© Mark Ghuneim 1.31.2024
Reading on: Deepfakes, Watermarks, Copyright and the Generative AI Supply Chain and Trademark Law
AI companies agree to limit election ‘deepfakes’ but fall short of ban (wapo) Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, TikTok and Adobe developed an accord to respond to the proliferation of AI-generated content in elections Related reading from Axios
Researchers Tested AI Watermarks—and Broke All of Them
Talkin’ ‘Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain – Katherine Lee* A. Feder Cooper† James Grimmelmann‡
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Patent and Trademark Office
Inventorship Guidance for AI-assisted Inventions
Remarks of Benjamin Wiseman at the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology on Worker Surveillance and AI
Sound
Purple Mountains – Snow is Falling in Manhattan
Vision
Art+Technology: Raphaela Vogel
In the Expanded Penalty Box: Did You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Fox?
January 11 – February 17, 2024 Petzel, NYC
Petzel is pleased to present In the Expanded Penalty Box: Did You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Fox?, an interdisciplinary exhibition of new works by Berlin-based artist Raphaela Vogel, in which she unfolds her enigmatic form repertoire beyond aesthetic orthodoxies. The show marks Vogel’s first exhibition with the gallery, as well as her first solo exhibition in the US, and will be on view from January 11 to February 17, 2024, at Petzel’s Chelsea location at 520 West 25th Street.
Through surrealistic and autobiographically composed environments, Vogel deals with power dynamics ranging from questions of gender to human-animal and machine relations. Here, phallic forms of spatial production and the urges of male voyeurism are confronted by Vogel’s highly subjective camera and occupation of space. Her installations and video collages often feature metal sounds, drones, field recordings, pop songs, and singing hooligans sampled from Vogel’s own cultural memory. The artist’s ambiguous play with received notions of architectural and artistic mastery is reflected in the employment of readymades associated with the public realm: steel girders, cars, urinals, or heraldic statues. These symbols of power are often paired with visceral white polyurethane sculptures and painterly stretched animal skins, transforming the virile rectangular predominant in architecture and painting into triangular bodily objects.
In the Expanded Penalty Box: Did You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Fox? interlocks new hallucinogenic video collages, sculptural monumentalism, and ritualistic paintings with questions of intersubjectivity, technogenesis, and a culture of remembrance. The center of the gallery is occupied by a retrofuturistic apparatus. This 360-degree 3D scanner functions as a panoptic confessional for exhibitionist self-monitoring where visitors can become masters and servants of themselves: a metaphorical penalty box of another kind. Once inside, in a fraction of a second, 70 single-lens reflex cameras capture every detail and angle of a body. But only for a fleeting moment do the scanned pictorial fractures of oneself pop up on a screen in order to vanish again without being stored in the digital ether.
Content, Reach and Manipulated Media
Watermarks and audit trails are not a solution to manipulated media. Face swapping does not care about provenance, it cares about reach.
Standards being put in-place now at the hardware level would have to become a filter at the display level unilaterally worldwide. There are always work arounds. Right now Yandex is providing the search results X is trying to stem.
How exactly does any of this go back into the bottle? It doesn’t. Reach is not just viral anymore it’s predatory, built on the scaffolding of ad-tech and social networks DAU’s OKRs, click bait, influencers and all the rest of the video horror show.
It’s almost like reach has become disintermediated from intent and original message and it becomes the content. The content that can achieve reach –– based on the current social-eco-political-pop-cutural landscape conditions.
This nightmare manifested itself with the Taylor Swift manipulations. Good on her fans to understand search is about results, and flooding that field with theirs. They also understood that the demand of ‘reach’ would be driving it right then.
Engagement needs to be removed as a metric that recommendation is based on. The content-reach-outrage troika knows no boundaries. It does not care about block chains, visible or invisible watermarks.
Legal & Legislative AI Tracker
MAIN SEQUENCE, LTD., JEROLD HAMZA as executor for the ESTATE OF GEORGE CARLIN, andJEROLD HAMZA in his individual capacity, Plaintiffs, v. DUDESY, LLC, WILL SASSO, CHAD KULTGEN, and JOHN DOES 1-20,
FTC Launches Inquiry into Generative AI Investments and Partnerships
Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL LAYING DOWN HARMONISED RULES ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ACT) AND AMENDING CERTAIN UNION LEGISLATIVE ACTS 2021/0106(COD) DRAFT [Final draft as updated on 21/01] 21-01-2024 at 17h11
Case Tracker: Artificial Intelligence, Copyrights and Class Actions.
EU AI Act Final Text
Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL LAYING
DOWN HARMONISED RULES ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ACT)
AND AMENDING CERTAIN UNION LEGISLATIVE ACTS
2021/0106(COD)
DRAFT [Final draft as updated on 21/01]
21-01-2024 at 17h11
M.E.D. Vol. 30 No. 15
WEF Panel – The Expanding Universe of Generative Models – Speakers: Yann LeCun, Nicholas Thompson, Kai-Fu Lee, Daphne Koller, Andrew Ng, Aidan Gomez
Artificial intelligence (AI) – despite important consequences on job re-organization and potential replacement of some positions – will lead to the emergence of a range of new roles, outlines the newly released Future of Growth Report 2024.
IMF Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work IMF Staff Discussion Notes (SDNs) showcase policy-related analysis and research being developed by IMF staff members and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate.
Tether stable coin – the coin for Casinos, Money Laundering, Underground Banking, and
Transnational Organized Crime in East and Southeast Asia: – A Hidden and Accelerating Threat
Databroker Watch. Tracking and mapping the data broker ecosystem
Artisans bring AI tools to the workbench (FT) Forward-thinking designers are willing to embrace the technology — without relinquishing human creativity’s central role.
Dreamtalk Given any audio (text or song) and a single image frame, it generates a lip-synced animated video, copying the “expression” of a style reference.
M2UGen: Multi-modal Music Understanding and Generation with the Power of Large Language Models
Genuary Art: Generative Coding Challenge
It’s Genuary! The annual event that brings together artists, coders, and enthusiasts of generative art from around the globe. It focuses on the creation of art through algorithms, coding, and computational methods. The event typically runs throughout January, offering a unique prompt each day to inspire participants. Genuary is more than just a challenge; it’s a community-driven initiative that celebrates creativity, innovation, and the intersection of art and technology.
Genuary, which first emerged in 2021, was born from a compelling and straightforward vision: to kick off each new year with a wave of creativity within the generative art scene. Daily prompts, released each day of January. These prompts are deliberately broad, inviting a variety of interpretations and creative outputs. Artists and coders, regardless of their experience level, are welcomed to take part. The event is accessible and inclusive, with no entry fees or formal sign-ups required. Submissions predominantly find their home on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, where they’re tagged with #Genuary2024, allowing others to easily find and engage with the work. I have been archiving each day and concatenate them into a single video reel. Example below Genuary 05 2024 In the style of Vera Molnár (1924 2023). Today’s prompt is – Genuary 11 – In the style of Anni Albers (1899-1994) Just incredible, come on!
For those interested in exploring or participating in Genuary check Genuary Official, the primary hub for prompts, guidelines, and a gallery of submissions. On social media, following the hashtag #Genuary2024 on Twitter and Instagram.
Music Streaming 2023 Reports – No Tail, No Royalties
158 million tracks had 1,000 plays or fewer on music streaming services last year. 45 million had no plays at all.
From Entertainment Industry Trend Reports – Luminate Data
This MBW article notes that Spotify will no longer pay royalties to tracks that have attracted fewer than 1,000 plays on its platform in the prior 12 months. That means 45.6 million tracks received nada, nothing. The distribution of attention is not new the bright line delineating the long-tail from the no-tail is.
Included in the Luminate deck is this slide on non music streaming. —- Be mindful of what you visually and audibly consume
Other industry snapshots.
Music Impact Report Exploring TikTok’s Impact on:
• Music Discovery , • Music Streaming
• Non-Digital Revenues, • Global Music Listening
This is Music 2023 (UK Music)
This is Music 2023 is the latest iteration of a series of reports that started back in December 2013, with the rather perfunctory named The Economic Contribution of the Core UK Music Industry.
AI Media Assets – Safe Storage
Highlighted the provision for safe storage of voice assets
SAG-AFTRA Signs Deal With Voiceover Studio for AI Use in Video Games
Editors note: Safe storage of AI assets, is not just a deal term, it’s a carrying cost.
Custody may be costly over time.