FILE - Drake poses at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 1, 2019. Drake says his new album, “For All the Dogs,” may drop in a couple of weeks. His announcement came during a tour stop at the sold-out Barclays Center Thursday night in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
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The Big Story
Senators pitch plan to protect actors from AI
A bipartisan bill introduced Thursday aims to protect actors, singers and other performers from generative artificial intelligence (AI) digital replicas.
The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act would hold individuals or companies liable for producing unauthorized digital replicas of individuals in a performance, along with platforms that host such content.
The bill would exclude certain digital replicas from liability based on First Amendment protections. For example, replicas for news or sports broadcasts, documentaries or historical work, or satire or parody are exempted.
The bill is sponsored by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
The proposal follows growing concerns over threats from generative AI to creators.
In one high-profile example, an AI-generated song was created using the likenesses of Drake and The Weeknd.
It was streamed millions of times across platforms before it disappeared after requests from the artists’ label, Vice reported.
Concerns around AI and using performers’ likenesses have also emerged as part of the SAG-AFTRA actors strike against major studios.
The European Union launched a probe Thursday into X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, over the handling of content about the war in Israel and Gaza. The move to investigate the platform owned by Elon Musk is the most significant action taken by the EU under its new Digital Services Act, which aims to restrict the spread of illegal content and disinformation across social media platforms. How Musk’s X is amplifying …
Viewership of NPR’s digital journalism has decreased only slightly as a result of the company’s decision to get off X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. According to an internal audience metrics memo sent to NPR staffers in August that was obtained by The Hill, the organization has seen what its leaders said was an “expected small decline” in audience “relative to our owned and operated, …
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has removed hundreds of accounts linked to Palestinian militant group Hamas after the attacks on Israel, the CEO confirmed. In a letter to Thierry Breton, the European Union (EU)’s Commission for Internal Market, X CEO Linda Yaccarino laid out a series of steps the platform has taken in recent days to “protect the public conservation,” ensure access to real-time information …
News we’ve flagged from the intersection of tech and other topics:
AI audio spreads on TikTok
Audio generated by AI technology, including one clip in the likeness of former President Obama’s voice, is spreading on TikTok without labels, The New York Times reported.
Threads rolls out edit tool
Meta’s Threads platform will let users edit their posts, a feature that rival company X requires users to pay for, The Verge reported.
Google will defend GenAI users from copyright claims
Google said it will defend users of its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology from copyright claims, amid a wave of recent lawsuits, Reuters reported.
In Other News
Branch out with other reads on The Hill:
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer fails to hurt credibility of the government’s star witness at fraud trial
NEW YORK (AP) — Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer did little to dent the credibility of the government’s key witness in the former crypto mogul’s fraud trial Thursday, meandering through a cross-examination of Caroline Ellison that at times left even the judge puzzled and impatient. During the …
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — TikTok and Montana faced off in federal court on Thursday in a case filed by the video sharing app and five Montana content creators who want the court to temporarily block the state’s ban on the platform before it takes effect Jan. 1. Attorneys for TikTok and the content creators …
Progressives are facing backlash over their initial responses to the attacks on Israel by Hamas militants, revealing the degree to which they’re at … Read more
Around 2,300 lives have been lost as of Wednesday evening in Israel and Gaza in a sequence of horrific events that began with a surprise attack by … Read more
