Microsoft Layoffs, Mass Plagiarism, and More
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Activision supplier laid off 160 video game testers in Boise. They allege retaliation
More than 150 video game testers who worked at Lionbridge in Boise were laid off in April. The workers say they were fired in retaliation for trying to unionize. Lionbridge employees test and provide feedback on some of the most-anticipated video games long before they’re released to the public. The company has testing sites in Boise; Mexico City; and Warsaw, Poland.
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EFF ☛ How the FTC Can Make the Internet Safe for Chatbots
Between the hype, the lawmaking, the saber-rattling, the trillion-dollar market caps, and the predictions of impending civilizational collapse, the AI discussion has become as inevitable, as pro forma, and as content-free as asking how someone is or wishing them a nice day.
But Chair Khan didn’t treat the question as an excuse to launch into the policymaker’s verbal equivalent of a compulsory gymnastics exhibition.
Instead, she injected something genuinely new and exciting into the discussion, by proposing that the labor and privacy controversies in AI could be tackled using her existing regulatory authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA5).
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Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft Hey Hi (AI) CEO Mustafa Suleyman describes content on the open web as ‘freeware’
A prominent Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Corp. executive said that content on the open web is “freeware” in a recent discussion on whether artificial intelligence models may use such material. Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive officer of Abusive Monopolist Microsoft AI, made the remarks during a Tuesday interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival. backdoored Windows Central reported the discussion today. Following a question on whether “AI companies have effectively stolen the world’s IP,” Suleyman replied in the negative. He argued that AI models can use content on the open web because it’s effectively freeware, or intellectual [sic] property [sic] that can be used and modified at no charge.
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The Verge ☛ Perplexity’s grand theft AI
But Perplexity has taken it a step further with its Pages product, which creates a summary “report” based on those primary sources. It’s not just quoting a sentence or two to directly answer a user’s question — it’s creating an entire aggregated article, and it’s accurate in the sense that it is actively plagiarizing the sources it uses.
Forbes discovered Perplexity was dodging the publication’s paywall in order to provide a summary of an investigation the publication did of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s drone company. Though Forbes has a metered paywall on some of its work, the premium work — like that investigation — is behind a hard paywall. Not only did Perplexity somehow dodge the paywall but it barely cited the original investigation and ganked the original art to use for its report. (For those keeping track at home, the art thing is copyright infringement.)
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Stefan Judis ☛ Web content, the social contract and copyrights | Stefan Judis Web Development
Bloggers just want to blog. We prefer sharing thoughts and creating something of value over studying copyright licenses. And what should we do when someone violates our copyright? Should we go out and enforce it? Nobody ain't time for that!
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[Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Record labels file lawsuits against AI music generators Suno and Udio, alleging widespread copyright infringement
The two separate lawsuits against Suno and Udio allege that the AI companies have carried out “widespread infringement” of copyrighted sound recordings at an “almost unimaginable scale.”
Leading the lawsuits is the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents plaintiffs including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Inc. and Universal Music Group N.V. They argue that Suno and Udio have illegally copied famous songs and tracks created by their human artists to train their AI models to create music that will eventually “saturate the market” with machine-generated content. They believe that AI-generated music will ultimately compete with their own music, and perhaps one day overshadow the genuine, human-produced originals.
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VOA News ☛ News nonprofit sues ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft for 'exploitative' copyright infringement
The Center for Investigative Reporting said Thursday it has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its closest business partner, Microsoft, marking a new front in the news industry's fight against unauthorized use of its content on artificial intelligence platforms.
The nonprofit, which produces Mother Jones and Reveal, said that OpenAI used its content without permission and without offering compensation, violating copyrights on the organization's journalism. The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, describes OpenAI's business as "built on the exploitation of copyrighted works" and focuses on how AI-generated summaries of articles threaten publishers.
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Windows Central ☛ Microsoft says it's okay to steal content published on the web
Several ongoing lawsuits suggest that publishers do not agree with the take of Suleyman.
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Ruben Schade ☛ All web “content” is freeware
Easy gotchas aside, this rambling, incoherent interview was a fascinating and deeply revealing perspective into how managers are thinking. It’s dawning on them that they’ve lost the financial argument, because these models are unsustainable to anyone not selling the shovels. Model decay has revealed the emperor has no clothes when it comes to tools “learning” or “being inspired” as artists are. The general public are beginning to equate “AI generated” with low effort and low quality, coining a new term in the process. There are also indications that peak AI may already soon be upon us, given they’re rapidly exhausting their supply of organic material to train against.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ Everything is freeware
Microsoft AI CEO—how many CEOs does Microsoft need?—Mustafa Suleyman sure has an interesting take on the web. I guess all the people sailing the high seas feel vindicated now. I mean, he said it: content that’s already on the open web is fair use if you want to copy it. I’m sure this is exactly what he meant and I’m definitely not misinterpreting what he’s saying. After all, all these companies are trying hard to follow both the literal and also the spirit of the laws so it’s only fair for me to try hard to not misinterpret their views am I right?
I also love that he used the term freeware and not free. Because the wiki definition of Freeware reads: [...]
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Vox ☛ Why are AI search engines so bad? Will they get better?
This spring looked like a turning point for AI search, thanks to a couple of big announcements from major players in the space. One was that Google AI Overview update, and the other came from Perplexity, an AI search startup that’s already been labeled as a worthy alternative to Google. At the end of May, Perplexity launched a new feature called Pages that can create custom web pages full of information on one specific topic, like a smart friend who does your homework for you. Then Perplexity got caught plagiarizing. For AI search to work well, it seems, it has to cheat a little.
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NBC ☛ OpenAI’s Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot and Microsoft’s Copilot repeated a false claim about the presidential debate
Two of the most popular generative Hey Hi (AI) products, OpenAI’s Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot and Microsoft’s Copilot, regurgitated false information about Thursday’s presidential debate just hours after it first appeared online and was debunked.
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Bleeping Computer ☛ Microsoft pulls backdoored Windows 11 KB5039302 update causing reboot loops
Microsoft pulled the June backdoored Windows 11 KB5039302 update after finding that it causes some devices to restart repeatedly.