From Publishing Perspectives: A key development in world publishing’s response to artificial intelligence technologies, today (October 31), four of the United Kingdom’s most prominent publishing-industry organizations have issued an adamant message to the government led by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. The Publishers Association; the Society of Authors, a trade union; Association of Authors’ Agents, … Read more
From Coinbase: Amid the heated row between artificial intelligence (AI) companies and creators over alleged copyright breaches, researchers are developing a new tool that will protect digital artists’ intellectual property (IP) rights. The tool, dubbed Nightshade, is designed to poison the data sets used in training generative AI models, causing them to malfunction. Per an … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com said profit tripled to nearly $10 billion from July to September as strong sales in its cloud-computing, advertising and retail units helped the company continue its rebound from postpandemic lows. Chief Executive Andy Jassy said the company would reap tens of billions of dollars in revenue in the next several years as … Read more
From The BBC: Microsoft 365 Copilot can summarise meetings held in Teams for anyone who chooses not to attend. It can also draft emails, create word documents, spreadsheet graphs, and Powerpoint presentations in moments. Microsoft says it hopes the tool will eliminate “drudgery” but some worry tech like this will replace workers. There are also … Read more
From LawSites: The law practice management platform Filevine today launched an enhancement to its Lead Docket lead intake tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate summaries of the key details of incoming leads and that help predict which leads are good matches for a law firm and which should be referred elsewhere. The new feature, LeadsAI, generates a summary of all … Read more
PG introductory explanation: The following is an excerpt between a couple of chapters of the Writers Guild of America and The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The producers contract with writers for movie and television scripts. Basically, this is a union contract with management. The original document is 94 pages long, and you … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Josh Stir knew he had been talking for a long time during a recent virtual company meeting. But he didn’t expect a robot to call him out on it. Stir was presenting from his Fort Wayne, Ind., office about a new software feature that would allow his colleagues to automate … Read more
PG thought he had blogged about this case before but couldn’t find any evidence of doing so when he searched TPV. From Copywrite Lately: While a flurry of AI copyright lawsuits from prominent authors and artists grab headlines, another case has quietly taken something more important: a head start. Even die-hard copyright geeks would be … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: It is probably not a bright idea for me to write this post. I finished it a few days ago, and things changed. You Patreon folk will see it at least a week before the website folk, and by then, I expect everything to be different again. So I’ll be updating … Read more
From Automation Alley: The remarkably prophetic capacity of humans to imagine and harness the future has shaped the evolution of humankind. Straight-line extrapolations and nonlinear predictions based on present-day facts have helped civilization discover mesmerizing technologies first described in science fiction novels and cinematic features from bygone eras. Therein we encounter thought-provoking ideas similar to … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: CAMBRIDGE, England—The U.K.’s storied universities have a problem. They lose money on almost every British student they teach. The country’s university system boasts 11 of the world’s top 100 universities, with three in the top 10—in a country that has just 1% of the global population. The system’s health has … Read more
From Learn2G2: As G2’s General Counsel, it’s my job to help build and protect the company, so it’s likely no surprise that generative AI is top of mind for me (and lawyers everywhere!). While AI presents an opportunity for organizations, it also poses risks. And these risks raise concerns for all business leaders, not only … Read more
From Wired: SIX OR SEVEN years ago, I realized I should learn about artificial intelligence. I’m a journalist, but in my spare time I’d been writing a speculative novel set in a world ruled by a corporate, AI-run government. The problem was, I didn’t really understand what a system like that would look like. I started … Read more
From chat.openai.com: Query: What are the most common features of best-selling science fiction novels? Response: While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for creating a best-selling science fiction novel, there are certain common features and elements that tend to be found in many successful works in the genre. Keep in mind that the popularity of specific … Read more
From Ars Technica: This week, OpenAI finally responded to a pair of nearly identical class-action lawsuits from book authors—including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay, Mona Awad, Chris Golden, and Richard Kadrey—who earlier this summer alleged that ChatGPT was illegally trained on pirated copies of their books. In OpenAI’s motion to dismiss (filed in both lawsuits), the … Read more
From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: I’ve been concerned about various threats from artificial intelligence for several years — threats to the economy, threats to our civil society, and even threats to human existence. I became even more alarmed about artificial intelligence when I discovered that AI systems are chronic, pathological liars. In … Read more
From Wired: AN AWARD-WINNING PIECE of AI art cannot be copyrighted, the US Copyright Office has ruled. The artwork, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, was created by Matthew Allen and came first in last year’s Colorado State Fair. Since then, the piece has been embroiled in a precedent-affirming copyright dispute. Now, the government agency has issued its third and … Read more
From Venture Beat: In July, New York City officially began cracking down on companies that run afoul of its first-in-the-nation law (NYC Law 144) governing the use of artificial intelligence in employment decisions. Even companies that are not based in New York City but have operations and employees there — particularly global enterprises — must … Read more
Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we … Read more
From BookRiot: There are so many stories regarding AI right now that it feels like a five-alarm fire mixed with a Whac-A-Mole game. . . . . And no, it’s not a five-alarm fire. But it is the very important pocket of time wherein a thing needs some form of regulation before we are fully … Read more
From Jane Friedman: Just two days after the Maui wildfires began, on Aug. 10, a new book was self-published, Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change by “Dr. Miles Stones” (no such person seems to exist). I learned about the book from this Forbes article, but by then, Amazon had … Read more
From Public Books: If you, like me, have participated in the #AcademicTwitter rite of passage that is bemoaning the lack of pedagogical training in graduate education, The New College Classroom is just the book for you. Authors Cathy Davidson and Christina Katopodis aim to fill this yawning gap with “a practical book dedicated to a lofty mission, … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: In England, the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) has announced that it’s putting together an “artificial intelligence” training program, for independent publishers, set for early October, ahead of Frankfurter Buchmesse. There are to be workshops relative to the course at the organization’s autumn conference, which is set for September 20 in London. Much of the program, … Read more
FromThe Bookseller: The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, WGGB, has published Writers and AI, a policy position statement outlining the challenges caused by AI and the risks that go with it, as well as the potential benefits of AI. The statement was released in response to the union’s recent survey, which revealed that 65% of 500 … Read more
From Almost an Author: Writing can be a solitary journey. But what if you had a companion to guide you, to help you when you’re stuck, to inspire you when your creativity needs a boost? That’s where ChatGPT comes in. While many authors frown upon the idea of trusting artificial intelligence with their writing, it … Read more
From IB Times: Artificial intelligence company OpenAI could be on the verge of facing the world’s first defamation lawsuit over the content generated by its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. An Australian Mayor has threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against ChatGPT, accusing the AI-based chatbot of making some false claims. . . . . Regional Australian … Read more
From CNet: My 12-year-old nephew’s bedroom is a shrine to monsters. Intricate Lego dragons loom ominously atop bookshelves jam-packed with reference works for the handmade creatures he painstakingly crafts out of clay. Then there are the paintings. Dozens of them. Plastered over the walls. Giant squid, kaiju, dinosaurs, hulking tentacled beasts of his own invention. … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Earlier this month, as you’ll recall, we reported the Top 10 start-ups chosen by Germany’s eighth international ContentShift accelerator program for book-publishing-related companies. Today (June 28), the Börsenvereinsgruppe has announced the six shortlisted finalists, which will go into competition for the program’s conclusion. All of this culminates in a winning start-up, which … Read more
From TweetSpeak: These days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can do just about anything! It can even draw pictures. What AI has a little more trouble with, however, is creating poems. Still, that doesn’t stop the AI writers of the world from making their valiant attempts. Here are the best (and worst) AI poem generators. Let’s see how each … Read more
From Bloomberg Law: The lawyers behind a court brief filled with phony case citations dreamed up by ChatGPT were fined $5,000 after a federal judge found they’d acted in bad faith. US District Judge P. Kevin Castel imposed the fine Thursday on the law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman P.C., finding that two of the firm’s lawyers … Read more
Write the first paragraph for a children’s book that includes a little girl, a unicorn and a lazy wolf. Once upon a time in the enchanting land of Fairytale Meadows, lived a spirited little girl named Lily. Lily had golden curls that danced in the wind, and her eyes sparkled with curiosity. One day, while … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have written a long, eloquent book arguing that technological progress is a decidedly mixed bag. They believe that the power of the state can and should be used to select the best of the goodies from the bag. The state, they argue, can do a better job … Read more
From CNet: All you need is love, but artificial intelligence can sometimes help too. Paul McCartney used AI to extract the late John Lennon’s voice from an old demo tape to create what he calls the final Beatles record, he told BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday. Though McCartney didn’t name the song, the BBC reports … Read more
From GoodEreader: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has touched almost all aspects of life, and book publishing is no exception. There has been news that authors are spamming out Kindle Books using ChatGPT, which is a famous AI content generator. Ink AI has introduced a ChatGPT e-book generator that can create full-length e-books quickly and easily. In response, publishers are … Read more
From GameReactor: Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, an agency under the country’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, has issued a statement setting out new guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence and its purposes during a seminar on AI art and copyright. The document states that AI may be used for educational, … Read more
From Verdict: In light of several high-profile lawsuits in recent months, countries’ legislative frameworks are finally beginning to grapple with the challenges thrown up by copyright law and generative artificial intelligence (AI). In January 2023, Getty Images announced a lawsuit against Stability AI in London’s High Court of Justice, alleging that the Stable Diffusion image generator infringed … Read more
From Lexology: The AI Explosion It’s probably no exaggeration to say artificial intelligence (AI) exploded into the public consciousness in late 2022 and early 2023. ChatGPT, the AI chatbot from OpenAI, reached an astonishing 100 million monthly active users in January 2023, just two months after its launch, beating out TikTok (nine months) and Instagram … Read more
From The Road to AI We Can Trust: Is AI going to kill us all? I don’t know, and you don’t either. But Geoff Hinton has started to worry, and so have I. I’d heard about Hinton’s concerns through the grapevine last week, and he acknowledged them publicly yesterday. Amplifying his concerns, I posed a … Read more
From Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds: So, a few things upfront: first, I am a privileged author who sells well and is able to support himself and his family on writing books. Second, none of this post is to be taken as fact, but rather, as opinion — it relies, quite frankly, on “artisanal data” (aka anecdotes) … Read more
From The National Law Review: On May 18, 2023, the US Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit’s decision that artist Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portrait of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of musician Prince, used for a Vanity Fair cover, was not a fair use under US Copyright Law. In a 7-2 decision, the Court found the “purpose … Read more
From The Atlantic: Creative artificial intelligence provokes a strange mixture of contempt and dread. People say things such as “AI art is garbage” and “It’s plagiarism,” but also “AI art is going to destroy creativity itself.” These reactions are contradictory, but nobody seems to notice. AI is the bogeyman in the shadows: The obscurity, more … Read more
From The Associated Press: The breathtaking development of artificial intelligence has dazzled users by composing music, creating images and writing essays, while also raising fears about its implications. Even European Union officials working on groundbreaking rules to govern the emerging technology were caught off guard by AI’s rapid rise. The 27-nation bloc proposed the Western … Read more
From The New Publishing Standard: Over at Book Riot, Arvyn Cerezo takes us through the process and then explains why they will still recommend a book you have absolutely no interest in. Machine learning systems called recommender systems, or recommendation systems, use data to assist users in finding new products and services … These algorithms, however, need a decent amount … Read more
From Springer Link: Abstract There is a problematic tradition of dualistic and reductionist thinking in artificial intelligence (AI) research, which is evident in AI storytelling and imaginations as well as in public debates about AI. Dualistic thinking is based on the assumption of a fixed reality and a hierarchy of power, and it simplifies the … Read more
From The Verge: Of all the emotions I expected out of this week’s Google I/O keynote, “dread” was not on my short list. Google has spent a couple of decades creating products that make my life easier. This week, it demonstrated the exact opposite: a way to make communicating with other people worse. Google I/O, … Read more
From Inside Privacy – Covington: On 4 May 2023, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) announced it is launching a review into AI foundation models and their potential implications for the UK competition and consumer protection regime. The CMA’s review is part of the UK’s wider approach to AI regulation which will require existing regulators to … Read more
From AP News: Vice President Kamala Harris met on Thursday with the heads of Google, Microsoft and two other companies developing artificial intelligence as the Biden administration rolls out initiatives meant to ensure the rapidly evolving technology improves lives without putting people’s rights and safety at risk. President Joe Biden briefly dropped by the meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, … Read more
From JSTOR Daily: When a colleague told me that ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) could write a one-page response to a complex work of literature in under fifteen seconds, I rolled my eyes. Impossible! I thought. Even if it can, the paper probably isn’t very good. But my curiosity was piqued. A few days later, I created a ChatGPT … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon wrote in 1597, using a quill and the Elizabethans’ distinctive “secretary hand.” Thomas Hobbes, who started out as Bacon’s secretary, agreed: Scientia potentia est, Hobbes wrote in the 1668 edition of “Leviathan.” Generations of spymasters, dictators and tax inspectors concurred, and so, as the rubble of … Read more
From The Bookseller: Frankfurt-based publishing technology and distribution company Bookwire has integrated ChatGPT as a beta version into its “Bookwire OS – One Solution” software. The organisation says that with the integration it aims to offer publishers “the latest technology and ensure the best service for the industry”. During the beta phase, publishers will be … Read more