reshape the future of game development. AI as an existential threat to performers: The unregulated use of artificial intelligence in video games has become a primary concern for voice actors and motion capture artists, who fear their likenesses could be replicated and used without consent or fair compensation: Union leaders argue that the ease and affordability of creating convincing digital replicas of performers' voices using AI pose an even greater threat to video game performers...
read Aug 1, 2024Runway Announces Gen-3 Alpha Turbo for Faster, Cheaper AI Videos
The AI model Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo sets a new bar for fast and affordable video generation, though questions about the company's training data practices persist. Key Takeaways: Runway's latest AI video model, Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, promises significant speed and cost improvements over its predecessor: Gen-3 Alpha Turbo is reportedly 7 times faster than the original Gen-3 Alpha model, capable of generating a 10-second video in just 11 seconds. The new model will be rolled out with "significantly lower pricing" compared to Gen-3 Alpha, which currently costs 10 credits per second of generated video. Runway is also working on bringing...
read Aug 1, 2024Reddit CEO Defends Decision to Block Web Scrapers
The CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, is defending the company's recent decision to block web scrapers from accessing the site's content without an AI agreement, which has sparked controversy and raised concerns about competition in the search engine market. Key developments: Reddit's move to restrict web scraping has significantly impacted search results and the competitive landscape: Reddit updated its robots.txt file to block bots from scraping the site, stating that it believes in an open internet but opposes the misuse of public content. As a result, search engines other than Google were temporarily unable to list recent Reddit posts in...
read Aug 1, 2024Artists Band Together to Sue AI Image Generators
The rise of A.I.-generated art has sparked a contentious debate about intellectual property rights and the future of creativity, as demonstrated by a recent class-action lawsuit filed by artists against popular A.I. imagery tools. Key developments in the legal battle: Three artists have joined forces to sue Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp, claiming that these A.I. generators are infringing on their copyrights and profiting from their work without consent or compensation: The artists allege that their names and distinctive styles are being used to create derivative works without their permission, with one artist's name appearing in over 12,000 public prompts...
read Jul 31, 2024USPTO Has 180 Days to Issue Recommendations on Copyright and AI
Key Takeaways: The US Copyright Office (USCO) has released the first part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence, focusing on the legal and policy issues surrounding AI-generated digital replicas of individuals' voices and appearances. The report's publication marks the start of a 180-day period for the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to issue recommendations for executive action on copyright and AI, as mandated by President Biden's AI Executive Order. USPTO Director Kathi Vidal emphasized the personal and valuable nature of an individual's name, voice, and likeness, stating that the USPTO will consider the report's findings in preparing...
read Jul 31, 2024U.S. Copyright Office Urges New Law to Combat AI-Generated Digital Replicas
The U.S. Copyright Office has called for new federal law to combat unauthorized digital replicas, as part of its ongoing study on AI and copyright: The Office's Report responds to the growing threat of convincingly manipulated videos, images, and audio that falsely depict individuals, recognizing that existing legal protections are insufficient. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter emphasizes the urgency of nationwide protection against the reputational and financial harms caused by unauthorized digital replicas, affecting public figures and private citizens alike. Comprehensive AI and copyright initiative: The Copyright Office launched a wide-ranging study in early 2023 to examine the complex intersection...
read Jul 31, 2024AI Search War Heats Up as AI Firms Partner with Publishers
Perplexity recently announced revenue-sharing deals with publishers, but it is far from the only player in the space with its eyes set on how to make AI search a big (and ethical) business. The appeal of AI-powered search: AI chatbots aim to provide comprehensive answers to user queries, eliminating the need to open and read multiple links. The promise of these chatbots means tech giants are racing to develop their own versions of AI-powered search. Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are vying to leverage generative AI to transform the traditional search experience. For AI-powered search to work effectively,...
read Jul 26, 2024“Copyright Traps” Helps Creators Detect AI Training on Their Work
Researchers have developed a new tool that could help content creators prove their work has been used to train AI models without their consent. The method, called "copyright traps," allows writers to subtly mark their text in a way that can later be detected in AI training data. Key points about the copyright trap tool: The copyright traps work by injecting long, gibberish sentences multiple times into a piece of text, which can then be used to determine if that text was used to train an AI model: The trap sentences are generated using a word generator and chosen randomly...
read Jul 25, 2024AI Startup RunwayML Accused of Secretly Training on YouTubers’ Content
The AI video startup Runway faces backlash following a report that it copied training data from thousands of YouTube videos without permission, raising concerns about the company's practices and the broader issue of AI models being trained on copyrighted content. Key details from the leaked spreadsheet: A former Runway employee allegedly leaked a company spreadsheet to 404 Media, revealing plans to categorize and train on YouTube content from various sources: The spreadsheet included over 3,900 individual YouTube channels, with hashtags indicating the type of content. Channels ranged from media companies like The New Yorker, VICE News, and Netflix to individual...
read Jul 24, 2024Reddit Blocks Search Engines, AI Bots as Google Retains Exclusive Access Through Deal
Reddit is ramping up its efforts to protect its data and generate revenue by blocking search engines and AI bots from accessing recent posts and comments unless they pay for access. Google's exclusive access: Google is currently the only mainstream search engine showing recent Reddit results due to a $60 million deal allowing the company to train its AI models using Reddit's content: Other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo are excluded, leaving Google as the sole provider of up-to-date Reddit search results. This move comes after Reddit threatened to cut off Google's access if the company continued using the...
read Jul 24, 2024AI vs. Journalism: How Tech Giants Threaten News Outlets’ Survival
The rise of AI presents an existential threat to the journalism industry as tech giants leverage news content without fair compensation, further disrupting already struggling news outlets. Key challenges facing publishers: AI tools from companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI can automatically scrape information from news archives and deliver it to audiences for free, potentially devastating the business models of news organizations: L.A. Taco editor Javier Cabral found that Google's AI appeared to lift content from an article he wrote without linking to the original, "enraging" him as he had spent significant time reporting the story. News outlets fear catastrophic...
read Jul 22, 2024Condé Nast Accuses AI Startup Perplexity of Plagiarism, Demands Cease-and-Desist
Condé Nast has sent a cease-and-desist letter to artificial intelligence search engine Perplexity, accusing the startup of plagiarizing content from its publications and demanding that it stop using this content in search results. Legal challenge from major publisher: The letter from Condé Nast, which publishes The New Yorker, Vogue, and Wired, among others, represents a significant legal challenge for Perplexity: The cease-and-desist letter, sent on Monday, comes just a month after Forbes sent a similar letter to Perplexity, accusing it of copyright infringement. Condé Nast's demand adds to the growing legal scrutiny facing AI startups over their use of news...
read Jul 19, 2024Figma’s AI Design Tool Temporarily Removed After Inadvertently Including Copyrighted Assets
Figma's AI design tool mistakenly included copyrighted assets, leading to its temporary removal for additional quality control measures. Key issues with Figma's AI tool: The "Make Designs" feature, launched as part of Figma's Config event, generated outputs suspiciously similar to Apple's weather app when given certain prompts: A user discovered that asking the AI to design a weather app would produce designs closely resembling Apple's own app, potentially exposing users to legal issues. This finding suggested that Figma may have inadvertently trained the AI model on Apple's proprietary designs, despite CEO Dylan Field's initial statement denying the tool was trained...
read Jul 19, 2024Generative AI and The Future of Intellectual Property
The rapid advancement of generative AI is raising complex questions about the future of intellectual property rights in an AI-driven world. As AI systems become more adept at generating creative outputs that blur the lines between original works and reproductions, traditional concepts of copyright, trademark, and patent protection are being challenged: IP concerns with generative AI training data: Many of the datasets used to train generative AI systems contain copyrighted, trademarked, or otherwise protected materials, often used without explicit consent from IP owners: The process of indiscriminately scraping the web for training data frequently incorporates copyrighted works, leading to potential...
read Jul 17, 2024CCC Introduces AI Licensing Solution to Foster Innovation While Compensating Creators
CCC launches collective licensing for AI: Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has introduced a new collective licensing service that allows companies to access and use copyrighted materials in their internal AI systems while ensuring compensation for content creators. The new service, available as of July 1, is an addition to CCC's existing Annual Copyright Licenses (ACL) and aims to streamline the licensing process across multiple rightsholders. The license covers internal use cases such as article summarization, literature review, and market surveillance, but does not extend to public use of the copyrighted materials. CCC has worked collaboratively for over a year to...
read Jul 16, 2024YouTube Creators Outraged To Find Major AI Companies Used Subtitles to Train Models
Apple, Nvidia, and Anthropic have used subtitles from over 170,000 YouTube videos to train their AI models without the creators' knowledge or consent, raising concerns about the ethics and legality of such practices in the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence. Key takeaways: An investigation by Proof News found that subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos, siphoned from more than 48,000 channels, were used by major tech companies to train AI models: The dataset, called YouTube Subtitles, was part of a larger compilation called the Pile, released by the nonprofit EleutherAI with the stated goal of lowering barriers to AI development....
read Jul 16, 2024Hackers Leak Disney’s Slack Data Over AI Concerns, Exposing Upcoming Projects
A hacker group claims responsibility for leaking Disney's internal Slack data, citing concerns over the company's handling of artist contracts and use of AI. The leak, which Disney is investigating, includes login credentials, code, images, and information about unreleased projects. Extent of the leak: The anonymous "Nullbulge" group says it obtained 1.1 terabytes of files and chat messages from nearly 10,000 Disney Slack channels: The leaked data, dating back to at least 2019, contains internal conversations about software development, recruitment, website maintenance, and employee programs. Details about upcoming gaming collaborations and unannounced video game sequels have started emerging online from...
read Jul 14, 2024Senators Introduce COPIED Act to Protect Content Creators from AI Exploitation
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the COPIED Act, which aims to protect content creators against unauthorized use of their work to train AI models or generate AI content: Key provisions of the COPIED Act: The bill would require standards for watermarking AI-generated content with provenance information, make it illegal to tamper with this information, and allow individuals and authorities to sue for violations: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would be tasked with creating guidelines and standards for adding watermark-like details about the origin of AI content. Removing, disabling, or tampering with this "content provenance" information...
read Jul 12, 2024Bipartisan Bill Aims to Protect Creators’ Rights in the Age of Generative AI
The bipartisan COPIED Act aims to protect journalists and artists from having their work used by AI models without consent. Introducing standards for authenticating AI-generated content: The COPIED Act directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish guidelines for proving the origin of content and detecting synthetic content: This includes methods like watermarking to authenticate the source of creative works. NIST will also develop security measures to prevent tampering with these authentication markers. Requiring transparency and consent for AI use of creative content: Under the bill, AI tools used for generating journalistic or creative content must allow...
read Jul 10, 2024Judge Dismisses Most Claims in GitHub Copilot Copyright Lawsuit, Narrows Case
The copyright lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI over the AI-powered GitHub Copilot tool has been significantly narrowed, with a judge dismissing most of the claims brought by a group of developers. Key developments in the case: Judge Jon Tigar's ruling dealt a major setback to the developers' lawsuit, which originally made 22 claims against the companies: Nearly all of the claims were dismissed, leaving only two standing: an accusation of open-source license violation and an allegation of breach of contract. The judge determined that the code allegedly copied by GitHub Copilot wasn't similar enough to the developers' original work...
read Jul 9, 2024YouTube’s AI “Erase Song” Tool Aids In Copyright Claims and Empowers Creators
YouTube introduces AI-powered "Erase Song" feature to remove copyrighted music from videos without disrupting the rest of the audio, offering creators more options to deal with copyright claims and maintain video monetization. Key takeaways from the new feature: When a video receives a copyright claim for music, YouTube will offer editing options in YouTube Studio, including the enhanced "Erase Song" tool powered by AI. The AI-based tool allows for precise identification and removal of copyrighted songs, leaving the rest of the video's audio intact. Previously, creators had limited options like muting the entire video or replacing the song, which often...
read Jul 8, 2024NYT vs. OpenAI: Landmark Copyright Case Could Shape Future of AI
The copyright battle between OpenAI and The New York Times could shape the future of generative AI, as the case tackles fundamental questions about the legality of data training practices used by AI companies. Key legal dispute over generative AI's reliance on copyrighted data: The NYT alleges that OpenAI infringed on copyrights by using Times articles without permission to train its AI models, while OpenAI argues that this practice falls under fair use and is necessary for developing advanced AI systems. OpenAI is seeking access to reporters' notes and other materials related to the articles in question, claiming it needs...
read Jul 6, 2024Artists Flock to New Tools to Prevent AI Mimicry and Theft
There is a growing demand for solutions that protect artists from AI systems that can mimic their unique styles, but challenges loom regarding their long-term effectiveness. Glaze, a popular tool designed to prevent style mimicry and discourage unauthorized data scraping, has seen a surge in requests, leading to significant delays in approving access for artists. Nevertheless, a recent attack by security researchers has called into question the effectiveness of Glaze's protections. Rising demand for AI protections amid evolving threats: As AI image generators continue to improve and platforms update their terms to allow for more extensive data scraping, artists are...
read Jul 5, 2024YouTube’s AI Erase Song Tool Simplifies Copyrighted Music Removal for Creators
YouTube enhances 'Erase Song' tool for more efficient removal of copyrighted music: YouTube is updating its Erase Song feature with a new AI-powered algorithm that can more accurately identify and remove copyrighted songs from videos while leaving the rest of the audio intact. Key improvements and options: The updated tool offers creators two choices when removing copyrighted music: Erase Song: This option will only remove the copyrighted song, allowing voiceovers and other audio elements to remain. Mute All Sound: This will mute all audio in the sections containing the copyrighted song. Simplified process for creators: When a creator receives a...
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