A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced the CREATOR Act, which would grant visual artists control over how AI mimics their creative styles. Existing intellectual property law generally doesn’t provide people with a right to their artistic styles. The CREATOR Act would significantly expand the scope of IP, and raises a number of unsettled questions about what exactly makes an artists’ work distinctive in a legal sense.
A bill to curb the use of unauthorized AI deepfakes has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, significant movement for a top legislative priority for the entertainment industry this year. The bill is meant to address the proliferation of unauthorized “deepfakes,” as a number of performers have testified on Capitol Hill about the use of their voice and likeness.
In the bill, a digital replica is described as “a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual.” It covers fully synthetic tracks and real recordings whose fundamental character has been materially altered, but exempts parody, commentary, news and authorized sampling.
Source: A landmark bill targeting AI deepfakes faces a US Senate Judiciary Committee vote on June 18
Lee Mendelson Film Productions has reached a licensing agreement with CBS for the use of Vince Guaraldi‘s Linus and Lucy on the final broadcast of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The proceeds from the CBS agreement will be donated to World Central Kitchen, which provides meals to communities affected by natural disasters and civil unrest.
Source: Peanuts music catalog owner lands CBS licensing deal after Stephen Colbert’s Late Show finale
Fresh off of last month’s victory against pirate web site Anna’s Archive, 13 publishers across all segments of the industry have allied to sue yet another pirate site, WeLib, for copyright infringement. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that the operators of WeLib “ copied the source code and most of the contents of” Anna’s Archive.”
A new music technology company called Artist Included has launched in Los Angeles, aiming to let artists re-record classic tracks using AI-assisted vocal technology. The company claims that it is “creating a new model for legendary artists to reimagine classic recordings and create new, artist-owned masters for today’s market”.
Source: Tech startup Artist Included launches with plan to re-record classic songs using AI
Some 31 UK websites, backed by the Movement for an Open Web (MOW), have added new “Search-Only Contracts” (SOC) to their website terms and conditions which prohibit the copying and repurposing of content by LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The terms seek to beef up existing robots.txt notices on websites, which are currently widely ignored by generative AI companies.
Source: Publishers to bill AI firms for unwanted scraping– and take them to court if they don’t pay
The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) revealed some worrying data tied to the sustained hit the industry has taken from streaming providers’ “bundles.” As Spotify (and similarly, Amazon Music) started reclassifying its “premium” subscription tiers as a bundle with other services such as audiobooks, royalties paid by both companies have been cut by approximately 30% over the past two years.
Source: Streamers’ Bundling Has Cost Music Publishers Nearly $500 Million Since 2024: NMPA
Specifically, Tuskegee-born Richie moved to obtain four trademarks yesterday – joining the likes of Taylor Swift and Matthew McConaughey, both of whom have sought voice and likeness trademarks as of late. According to the filings, Richie is specifically seeking sound marks for snippets of his famed song lyrics: “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”; “Say you, say me”; “Easy like Sunday morning”; and “All night long.”
Publisher AI standards coalition SPUR has shared details of a proposed “common language” for tracking content usage by AI companies. SPUR aims to come up with a standard technical foundation for how AI platforms report on use of the content they scrape. This could be used by publishers when agreeing licensing deals. SPUR was launched at the start of the year by The Guardian, the Financial Times, BBC, Sky News and The Telegraph and has since added more than 20 other publisher members.
Source: SPUR publishes ‘common language’ for tracking AI use of publisher content