GoKawiil
Tech News
Hasbro and the makers of Tetris found their intellectual property appropriated in government-produced propaganda content, prompting both companies to publicly clarify that their brands do not endorse the administration's messaging. The incidents mark a growing trend of copyright holders having to respond after official government accounts repurposed their imagery without permission.
Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group have amended their copyright lawsuit against AI music generator Suno, arguing its newly released v6 models still rely on infringing material. The labels claim Suno's own admission that v6 was trained partly on 'user interactions' with earlier models means it indirectly used previously scraped copyrighted recordings, potentially implicating over 60,000 songs.
Disney has hired Karandeep Anand, who recently led Character.AI, to serve as the company's first chief technology officer, reporting directly to CEO Josh D'Amaro. Anand will oversee enterprise technology and Disney's data and AI platforms, and is bringing several former Character.AI engineers with him. Disney is also promoting Adam Smith to a new Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer role for Disney Entertainment.
Newly unsealed portions of a legal brief in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft show internal admissions from both companies' executives. Microsoft's director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, reportedly called AI training data scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, described the chatbot as an 'existential threat' to publishers. The filing also cites data showing Copilot slashed click-through traffic to the Times by up to 93% compared to Bing search.
Newly unsealed court documents in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal admissions from both companies' executives. Microsoft's director of applied science Brent Hecht reportedly described AI training as the 'largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman acknowledged that generative AI products pose an 'existential threat' to publishers because they are increasingly substitutive of original content.
Copyright lawsuits by The New York Times, Ziff Davis and other publishers against OpenAI are moving into a new legal phase after discovery concluded, with both sides asking a federal court to rule on whether OpenAI's use of published material qualifies as fair use. Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah publicly criticized a Trump administration filing arguing licensing requirements would burden AI firms, contrasting the U.S. music industry's roughly $20 billion in annual royalties with OpenAI's projected $750 billion computing spend through 2030.
The White House deleted a Tetris-style browser game called 'Build The Wall' from its website days after The Tetris Company publicly objected to the unauthorized use of its game mechanics and look. The company said on X it had no involvement in creating the game and takes copyright infringement seriously. The White House has not explained the removal or responded to media inquiries.
The White House removed a browser game called 'Build the Wall' from its website after the Tetris Company said it had no involvement in the title and takes copyright infringement seriously. The game, which used block-stacking mechanics resembling Tetris, tasked players with building a wall to stop a 'zombie border siege' and drew criticism for its racist framing. The page now returns a 404 error, though another game on the site, Rio Run, which involves deporting immigrant characters, remains live.
The White House has taken down Build the Wall, a browser game styled after Tetris that had players stack bricks to construct a border wall, from its online arcade. The removal followed public criticism from The Tetris Company, which said it had no involvement in the game and cited copyright concerns over its close resemblance to Tetris.
The White House quietly removed 'Build the Wall,' a Tetris-inspired browser game from its new WhiteHouse.gov 'Arcade' section, after The Tetris Company publicly disavowed the game and warned it takes copyright infringement seriously. The game had players stack border-wall bricks to block pixelated 'zombies' representing migrants, but unlike real Tetris, completed lines never cleared, making every round end in a 'Border Breached' message. Other games in the same arcade, modeled on Flappy Bird and Snake, remain live.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming their journalism was used without permission to train AI models and is often reproduced verbatim in chatbot responses. Microsoft was named as a defendant because its Copilot tool relies on OpenAI's technology, and the outlets are seeking destruction of any copied works, datasets, and models built from them.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging their journalism was used without permission to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The suit claims these tools consume original reporting and generate imitative outputs that could financially undermine the news organizations that created the source material.