Everybody wants to rule the (AI) world
So many of the stories about generative AI are ultimately about control — who has it, who wants it, who deserves it.
That’s the common thread in the first ten links in today’s newsletter.
AdWeek’s Mark Stenberg reports that a handful of influential publishers “are preparing to opt out of Google Search” due to concerns about AI products “that are regurgitating their data without compensation.”
404 Media’s Samantha Cole reports that Patreon is partnering with Cloudflare “to block crawlers from stealing creators’ work to train AI models.”
The Guardian’s Sanya Mansoor writes that Meta “has sparked blowback from privacy advocates for allowing its new AI image maker to generate photos of users with public profiles by default.”
Deadline’s Glenn Garner says Hollywood’s biggest actors union, SAG-AFTRA, is urging its members to “take action to protect your likeness” by opting out of the Meta image maker. The talent agency CAA is also being outspoken about the matter. And numerous websites have published pieces explaining “how to stop Meta’s AI from using your photos.”
The WSJ’s Katherine Sayre reports that “a coalition of record-label and artist groups is pushing streaming giants” to label AI-generated songs, arguing that “fans want transparency.”
The Associated Press says it is joining a group of news organizations, the SPUR Coalition, that is seeking to set industry standards for AI licensing deals.
And that’s all just in the past 24 hours. All over the place, control is the theme.
“Lately, the only important question about a new large language model has been whether the Trump administration would allow anyone to use it,” Platformer’s Casey Newton writes. “On Thursday, though, not one but two notable models became available for use: GPT-5.6, from OpenAI, and Muse Spark 1.1 from Meta.” Mark Zuckerberg gave a rare interview to Bloomberg, talking about his new model.
He spoke about making sure “that you’re going to have very high-quality intelligence that is accessible to everyone.”
That sounds enticing to many, but evokes a sense of powerlessness in others, knowing how much control the tech companies have…
Hadas Gold writes: In their sweeping copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, The New York Times and co-plaintiffs like the New York Daily News are charging the AI giant with lying to the court and the public.
The outlets say OpenAI concealed evidence that it could search its own systems to determine whether copyrighted material had appeared in ChatGPT’s training data or outputs. The Times and its co-plaintiffs say they had sought those company records for two years, but that OpenAI claimed the searches would be “infeasible, burdensome, and invasive of users’ privacy.” An OpenAI engineer, however, revealed in a recent deposition that the company had already conducted such searches.
The Times and its co-plaintiffs are seeking sanctions from the court. If a judge rules in their favor, the jury in the case could be told of OpenAI’s alleged deception. An OpenAI spokesperson said in response, “As the Times’ case weakens and they’ve been forced to drop claims against us, they’re persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations.”
An AI detection company called Pangram ventured to answer that question using a Chrome browser extension and its own detection software. It found the “amount of AI content that users actually see in their day-to-day browsing is shockingly high,” 404 Media’s Jason Koebler writes:
“As much as 41% of longform written content seen by users on LinkedIn is likely to be fully AI-generated and roughly a third of longer posts on X are AI-generated; roughly one-in-ten longer Reddit and Substack posts are AI.”
>> In other news, Google “will now tell you if an ad was made with AI,” but you’ll have to go looking for the info, The Verge notes.
On Page One of today’s NYT…
The headline says “Foreign Actors Aim to Exploit Divide on A.I.” It’s unfortunately a classic example of a conniving disinformation campaign.
Steven Lee Myers and Dustin Volz write that “China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into ‘a domestic fracture point,’ according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.”
They note that the content is sometimes generated with AI tools, and “not all of the anti-AI content online has an overtly political purpose. Other actors appear to be exploiting the issue simply to build engagement.” One analyst calls it “rural rage bait…”
New this morning: Instagram and Facebook’s “addictive” designs, like the infinite scroll, “have put Meta in breach of the European Union’s digital laws, the EU concluded Friday in a preliminary report,” CNBC’s Sawdah Bhaimiya reports.
This is the second such finding against Meta by the EU Commission this year. “Meta is facing a fine of up to 6% of its total annual turnover if the Commission’s findings are confirmed…”
With its shares down 40% over the past year, the streaming king “is rethinking some of its core strategies to compete with rivals,” according to this exclusive WSJ report by Jessica Toonkel and Ben Fritz.
Specifically, Netflix execs “have recently discussed adding live channels that would continuously stream certain programs, or shows and films from a certain genre.” They have also “explored bundling other subscription-based streaming services, including NBCUniversal’s Peacock, into its offering.” Here’s that full piece…
As M.G. Siegler wrote last month, “it increasingly feels like Netflix and YouTube are on a collision course to be the main hub/UI of streaming.”
Another example of a streamer searching for a growth strategy in a hugely competitive market:
“Disney is exploring making some of its streaming content available at an unbeatable price: free,” James Faris reports for Business Insider. “Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon,” though he “didn’t share a timeline for this initiative or a sense of the scope.”
This year’s World Cup “has secured a prominent place in U.S. sports TV ratings history,” as The Athletic’s Dan Shanoff wrote.
Last night Fox Sports shared #s showing the overall viewership for the USA-Belgium match across both Fox and Telemundo’s platforms – an extraordinary 50.1 million viewers. The prior day’s Mexico-England match averaged 46.7 million. Those were “the most-watched non-NFL sports events in the U.S. since the 1994 Winter Olympics,” Fox said.
>> Related: LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig checked in on the ratings for James Corden’s late-night World Cup show on Fox…
What’s “the fastest way to find out the World Cup score? Old-fashioned radio,” writes Daniel Thomas in the FT today (gift link).
He reports that the BBC and ITV in the UK “are exploring technological advances to dramatically cut down” on the lag time for TV streams of World Cup matches. Viewers sometimes find out about a goal “from neighboring homes before it is shown on their own TV screens” since radio remains “the fastest to reach the home within a couple of seconds…”
On Wednesday, I led this newsletter with The Atlantic’s new cover story about “the end of reading.” (That piece remains #1 on the website’s most-read list, BTW.)
Yesterday, the NYT’s Alex Vadukul published a story that, to borrow from Nisha Chittal, is “a great palate cleanser” to The Atlantic’s assessment. The title: “Too Many Books?” It’s about Mendel Uminer, who was evicted from his Upper East Side studio apartment over the 10,000 books his landlord claimed constituted a fire hazard. Here’s a gift link to the lovely story…
>> The NYT “is launching a Twin Cities newsletter as part of a new local journalism initiative the publisher hopes can become a blueprint for expanding regional news coverage across the US,” A.J. Katz writes. (TheWrap)
>> Disney is touting its July 4 ratings, noting that ABC’s 24-hour special reached about 50 million Americans altogether. (THR)
>> Banijay Entertainment and All3Media have completed their merger, “creating a new London-based production and distribution giant that makes and sells shows including ‘The Traitors,’ ‘Big Brother,’ ‘MasterChef’ and ‘Peaky Blinders.’” (Deadline)
>> “New plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk’s AI company, SpaceXAI, allege that the company’s image-generation models were used to create child sexual abuse material and that the company failed to adequately share information about an alleged perpetrator with authorities,” Huo Jingnan reports. (NPR)
“Moana” “might be heading for choppy waters at the box office,” Variety’s Rebecca Rubin writes, with an estimated debut this weekend of “$60 million to $65 million.” Some are predicting “an even softer start around $40 million,” Rubin notes, “which would be catastrophic given that ‘Moana’ carries a massive $250 million production budget.”
>> Meanwhile, “Toy Story 5” has now grossed past the $800 million mark, Anthony D’Alessandro reports, making it “Pixar’s ninth all-time grossing movie.”
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.