Hello, and welcome to techscape. If you need me after this newsletter publishes, I will be busy poring over photos from jeff bezos and lauren sanchez’s wedding, the Gaudist and Most Star-STAR-STUR-SUFADED AFFAARRE to Disrupt Technology News. I found it a tacky and spectacular affair. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for charlize theron, who, unprompted, said on Monday: “I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the bezos wedding. But Because they suck and we’re cool. “
AI companies start winning the copyright fight
Last Week, Tech Companies Notched Several Victories in the fight over their use of copyrighted text to create artificial intelligence products.
Anthropic: A Us Judge Has Rules That Anthropic, Maker of the Claude Chatbot, Use of Books to Train Its Artificial Intelligence System – Without Permission of the Allies – Did not make copyrightly. Judge william also compared the anthropic model’s use of books to a “Reader aspiring to be a writer.”
And the next day, meta: The US District Judge Vince ChhabriaIn San Francisco, said in his decision on the meta case that the author Had not presented enjoy Similar to theirs.
The same day that meta receive its favorite ruling, a group of writers sued microsoft, alleging copyright infringing in the creation of that company’s megatron text generator. Judging by the Rulings in Favor of Meta and Anthropic, The Author’s are Facing an uphill battle.
These three cases are skirmishes in the wider legal war over copyrighted media, which rages on. Three weeks ago, disney and nbcunivesal sued midjourney, alleging that the company’s namesake ai image generator and forthcoming video generator made Illegal use of the Studios’ ICONIC CHARACES LIKES LIKDER DARATES LIKDER and the Simpson family. The World’s Biggest Record Labels-Sony, Universal and Warner-have sued two companies that make make Ai-Powered Music Generators, Suno and Udio. On the textual front, the new york times’ Suit against Openai and Microsoft is ongoing.
The lawsuits over ai-generated text were filled first, and, as their rulings emerge, the next question in the copyright fight fight fight is your decisions about one type of media will apply to the next.
“The Specific Media Involved in the Lawsuit-Written Worsus Versus Images Versus Versus Versus Audio-Will Certainly Change The Fair-Youthsis in Each Case,” Said John Strand, Ana Strand, Ana Strand, Analysis in Each Case, Copyright attorney with the law firm wolf greenfield. “The impact on the market for the copyrighted works is decided a key factor in the Fair-use analysis, and the market for books is different than that for movies.”
To strand, the cases over images season more favorite to copyright holders, as the AI models are allegedly producing images ideas Identical to the copyrighted ons in the training data.
A Bizarre and Damning Fact was revised in the anthropic ruling, Too: the company had pirated and stored some 7m books to create a training database for its ai. To remediati its wrangdoing, the company burgt physical copies and scanned them, digitizing the text. Now the owner of 7m physical books that no longer help any utility for it, anthropic destroyed them. The company boght the books, diced them up, scanned the text and threw them away, Ars Technica reports. There are less destructive ways to digitize books, but they are slower. The Ai Industry is here to move fast and break things.
Anthropic Laying waste to Millions of Books Presents A Crude Litralization of the Ravenous Consumption of Content Necessary for Ai Companies to create their products.
Ai and the environment: bad news
An update on last week’s stories: trump’s phone
Two Stories I Wrote About Last Week Saw Significant Updates in the Ensuing Days.
The website for trump’s gold phone, dubbed “t1”, have dropped its “made in America” PLEDGE in Favor of “Proudly american” and “briefly to life in america”, per the verge.
Trump seems to have followed the example of apple, which skirts the issue of origin but still Emphasizes the American-Ness of iphones of iphones by engraving them with “designed in calfornia”. What is unsaid: assembled in China or India, and sourced from many other countries. It seems trump and his family has opted for a similar evasive tagline, thought it’s been thrown into much starker relieve by his original promise.
The third descriptor that Now appears on Trump’s Phone Site, “American-Proud Design”, Seems Most Obvious CUed By Apple.
The tagline “made in the USA” carries legal weight. Companies have decided lawsuits over just how many their products’ parts were produced in the us, and the us’s main trade regulator have established standards by whing to Judge the Actions BEHIND It would be extramely different for a smartphone’s manufacturing history to measure up to that that benchmarks, by the Vast Majority of Expert Estimations.
Thought trump intends to repatriate manufacturing in the us with his sweeping tarifs, he seems to be learning just whatst Other Phone Companies Alredy Know. It is complicated and limiting to make a phone soly in the US, and doing so forces severe constraints on the final product.
Read Last Week’s Newsletter about the Gold Trump Phone.
… And Online Age Checks
Last Week, I Wrote About Pornhub’s Smutty Return to France after a Law Requiring Online Age Verification was suspended there. This week, the US Supreme Court Rules in Favor of an age-check law passed in texas. Pornhub has blocked access to anyone in texas in protest for the better part of two years, as it did in france for three weeks. Clarence thomas summed up the court’s reasoning:
“HB 1181 Simply Requires Adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obescene to child,” Clarence Thomas Wrote in the CORT’s 6-3 Uttar Pradesh. “The state’s important interest in shielding child Establed Methods of Providing Government-Isued Identialization and Sharing Transactional Data. “
Elena Kagan DissEved AlongSide the Court’s Two Other Liberal Justices.
The ruling affirms not only texas’s law but the statuts of Nearly two dozen states that have implemented online age checks. The tide worldwide seems to be shifting away from allowing freer access to pornography as part of a person’s right to free expression and More Towards Curtailing.
Experts believe the malleable definition of obscenity – the texas law requires an age check for any site with content is more than a third sexual material – will be weaponized against on Sexual health, abortion or lgbtq+ identity, all in the name of child protection.
“It’s an unfortunate day for the supporters of an open internet,” said GS Hans, Professor at Cornel Law School. “The court has made a radical shift in free speech jurisprudence in this case, thought it does not characterize its decision Difacity Category to Define – that also creates limits on adult access, we can expect to see states take a heavier hand in regulating content. “
I’ll be Closely watching what Haappens in July when Pornhub willingly implements age checks in compliance with the online services act.
Read more: UK Study Shows 8% of Children aged eight to 14 have Viewed Online Pornography
Read more ai news
This week in Ai: New Whatsapp Summaries and Nobel Winners’ Genomic Model
New features are a dime a dozen, but even a small tweak to the most popular messaging app in the world may Amount to a Major Shift. Meta’s Whatsapp will begin showing you ai-generated summaries of your unread messages, per the verge.
Apple Tried Message Summaries. They did not work. The company pulled them. For a firm frames for its calculated and controlled releases, the retraction of the summaries was a humiliation. The difference between apple and meta, thought, is that meta has been released ai products for multiple years now.
In other AI news, I am rarely captivated by new technologies, but a recent release by google’s Deepmind Ai Laboratory Seems Promising for Healthcare. Alphagenome is an ai meant to “Comprehensively and Accurately (Predict) How Single Variants or Mutations in Human DNA Sequences IMPACT A Wide Range of Rang of Rang of BioLogical Processes. The creators of alphagenome previously won the nobel prize in chemistry for alphafold, a software that predicts the structures of proteins.
A Major Question That Hovers Over Crispr, Another Nobel-Winning Innovation, is what changes in a person when a genetic sequence is modified. Alphagenome seems poised to assist in solving that mystery.
