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, creators and researchers debated whether models will replace artists. 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, aiming to set 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 AI-generated image can be protected by copyright if the creator controlled the process. Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court refused protection for a work created entirely by a machine.
French publisher Harlequin, known for romance novels, used an AI tool to translate about a dozen books. Literary translators call it a threat to their profession.
The Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf ruled that generating an image from someone else's photograph does not always infringe copyright. Days later, the European Parliament adopted recommendations on creator compensation.
China's most populous province moved past scanning monuments years ago to build 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 bills itself as the world's first museum of art created by artificial intelligence. The project is by Turkish-American new media artist Refik Anadol.
The US and international recording industry wants to label tracks on player pages, similar to content warnings. Sony went further and taught a model to calculate what percentage of a song is Beatles.
Oliver McCann, a 37-year-old British graphic designer, cannot sing or play an instrument, yet he releases songs. His deal with 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. The makers deliberately involved humans because a work generated entirely by machine cannot receive legal protection.