"In a watershed moment for Hollywood and generative artificial intelligence, Disney said on Thursday that it would buy a $1 billion stake in OpenAI and bring its characters to Sora, the A.I. company’s short-form video platform.
A curated selection of videos made with Sora will be available to stream on Disney+ as part of the three-year deal, giving the streaming service a foothold in a type of content that younger audiences, in particular, enjoy viewing and that has proved powerful for competitors like YouTube and TikTok. Sora users will be able to start generating videos with Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Yoda early next year.
“The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling,” Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, said in a statement.
Disney is the first major Hollywood company to cross this particular Rubicon. Many actors, animators and writers have raised alarms about the possibility of A.I.-generated shows and movies replacing them en masse. So far, those fears have not come to pass, partly because companies like Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery have proceeded very slowly.
Disney and Universal, for instance, are suing Midjourney, an A.I. image generator, for allowing people to create images that “blatantly incorporate and copy” characters owned by the companies. Midjourney has rejected the claim, saying its actions fall under “fair use.”"
While big-upping this channel, another great one about the inherent dangers of monopolies/semi-monopolies & planned obsolescence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
Some might see this as political, & it partly is, but it's a crucial tech issue at its core.
Also, this is definitely a
@pluralistic topic. Cory Doctorow's written about this a lot in an essential way for clear understanding of the deep issues.
I'm attending the
@EUCommission's #NGIForum25 in Brussels today and am super happy to finally see essential #FOSS digital service providers being better represented in the policy debates, e.g. with speakers from
@Mastodon,
@xwiki and
@Taler-related projects. 🎉
Photo of conference room with panel speakers and audience members shown from the back.
"In an unprecedented move, the Japan Fair Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a cease-and-desist order against Google for violating the country's anti-monopoly law by forcing manufacturers to preinstall the company’s apps on their Android smartphones.
This is the first time that Japan has issued such an order against any of the major U.S. technology companies referred to collectively as GAFAM — Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
“By binding smartphone manufacturers and telecommunication carriers, Google has made it difficult for other competing search engine applications to be used on Android phones,” Saiko Nakajima, a senior investigator for digital platform operators at the commission, said.
“Google's conduct in this case has created a risk of impeding fair competition concerning transactions — thus, we have determined that this is an act in violation of the Antimonopoly Act,” she added."
This is a REALLY important article. We're entering the era of algorithmic fraud. FBI raids Cortland Management (corporate real estate management firm, rents out 85,000 units across 13 states) who used RealPage to increase rents nationwide by coordinating landlord pricing decisions and holding apartments off the market.