DreamFlare has emerged from stealth to launch what is being billed as the first streaming platform for GenAI video. In addition to the consumer-facing subscription platform, the business model includes a sort of AI studio where creators can tap the expertise of professional storytellers to produce AI video using third-party tools like Runway, Sora and Midjourney. The company will feature two types of content: Flips, which are animated narratives with audio that viewers can also examine frame-by-frame, as with comic books, and Spins, described as “short movies” featuring branched narratives that provide interactive plot choices. Continue reading DreamFlare Launches AI Video Studio and Streaming Service

YouTube has released an eraser tool update that makes it easy to remove copyrighted music from videos without disturbing the remaining audio, like dialogue and sound effects. The Erase Song update uses an AI algorithm to detect and remove the offending material, making it more accurate than what had previously been available, as well as easier. Creators whose material has Content ID claims can now excise the objectionable material without having to manually edit and upload a new video, thereby avoiding potential restrictions on where the video is viewable or whether it can be monetized. Continue reading YouTube AI Song Eraser Easily Removes Copyright Material

Created by Humans, a company that aims to make it easy for creators to be compensated when their work is used for AI model training, has emerged from stealth with $5 million in funding. Positioning itself as “the AI rights licensing platform for creators,” the company was launched by Trip Adler, formerly the CEO of document sharing service and publishing platform Scribd. Noted author Walter Isaacson is an investor and creative advisor. In streamlining the licensing process, Created by Humans hopes to spare individuals and smaller companies from the proposition of engaging in costly litigation against LLM firms. Continue reading Created by Humans: AI Rights Licensing Platform for Creators

A group that includes the world’s three largest music labels — Sony, Universal and Warner — are backing federal lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America against AI companies Suno and Udio. Claiming “mass infringement,” the suits allege the startups scraped libraries of copyrighted songs to train models that power generative audio products allowing consumers to create music using text prompts. Suno is based in Massachusetts while Udio and its parent Uncharted are headquartered in New York, with the actions filed earlier this week in their respective states. Continue reading Recording Industry Sues AI Startups Citing Mass Infringement

New documents submitted to state regulators for license applications are shedding light on how Elon Musk plans to make his X app into a payment platform that competes with services like Venmo and PayPal. Plans include letting users store money within their X accounts that can then be applied to purchases — including in physical stores — or issuing payment to other individuals or businesses. The filings come as X seeks to expand its revenue pool beyond advertising, which had in its Twitter days accounted for as much as 90 percent of sales. Ad income is said to have fallen below that threshold since Musk purchased the company in October 2022. Continue reading Musk Takes Next Step Toward Making X an ‘Everything App’

A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five men for illegal streaming operations perpetrated through a company called Jetflicks, which generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue while causing “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,” according to the Department of Justice. Jetflicks, which charged customers $9.99 per month, had a catalog that included “hundreds of thousands” of copyrighted TV episodes, larger than the combined offerings of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, prosecutors said, explaining the outfit “used sophisticated computer scripts and software to scour pirate websites for illegal copies of television episodes.” Continue reading DOJ Scores Criminal Conviction Against Operators of Jetflicks

Twitch is rolling out its licensed DJ Program to allow music live streamers to pursue their craft without having to deal with takedown notices. The popular gaming platform, owned by Amazon, has been dealing with copyright infringement complaints, and now offers what it calls a “first-of-its-kind” compliance solution that provides creators who opt-in with “millions of tracks” that will be legally safe to use. Participating DJs will be required to pay copyright holders a percentage of their earnings from the stream in which the music is used. Twitch did not disclose the percentage but said it would split the cost 50/50 with creators. Continue reading Twitch DJ Program Forges New Path for Live Streaming Music

Stability AI has added another audio product to its lineup, releasing the open-source text-to-audio generator Stable Audio Open 1.0 for sound design. The new model can generate up to 47 seconds of samples and sound effects, including drum beats, instrument riffs, ambient sounds, foley and production elements. It also allows for adapting variations and changing the style of audio samples. Stability AI — best known for the image generator Stable Diffusion — in September released Stable Audio, a commercial product that can generate sophisticated music tracks of up to three minutes. Continue reading Stability AI Releases Free Sound FX Tool, Stable Audio Open

Music startup Suno, which leverages ChatGPT tech with the goal of emulating that app’s success in music, has raised $125 million in Series B funding, resulting in a valuation of $500 million. Founded by Harvard physics PhD turned tech entrepreneur Mikey Shulman, the company is being called “a rising star” in the realm of generative AI. Suno lets people generate original songs by using text prompts or lyrics, with the AI supplying the melodies and harmonies for fully-formed compositions. “We started Suno to build a future where anyone can make music,” according to the company. Continue reading AI Startup Suno Raises Funds to ‘Democratize Music Creation’

Elon Musk’s xAI has released its Grok chatbot and open-sourced part of the underlying Grok-1 model architecture for any developer or entrepreneur to use for purposes including commercial applications. Musk unveiled Grok in November and announced that it would be publicly released this month. The chatbot itself is available to X social premium members, who can ask the cheeky AI questions and get answers with a snarky attitude inspired by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” sci-fi novel. The training for Grok’s foundation LLM is said to include X social posts. Continue reading Grok-1 Architecture Open-Sourced for General Release by xAI

A government study finds that while IP theft is commonplace in the world of NFTs, existing laws can be applied to protect U.S. copyright, trademark and patent rights. Those are the findings of a study released this month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in conjunction with the U.S. Copyright Office. The 112-page report concludes “existing statutory enforcement mechanisms are currently sufficient to address infringement concerns related to NFT applications, and that changes to intellectual property laws,” or to registration and recordation practices, “are not necessary or advisable at this time.” Continue reading IP Theft Common in NFT Markets, But No New Laws Required

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued revised guidance on patents for inventions created using artificial intelligence, a fast-developing category of intellectual property law. The advisory says patents may cover AI-assisted inventions in cases where “a natural person provided a significant contribution.” Insofar as what constitutes appropriately significant input, the agency is looking for the “right balance” between “awarding patent protection to promote human ingenuity and investment for AI-assisted inventions while not unnecessarily locking up innovation for future developments,” according to a USPTO blog post. Continue reading USPTO Says Only Humans Can Patent, Although AI May Assist

AI copyright infringement tool Nightshade generated 250,000 downloads shortly after its January release, exceeding the expectations of its creators in the computer science department at the University of Chicago. Nightshade allows artists to thwart AI models from scraping and training on their work without consent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows more than 2.67 million artists working in the U.S., but social media feedback indicates the downloads have been worldwide. One of the coders says cloud mirror links had to be added so as not to overwhelm the University of Chicago’s web servers. Continue reading AI Poison Pill App Nightshade Has 250K Downloads in 5 Days

Getty Images and Nvidia are expanding their AI partnership with the addition of the text-to-image platform Generative AI by iStock, designed to produce stock photos that can be used by individuals or enterprise customers. Built on Nvidia Picasso, a foundry for custom AI models, and trained exclusively on data from Getty Images’ proprietary creative libraries, Generative AI by iStock “has been engineered to guard against generations of known products, people, places or other copyrighted elements,” Getty explains, adding that “any licensed visual that a customer generates comes with iStock’s standard $10,000 USD legal coverage.” Continue reading CES: Getty Rolls Out iStock Generative AI Powered by Nvidia

A CES session on government AI policy featured an address by Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson (who is also administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration), followed by a discussion of government activities, and finally industry perspective from execs at Google, Microsoft and Xperi. Davidson studied at MIT under nuclear scientist Professor Philip Morrison, who spent the first part of his career developing the atomic bomb and the second half trying to stop its use. That lesson was not lost on Davidson. At NTIA they are working to ensure “that new technologies are developed and deployed in the service of people and in the service of human progress.” Continue reading CES: Panelists Weigh Need for Safe AI That Serves the Public