An anonymous reader shares a report: Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world. While its algorithmic recommendations aren't necessarily the reason, its reach has meant that hundreds of millions of people are being fed a steady diet of music curated by a machine. Spotify's goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to her by a former Spotify employee in which Daniel Ek said, "our only competitor is silence."

According to this employee, Spotify leadership didn't see themselves as a music company, but as a time filler. The employee explained that, "the vast majority of music listeners, they're not really interested in listening to music per se. They just need a soundtrack to a moment in their day." Simply providing a soundtrack to your day might seem innocent enough, but it informs how Spotify's algorithm works. Its goal isn't to help you discover new music, its goal is simply to keep you listening for as long as possible. It serves up the safest songs possible to keep you from pressing stop.

The company even went so far as to partner with music library services and production companies under a program called Perfect Fit Content, or PFC. This saw the creation of fake or "ghost" artists that flooded Spotify with songs that were specifically designed to be pleasant and ignorable. It's music as content, not art. [...] Artists, especially new ones trying to break through, actually started changing how they composed to play better in the algorithmically driven streaming era. Songs got shorter, albums got longer, and intros went away. The hook got pushed to the front of the song to try to grab listeners' attention immediately, and things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music. The palette of sounds artists pulled from got smaller, arrangements became more simplified, pop music flattened.

The nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation is making thousands of historic songs accessible to the public for free through a new partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The songs represent "some of the rarest and most uniquely American music borne from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression," according to the university, and classic blues recordings or tracks by Fiddlin' John Carson and his daughter Moonshine Kate "would have likely been lost to landfills and faded from memory."

Launched in 1999 by Lance and April Ledbetter, Dust-to-Digital focused on preserving hard-to-find music. Originally a commercial label producing high-quality box sets (along with CDs, records, and books), it established a nonprofit foundation in 2010, working closely with collectors to digitize and preserve record collections. And there's an interesting story about how they became familiar with library curator David Seubert... Once a relationship is established, Dust-to-Digital sets up special turntables and laptops in a collector's home, with paid technicians painstakingly digitizing and labeling each record, one song at a time. Depending on the size of the collection, the process can take months, even years... In 2006, they heard about Seubert's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project getting "slashdotted," a term that describes when a website crashes or receives a sudden and debilitating spike in traffic after being mentioned in an article on Slashdot.
Here in 2025, the university's library already has over 50,000 songs in a Special Research Collections, which they've been uploading it to a Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) database. ("Recordings in the public domain are also available for free download, in keeping with the UCSB Library's mission for open access.") Over 5,000 more songs from Dust-to-Digital have already been added, says library curator Seubert, and "Thousands more are in the pipeline."

One interest detail? The bulk of the new songs come from Joe Bussard, a man whose 75-year obsession with record collecting earned him the name "the king of the record collectors and "the saint of 78s".

The new series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, Pluribus, was emphatically made by humans, not AI, reports TechCrunch: If you watched all the way to the end of the new Apple TV show "Pluribus," you may have noticed an unusual disclaimer in the credits: "This show was made by humans." That terse message — placed right below a note that "animal wranglers were on set to ensure animal safety" — could potentially provide a model for other filmmakers seeking to highlight that their work was made without the use of generative AI.
In fact, yesterday the former X-Files writer told Variety "I hate AI. AI is the world's most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine...." He goes on, about how AI-generated content is "like a cow chewing its cud — an endlessly regurgitated loop of nonsense," and how the U.S. will fail to regulate the technology because of an arms race with China. He works himself up until he's laughing again, proclaiming: "Thank you, Silicon Valley! Yet again, you've fucked up the world."
He also says "there's a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit," according to the article. "It's basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world's first trillionaires. I think they're selling a bag of vapor."

And earlier this week he told Polygon that he hasn't used ChatGPT "because, as of yet, no one has held a shotgun to my head and made me do it." (Adding "I will never use it.")

Time magazine called Thursday's two-episode premiere "bonkers." Though ironically, that premiere hit its own dystopian glitch. "After months of buildup and an omnipresent advertising campaign, Apple's much-anticipated new show Pluribus made its debut..." reports Macworld. "And the service promptly suffered a major outage across the U.S. and Canada." As reported by Bloomberg and others, users started to report that the service had crashed at around 10:30 p.m. ET, shortly after Apple made the first two episodes of the show available to stream. There were almost 13,000 reports on Downdetector before Apple acknowledged the problem on its System Status page. Reports say the outage was brief, lasting less than an hour...

[T]here remains a Resolved Outage note on Apple TV (simply saying "Some users were affected; users experienced a problem with Apple TV" between 10:29 and 11.38 p.m.), as well as on Apple Music and Apple Arcade, which also went down at the same time. Social media reports indicated that the outage was widespread.

The Verge's Ash Parrish writes: Nintendo has released a new store app on Android and iOS giving users the ability to purchase hardware, accessories, and games for the Switch and Switch 2. When I open my phone and scroll down to the N's, I get a neat, full row dedicated entirely to Nintendo. That's four apps: the Switch app, the music app, the Nintendo Today news app, and now the store. (The tally increases to five if you're a parent using the Switch Parental Controls app.) And it is entirely too much.

Nintendo has always been the one company of the big three publishers that does its own thing, and that's worked both for and against it. The company hasn't chased development trends with the same zeal as Microsoft and Sony. That insulates Nintendo when those trends don't pan out, like exorbitant spending on live-service games that fail. But also hurts it when it comes to performance and user experience. Console-native voice chat, for example, has been a standard on other platforms for a long time, but was only offered on a Nintendo console with the Switch 2 this year.

With the deployment of these apps, Nintendo is both trying to innovate and playing catch-up with results that feel confusing and overwhelming. Do we really need four distinct apps? That's not to say these apps shouldn't exist; they serve valuable and necessary purposes. But when I look at all the programs I have to manage in my Nintendo life, it just feels like it's too much... Further reading: Nintendo Won't Shy Away From Continuing To 'Try Anything'

A new class-action lawsuit accuses Spotify of allowing billions of fraudulent Drake streams generated by bots between 2022 and 2025, allegedly inflating his royalties at the expense of other artists. "Spotify pays streaming royalties using a 'pro-rata' model based on an artist's market share," notes Consequence. "Each month, revenue from subscriptions and ads is collected into a single, fixed 'pot' of money, which is then distributed to rights holders based on their percentage of the platform's total streams. Because this pot is fixed, an artist who artificially inflates their numbers through bots would dilute the value of every legitimate stream. This allows them to take a larger share of the pot than they earned, effectively siphoning royalties that should have gone to other artists." From the report: According to Rolling Stone, the lawsuit alleges bot use is a widespread problem on Spotify. However, Drake is the only example named, based on "voluminous information" which the company "knows or should know" that proves a "substantial, non-trivial percentage" of his approximately 37 billion streams were "inauthentic and appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts."

The complaint claims this alleged fraudulent activity took place between "January 2022 and September 2025," with an examination of "abnormal VPN usage" revealing at least 250,000 streams of Drake's song "No Face" during a four-day period in 2024 were actually from Turkey "but were falsely geomapped through the coordinated use of VPNs to the United Kingdom in [an] attempt to obscure their origins." Other notable allegations in the lawsuit are that "a large percentage" of accounts were concentrated in areas where the population could not support such a high volume of streams, including those with "zero residential addresses." The suit also points to "significant and irregular uptick months" for Drake's songs long after their release, as well as a "slower and less dramatic" downtick in streams compared to other artists.

Noting a "staggering and irregular" streaming of Drake's music by individuals, the suit also claims there are a "massive amount of accounts" listening to his songs "23 hours a day." Less than 2% of those users account for "roughly 15 percent" of his streams. "Drake's music accumulated far higher total streams compared to other highly streamed artists, even though those artists had far more 'users' than Drake," the lawsuit concludes.

The Internet Archive celebrated archiving its trillionth webpage last month and received congratulations from San Francisco, which declared October 22 "Internet Archive Day." Senator Alex Padilla designated the nonprofit a federal depository library. The organization currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. But these victories arrived after years of bruising copyright battles that forced the removal of more than 500,000 books from the Archive's Open Library. "We survived, but it wiped out the Library," founder Brewster Kahle told ArsTechnica.

In 2024, the Archive lost its final appeal in a lawsuit brought by book publishers over its e-book lending model. Damages could have topped $400 million before publishers announced a confidential settlement. Last month, the organization settled another suit over its Great 78 Project after music publishers sought damages of up to $700 million. That settlement was also confidential. In both cases, the Archive's experts challenged publishers' estimates as massively inflated.

Kahle had envisioned the Open Library as a way for Wikipedia to link to book scans and help researchers reference e-books. The Archive wanted to deepen Wikipedia's authority as a research tool by surfacing information often buried in books. "That's what they really succeeded at -- to make sure that Wikipedia readers don't get access to books," Kahle said of the publishers. He thinks "the world became stupider" when the Open Library was gutted. The Archive is now expanding Democracy's Library, a free online compendium of government research and publications that will be linked in Wikipedia articles.

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli summarizes some news from Nerds.xyz: Creative Technology has launched Sound Blaster Re:Imagine, a modular, Linux-powered audio hub that reimagines the classic PC sound card for the modern age. The device acts as both a high-end digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and a customizable control deck that connects PCs, consoles, phones, and tablets in one setup.

Users can instantly switch inputs and outputs, while developers get full hardware access through an SDK for creating their own apps. It even supports AI-driven features like an on-device DJ, a revived "Dr. Sbaitso" speech synthesizer, and a built-in DOS emulator for retro gaming.

The Kickstarter campaign has already raised more than $150,000, far surpassing its initial goal of $15,000 with over 50 days remaining. Each unit ships with a modular "Horizon" base and swappable knobs, sliders, and buttons, while a larger "Vertex" version will unlock at a higher funding milestone.

Running an unspecified Linux build, Re:Imagine positions itself as both a nostalgic nod to Sound Blaster's roots and a new open platform for creators, gamers, and tinkerers.

Microsoft is bringing shared audio to Windows 11, allowing you to stream audio across two pairs of wireless headphones, speakers, earbuds, or hearing aids. From a report: The feature is built using the Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) audio codec, and it's rolling out in preview to Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev and Beta channels. Shared audio comes in handy if you're watching a movie on a laptop with your friend or family member, or just want to show them new music that you can both stream inside your own wireless headsets. You can use shared audio by connecting Bluetooth LE-supported devices to your Windows 11 PC and then selecting the Shared audio (preview) button in your quick settings menu. Microsoft introduced an LE Audio feature on Windows 11 in August, enabling higher audio quality while using a wireless headset in a game or call.

Universal Music Group has settled its copyright lawsuit with AI music startup Udio and struck a licensing deal to launch a new AI-powered music platform next year. The Verge reports: The deal includes some form of compensation and "will provide further revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters," Universal says. Udio, the company behind "BBL Drizzy," will launch the platform as a subscription service next year. Universal, alongside other industry giants Sony and Warner, sued Udio and another startup Suno for "en masse" copyright infringement last year.

Universal -- whose roster includes some of the world's biggest performers like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, and Ariana Grande -- says the new tool will "transform the user engagement experience" and let creators customize, stream, and share music. There's no indication of how much it will cost yet. Udio's existing music maker, which lets you create new songs with a few words, will remain available during the transition, though content will be held "within a walled garden" and security measures like fingerprinting will be added.

Blogger and technologist Anil Dash, writing about OpenAI's recently launched browser, Atlas: When I first got Atlas up and running, I tried giving it the easiest and most obvious tasks I could possibly give it. I looked up "Taylor Swift showgirl" to see if it would give me links to videos or playlists to watch or listen to the most popular music on the charts right now; this has to be just about the easiest possible prompt.

The results that came back looked like a web page, but they weren't. Instead, what I got was something closer to a last-minute book report written by a kid who had mostly plagiarized Wikipedia. The response mentioned some basic biographical information and had a few photos. Now we know that AI tools are prone to this kind of confabulation, but this is new, because it felt like I was in a web browser, typing into a search box on the Internet. And here's what was most notable: there was no link to her website.

I had typed "Taylor Swift" in a browser, and the response had literally zero links to Taylor Swift's actual website. If you stayed within what Atlas generated, you would have no way of knowing that Taylor Swift has a website at all.

Unless you were an expert, you would almost certainly think I had typed in a search box and gotten back a web page with search results. But in reality, I had typed in a prompt box and gotten back a synthesized response that superficially resembles a web page, and it uses some web technologies to display its output. Instead of a list of links to websites that had information about the topic, it had bullet points describing things it thought I should know. There were a few footnotes buried within some of those response, but the clear intent was that I was meant to stay within the AI-generated results, trapped in that walled garden.

During its first run, there's a brief warning buried amidst all the other messages that says, "ChatGPT may give you inaccurate information", but nobody is going to think that means "sometimes this tool completely fabricates content, gives me a box that looks like a search box, and shows me the fabricated content in a display that looks like a web page when I type in the fake search box."

And it's not like the generated response is even that satisfying.

As it nears its 30th anniversary, Pitchfork is testing user reviews and comments in a major shift from its long-standing critic-only model. The site will now let readers rate albums and leave comments, combining those into an aggregated "reader score" alongside the official Pitchfork score. The Verge reports: Pitchfork has historically been a one-sided affair. While it ran the occasional reader poll, there was no way for readers to directly voice their opinion on the site. If you thought that Jet's Shine On deserved better than a 0.0 (first off, you're wrong), there was no way to let the author know other than shouting into the void of this new thing at the time called Twitter. Now the site is considering letting users comment directly on reviews and give albums scores of their own. And then those scores will be averaged up into a single reader score for each album.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: I realize that, at this point, there are already far too many shows. Every channel, every streaming service is teeming with content demanding your attention, and there are simply too few hours in the day to watch them all. However, with that in mind, may I recommend a new show called Space Live? There's only one episode. The only potential downside is that the episode literally lasts for ever. Actually, that's inaccurate. Space Live isn't a show, it's a channel. It launched on Wednesday morning, tucked away on ITVX, and consists only of live footage of Earth broadcast from the International Space Station. It's beguiling to watch, especially for anyone who didn't realize that a person can be awestruck and bored simultaneously.

It's billed as a world first. ITV has partnered with British space media company Sen to use live 4K footage from its proprietary SpaceTV-1 video camera system, mounted on the International Space Station, giving us three camera views: one of the station's docking ports, a horizon view able to show sunrises and storms, and a camera pointing straight down as the ISS passes across the planet. A tracker in the corner of the screen shows the live location of the ISS, while a real-time AI information feed provides facts about our geography and weather systems.

Of course, if you wanted to be picky, you could argue it isn't exactly new. Nasa's YouTube channel has been streaming live footage from the ISS for years, and uniformly draws an audience of a few thousand. But Space Live is, if nothing else, slightly snazzier. The footage is certainly nicer: at 8.30am on Wednesday, Space Live showed gorgeous images of the sun's glare bouncing off the sea around the Bay of Biscay, while all Nasa could offer was a piece of cloth with the word "Flap" written on it. There's even a soundtrack, a constant, soothing kind of hold music that loops and loops without ever becoming fully annoying. It's an improvement, in other words. And, at least for the first orbit, it is absolutely spellbinding.

Spotify has officially partnered with major record labels to create a "responsible AI" initiative aimed at developing generative music tools that supposedly benefit both artists and fans. While Spotify promises choice, transparency, and fair compensation, the vague announcement has many skeptics wondering if "responsible AI" is just another remix of old industry power plays set to a new algorithmic beat. The Verge reports: Spotify didn't detail any specific products in the works but said it was building a "state-of-the-art generative AI research lab and product team focused on developing technologies that reflect our principles and create breakthrough experiences for fans and artists." Most of the press release is dedicated to vagaries and laying out the principles that will guide Spotify's generative AI projects: [partnerships with record labels, distributors, and music publishers; choice in participation; fair compensation and new revenue; and artist-fan connection.]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Record labels Sony, Warner, and Universal yesterday asked the Supreme Court to help it boot pirates off the Internet. Sony and the other labels filed their brief (PDF) in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, a case involving the cable Internet service provider that rebuffed labels' demands for mass terminations of broadband subscribers accused of repeat copyright infringement. The Supreme Court's eventual decision in the case may determine whether Internet service providers must terminate the accounts of alleged pirates in order to avoid massive financial liability.

Cox has argued (PDF) that copyright-infringement notices -- which are generated by bots and flag users based on their IP addresses -- sent by record labels are unreliable. Cox said ISPs can't verify whether the notices are accurate and that terminating an account would punish every user in a household where only one person may have illegally downloaded copyrighted files. Record labels urged the Supreme Court to reject this argument.

"While Cox waxes poetic about the centrality of Internet access to modern life, it neglects to mention that it had no qualms about terminating 619,711 subscribers for nonpayment over the same period that it terminated just 32 for serial copyright abuse," the labels' brief said. "And while Cox stokes fears of innocent grandmothers and hospitals being tossed off the Internet for someone else's infringement, Cox put on zero evidence that any subscriber here fit that bill. By its own admission, the subscribers here were 'habitual offenders' Cox chose to retain because, unlike the vast multitude cut off for late payment, they contributed to Cox's bottom line." Record labels were referring to a portion of Cox's brief that said, "Grandma will be thrown off the Internet because Junior illegally downloaded a few songs on a visit."

"Amazon Echo Show owners are reporting an uptick in advertisements on their smart displays," reports Ars Technica. The company's Echo Show smart displays have previously shown ads through the company's Shopping Lists feature, as well as advertising for Alexa skills. Additionally, Echo Shows may play audio ads when users listen to Amazon Music on Alexa. However, reports on Reddit (examples here, here, and here) and from The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who owns more than one Echo Show, suggest that Amazon has increased the amount of ads it shows on its smart displays' home screens.

The Echo Show's apparent increase in ads is pushing people to stop using or even return their Echo Shows.
The article notes Amazon's smart displays have also started showing ads for Alexa+ — and The Verge's reporter saw ads on one (but not all) of her Echo Shows this week. (Even when the display is set to show personal photos, ads sometimes appear for herbal supplements, Quest sports chips, and tabletop picture frames.

Ars Technica notes that users "are unable to disable the home screen ads." When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: "Advertising is a small part of the experience, and it helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in..." Amazon declined to comment on whether it has increased Echo Show ad loads... According to Amazon, Echo Show home screen ads change based on how close someone is to the gadget. "When the customer is more than four feet away from their device, ads will display full-screen in rotation with other content such as weather, recipes, sports, and news..."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: This month, indie musicians in San Francisco gathered for a series of talks called Death to Spotify, where attenders explored "what it means to decentralize music discovery, production and listening from capitalist economies". The events, held at Bathers library, featured speakers from indie station KEXP, labels Cherub Dream Records and Dandy Boy Records, and DJ collectives No Bias and Amor Digital. What began as a small run of talks quickly sold out and drew international interest. People as far away as Barcelona and Bengaluru emailed the organizers asking how to host similar events.

The talks come as the global movement against Spotify edges into the mainstream. In January, music journalist Liz Pelly released Mood Machine, a critical history arguing the streaming company has ruined the industry and turned listeners into "passive, uninspired consumers". Spotify's model, she writes, depends on paying artists a pittance — less still if they agree to be "playlisted" on its Discovery mode, which rewards the kind of bland, coffee-shop muzak that fades neatly into the background... The Death to Spotify organizers say their goal is not necessarily to shut the app down. "We just want everyone to think a little bit harder about the ways they listen to music," says [event co-founder] Manasa Karthikeyan. "It just flattens culture at its core if we only stick to this algorithmically built comfort zone."
So the goal was "down with algorithmic listening, down with royalty theft, down with AI-generated music," according to the event's other co-founder, Stephanie Dukich.

Basically some artists "are questioning whether it's doing much for them," says a professor of music at the University of Texas at Austin. The article cites performers who are trying Spotify alternatives, like pop-rock songwriter Caroline Rose, who released her new album only on vinyl and Bandcamp. "I find it pretty lame that we put our heart and soul into something and then just put it online for free," Rose says.

"A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of starting the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes in January," reports the BBC.

"Evidence collected from Jonathan Rinderknecht's digital devices included an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city, justice department officials said." Mr Rinderknecht had been living and working in California, and moved to Florida shortly after the fire, according to authorities. The initial blaze Mr Rinderknecht allegedly started on New Year's Day was called the Lachman fire. Although it was quickly suppressed by firefighters, it continued to smoulder underground in the root structure of dense vegetation, according to investigators, before it flared up again above ground in a windstorm [nearly a week later]... He lit it with an open flame after he completed a ride as an Uber driver on New Year's Eve, according to the indictment.

Two passengers rode with Mr Rinderknecht earlier on New Year's Eve. One passenger told investigators he remembered the driver had appeared agitated and angry. Officials said they had used his phone data to pinpoint his location when the fire initially started on 1 January, but when they pressed him on details he allegedly lied to investigators, claiming he was near the bottom of the trail... The phone also showed that he repeatedly called 911 just after midnight on New Year's day, but could not get through because of patchy mobile reception on the trailhead. There was a screen recording of him trying to call emergency services and at one point being connected with a dispatcher. Mr Rinderknecht also asked ChatGPT: "Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?"

Investigators said the suspect wanted to "preserve evidence of himself trying to assist in the suppression of the fire". "He wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire," the indictment said... In July 2024, five months before he allegedly set the fire, Mr Rinderknecht asked ChatGPT to create an image of a "dystopian painting" that included a burning forest and a crowd of people running away from a fire, according to investigators.
The announcement from officials suggests they retrieved data about Rinderknecht's iPhone. It says after walking up the trailer Rinderknecht "listened to a rap song — to which he had listened repeatedly in previous days — whose music video included things being lit on fire."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bose will brick key features of its SoundTouch Wi-Fi speakers and soundbars soon. On Thursday, Bose informed customers that as of February 18, 2026, it will stop supporting the devices, and the devices' cloud-based features, including the companion app, will stop working. The SoundTouch app enabled numerous capabilities, including integrating music services, like Spotify and TuneIn, and the ability to program multiple speakers in different rooms to play the same audio simultaneously.

Bose has also said that some saved presets won't work and that users won't be able to change saved presets once the app is gone. Additionally, Bose will stop providing security updates for SoundTouch devices. The Framingham, Massachusetts-headquartered company noted to customers that the speakers will continue being able to play audio from a device connected via AUX or HDMI. Wireless playback will still work over Bluetooth; however, Bluetooth is known to introduce more latency than Wi-Fi connections. Affected customers can trade in their SoundTouch product for a credit worth up to $200.

In its notice sent to customers this week, Bose provided minimal explanation for end-of-life-ing its pricey SoundTouch speakers, saying: "Bose SoundTouch systems were introduced into the market in 2013. Technology has evolved since then, and we're no longer able to sustain the development and support of the cloud infrastructure that powers this older generation of products. We remain committed to creating new listening experiences for our customers built on modern technologies."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, Amazon launched a major update of its line of Alexa-enabled Echo smart speakers and displays. The redesign -- led by former Microsoft design chief Ralf Groene, whom Amazon Devices & Services head Panos Panay coaxed out of retirement -- included two new Echo Show smart displays. According to Panay, these new models are the first step on a road to building "products that customers love."

But there's one big barrier to customers loving their Echo Shows: ads. In recent months, full-screen display ads with the tag "sponsored" have been appearing on current Echo Shows, and users are not happy. They just started popping up on my device this week, and they are very intrusive, appearing between photos when the Show is set to Photo Frame mode or between content if it's set to show different categories (such as music, recipes, news). As I type, the last-gen Echo Show 8 on my desk showed an ad for an herbal supplement between a snapshot of my daughter dancing at her aunt's wedding and a baby picture of my son. The ad reappeared two photos later, and then again. And again.

If you upload an image to serve as the inspiration for an AI-generated video from OpenAI's Sora, "the app will reject your image if it detects a face — any face," writes Mashable." (Unless that person has agreed to participate.) All Sora videos also include a watermark, notes PC Magazine, and Sora banned the creation of AI-generated videos showing public figures.

"But it turns out the policy doesn't apply to dead celebrities..." Unlike lower-quality deepfakes, many of the Sora videos appear disturbingly realistic and accurately mimic the voices and facial expressions of deceased celebrities. Some of the clips even contain licensed music... [A]ccording to OpenAI, the videos are fair game. "We don't have a comment to add, but we do allow the generation of historical figures," the company tells PCMag.
CNBC reported Saturday that Sora users have also "flooded the platform with artificial intelligence-generated clips of popular brands and animated characters." They noted Sora generated videos with clearly-copyrighted characters like Ronald McDonald, Simpsons characters, Pikachu, Patrick Star from "SpongeBob SquarePants," and Pikachu. (as Cracked.com puts it, "Ever wish 'South Park' was two minutes long and not funny?")

OpenAI's "opt-out" policy for copyright holders was unusual, CNBC writes, since "Typically, third parties have to get explicit permission to use someone's work under copyright law"" (as explained by Jason Bloom, partner/chair of the intellectual property litigation practice group at law firm Haynes Boone). "You can't just post a notice to the public saying we're going to use everybody's works, unless you tell us not to," he said. "That's not how copyright works." "A lot of the videos that people are going to generate of these cartoon characters are going to infringe copyright," Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, said in an interview. "OpenAI is opening itself up to quite a lot of copyright lawsuits by doing this..."