1) Saw the One to One: John and Yoko documentary. It was, I thought, a clever way of creating one with very little new footage or audio recordings. It focuses on a 2 year period where they are in a small apartment in the Village and basically drops in bits about the two within a larger documentary weaving pop culture and political activity clips as if switching TV channels. ( Read more... )

2) Disney+ to Allow User-Generated Content Via AI. It's hard for me to imagine how this could possibly work. The only thing I can figure is that they plan to use a version of AI that is more like a choose your own adventure option, than something open to user input.

In other AI news however: "A staggering 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between artificial intelligence-generated and human-composed songs...underscoring growing concerns that AI could upend how music is created, consumed and monetized.

The findings of the survey, for which Ipsos polled 9,000 participants across eight countries, including the U.S., Britain and France...found that 73% of respondents supported disclosure when AI-generated tracks are recommended, 45% sought filtering options, and 40% said they would skip AI-generated songs entirely. Around 71% expressed surprise at their inability to distinguish between human-made and synthetic tracks." ( Read more... )

3) Big Tech banks on our laziness."Like any new technology, AI is a natural threat to these businesses, whose basic technology is already decades old. There’s a very real threat that a newcomer like OpenAI could mount a successful challenge to Google Search or Amazon Web Services. Yet, ingeniously, the platforms may manage to ward off AI challengers by using AI themselves to reinforce their dominance, protecting monopoly positions and justifying their large investments. Doing so depends, more than anything, on using AI to further increase our dependence and that sense of couchlock....( Read more... )

4) Webtoon Entertainment Inc. is partnering with Walt Disney to bring Star Wars and Marvel comics to Webtoon's English platform and with Warner Bros. Animation to co-produce animated series for global distribution.

5) Although this article focused on how many people want to listen to music made with AI, it was rather an interesting picture painted of how people consume music at all, what they know about artist pay, and what sorts of music related things they're willing to spend money on.

One thing I found personally interesting is that they either were not asked or did not respond, that a main way to encounter new music was via TV or movies, even though some of them mentioned that soundtracks were their favorite genre. I know it's been one of my big 3 ways for decades now.