Thomann, the world's largest music retailer, is suing Fender over its wave of cease-and-desist letters in the Stratocaster copyright dispute. It is the first company to take the guitar maker to court.
A copyright dispute is not always a fight between two companies over a song. Sometimes it decides whether a figure skater can perform, whether a legal database can be scraped, or who owns a photograph taken by a monkey.
A figure skater got his Minions routine back after a public outcry, but most copyright disputes end in confidential settlements, abandoned performances or four months of an artist's life.
A German retailer is suing Fender over its Stratocaster cease-and-desists. A Canadian legal database and an AI startup have settled their own copyright case. Both stories landed within months of each other.
At a culture forum in Beijing, writers and researchers argued over whether models will replace artists. The writer Mark Handler had a short answer: we do not need AI to tell our stories.
A Hong Kong AI festival requires models to generate more than half of every entry, and it wants to build a standard around that threshold. Nice has already held the second edition of an event chaired by Claude Lelouch.
A Chinese court ruled that an image generated by a model can be protected by copyright if the creator controlled the process. Around the same time, the US Supreme Court refused protection for a work a machine made on its own.
The French publisher Harlequin, known for romance novels, had about a dozen books translated by an AI-based tool. Literary translators call it a threat to their profession.
The Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf has ruled that generating an image from someone else's photograph does not always infringe copyright. A few days later, the European Parliament adopted recommendations on paying creators.
China's most populous province stopped scanning monuments years ago and moved on to interactive experiences and games. Generative AI is now part of that work, and universities have turned it into a competition of its own.
DATALAND on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles calls itself the world's first museum of art made by artificial intelligence. The project belongs to Turkish-American new media artist Refik Anadol.
The American and international recording industry wants to label tracks on the player page, much like warnings for unsuitable content. Sony went further and taught a model to work out what percentage of a song is Beatles.
Oliver McCann, a 37-year-old British graphic designer, can't sing or play an instrument, yet he puts out songs. His deal with the independent label Hallwood Media was announced as the first of its kind in the industry.
"Critterz" is to be made in nine months instead of three years, for less than 30 million dollars. The makers deliberately brought people into the work, because a piece generated entirely by machine cannot get legal protection.