An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: App developer Elias Saba has had some bad luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which combines a web browser with a file manager, was suspended by Google Play in May after several Israeli TV companies complained that the app could be used to load a pirate website. Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. But Downloader has been suspended by Google Play again, and this time the reason is even harder to understand. Based on a vague DMCA notice, it appears that Downloader was suspended simply because it can load the Warner Bros. website. [...]

The notice includes a copy of the DMCA complaint, which came from MarkScan, a "digital asset protection" firm that content owners hire to enforce copyrights. MarkScan said in its complaint that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. A DMCA notice is supposed to identify and describe the copyrighted work that was infringed. But MarkScan's notice about Downloader identifies the copyrighted work only as "Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc." It provides no detail on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader. A DMCA notice is also supposed to provide an example of where someone can see "an authorized example of the work." In this field, MarkScan simply entered the main Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/. The Downloader app had been installed over 10 million times before the takedown, according to an Internet Archive capture taken before the latest suspension.

Saba appealed the takedown today, but he told us that the appeal was rejected by Google Play after 24 minutes. Saba said he also submitted a DMCA counter-notice, which gives the complainant 10 business days from today to file a legal action. After his first takedown in May, his app was reinstated after the DMCA complainant didn't take any legal action. Saba also wrote a blog post today about the latest takedown. "Given that my app still does not contain any copyright-infringing content and never has, I've countered this new DMCA takedown which will, hopefully, mean the app will be restored sometime in the coming weeks," he wrote. "In the meantime, you can sideload the app onto your Google TV or Android TV devices by downloading the APK from https://www.aftvnews.com/downloader.apk. Downloader remains available on Fire TV devices directly from the Amazon Appstore." Saba said it's "absurd that Google seems to make no effort at all to verify the copyright claims being made on my app which is just a web browser that can download files and has no content of any sort in it."

"If loading a website with infringing content in a standard web browser is enough to violate DMCA, then every browser in the Google Play Store including @googlechrome should also be removed," said Saba in May. "It's a ridiculous claim and an abuse of the DMCA."

Global pay TV penetration (the number of pay TV subscriptions relative to the number of households) is set to decline for the first time ever in 2024 following a peak penetration of 60.3% in Q4 2023. This decline will continue into the forecast period, with a drop of almost 4 percentage points by the end of 2028, according to Ampere's latest forecasts, which cover 96 markets. From a report: This decline in pay TV penetration has been driven primarily by the Americas, and in particular North America which has seen its pay TV penetration almost halve from a high of 84% in 2009 to 45% in 2023. In the case of North America, this drop has been caused by a combination of high costs (currently over $90 per month) and competition from a mature SVoD market which is driving customers increasingly to cut the cord.

However, the recent distribution deal between Disney and Charter in the US, which saw select Disney streaming products bundled into Charter's TV packages, demonstrates that cable operators in the region remain a powerful force as distribution partners, giving streamers the ability to reach a larger and potentially untapped audience base. In addition to North America, Latin America has also shown large declines in pay TV penetration, with a drop of around 10 percentage points since its peak of 42% in 2016. On the contrary, the APAC and Europe have shown the highest penetration growth in recent years, with large gains coming from China, especially after China Mobile acquired an IPTV license in 2018. The growth in these regions has largely come from low-cost IPTV services which are often bundled into broadband packages for a low cost, and helps drive pay TV subscriptions in these areas. In Europe, markets such as Portugal, Serbia and Hungary are expected to see further growth in the forecast period.

A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. TorrentFreak reports: In a statement last week, Denmark's National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) announced that as part of a long-running investigation, a man was arrested on November 22 and then charged with copyright infringement offenses. NSK said its officers searched the home of a 47-year-old man in South Zealand (Sydsjaelland) and seized IT equipment in connection with illegal file-sharing and "copyright infringement of a particularly serious nature." "The case is about an organized network that has illegally shared extremely large quantities of films and TV series via file sharing services," said NSK Police Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek. While noting that NSK had no further information to offer at this time, Kelbaek said he was pleased that NSK had arrested another suspect believed to have played a 'significant role' in the unnamed network.

Last week's arrest was only the latest in a series of arrests carried out as part of the same long-running NSK investigation into the illegal distribution of movies and TV shows. In late August, NSK arrested four people on suspicion of sharing "extremely large quantities" of movies and TV shows. NSK raided addresses in South-West Jutland, North Zealand and Bornholmand. A 43-year old was arrested at the last location, but it's claimed he lives elsewhere. In common with last week's arrest, all were charged on suspicion of "particularly serious" copyright infringement offenses. In an almost identical statement to that issued last week, Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek said the case was about "an organized network that shares extremely large amounts of data, presumably in the form of films and series."

TorrentFreak sources report concerns that last week's arrest may be linked to Scene groups. Terminology used by NSK doesn't instantly rule that out and does seem to suggest something potentially more significant than other arrests over the past few years. According to NSK, the August arrests took place on August 28, 2023. Using information in Scene release databases we looked for Danish Scene groups and/or groups that were releasing Denmark-focused content before that date but then made no releases afterward; while that wouldn't provide conclusive proof that a group had been targeted, the method has proven useful in the past. While activity late August suggests nothing especially out of the ordinary, activity since the arrest last week stands in contrast. TF is informed that some groups may have gone dark simply out of an abundance of caution. It's also possible that the groups have nothing to release. Furthermore, there are many other global groups with no obvious links to Danish content or Denmark that also stopped releasing on November 21. The reasons for this are unknown but holidays in the United States may play a role.

Simon Sharwood reports via The Register: Amazon Web Services has announced the WorkSpaces Thin Client -- a device dedicated to connecting to its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a service offering and based on Amazon's own "Fire Cube" smart TV box. The $195 machine has the same hardware as the Fire Cube: the eight-core Arm-powered Amlogic POP1-G SoC, plus 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 10/100 ethernet, and a single USB-A 2.0 port. Bluetooth is included to connect other peripherals. A second HDMI output can be added by acquiring an $85 hub that also offers four more USB ports. Like the Fire TV Cube, the Thin Client also runs a modified cut of Android.

But there the similarities end. AWS created custom firmware and ripped out anything remotely related to running a consumer device, replacing it with software designed solely to create a secure connection between the device and desktops running in the Amazonian cloud. Amazon Business -- the B2B version of Jeff Bezos's digital souk -- will ship the device to your door, and charge it to your AWS bill. At least if you are in the USA. Europe will get the Thin Client in early 2024, and it'll eventually migrate elsewhere.

AWS decided to base the box on the Fire Cube because, according to a corporate blog post, AWS customers expressed a desire for cheaper and easier-to-maintain client devices. As AWS execs searched for a well-priced box, they considered the Fire TV Cube, found it fit the bill and noted it was already being made at scale. Keeping things in-house made sense, too. And so we find ourselves with AWS taking on established thin client providers. The cloudy concern is also keen to have a crack at the thick wedge of the enterprise PC market: call centers, payment processing centers, and other environments with lots of users and high staff turnover due to factors like seasonal demand for workers.

"Several of your films have explored artificial intelligence," Rolling Stone pointed out to 85-year-old Ridley Scott, before asking: "Does AI worry you?" Ridley Scott: I always thought the world would end up being run by two corporations, and I think we're headed in that direction. Tyrell Corp in Blade Runner probably owned 45-50% of the world, and one of his playthings was creating replication through DNA. Tyrell thinks he's god and in the first Blade Runner has made a Nexus female. And the Nexus female will have a limited lifespan because AI will get dangerous. We have to lock down AI. And I don't know how you're gonna lock it down. They have these discussions in the government, "How are we gonna lock down AI?" Are you fucking kidding? You're never gonna lock it down. Once it's out, it's out. If I'm designing AI, I'm going to design a computer whose first job is to design another computer that's cleverer than the first one. And when they get together, then you're in trouble, because then it can take over the whole electrical-monetary system in the world and switch it off. That's your first disaster. It's a technical hydrogen bomb. Think about what that would mean?

Rolling Stone: I wanted to ask you about what effect you think AI will have on Hollywood as it was a big sticking point in the writers' strike, in particular. One fear is that studios will plug a book into AI, have it crap out an "adaptation," and then pay actual screenwriters day rates to punch it up.

Ridley Scott: Yeah. They really have to not allow this, and I don't know how you can control it. Another AI expert said, "We are way over-panicking. Of course, I have a computer that can defeat a chess master in an hour because we can feed him every conceivable move from data, and it'll process 1,900 conceivable moves on what the person will do next in seconds, and the guy is in trouble." There's something non-creative about data. You're gonna get a painting created by a computer, but I like to believe — and I'm saying this without confidence — it won't work with anything particularly special that requires emotion or soul. With that said, I'm still worried about it.
The article also looks back more than 40 years, to when Ridley Scott was going to direct Dune in between filming Alien and Blade Runner. Scott says he had "a really good screenplay, had all the sets to go" — but the producer had wanted to save money by filiming it in Mexico City, and Scott "didn't love" the idea of spending a year there.

It was November 23rd of the year 1963 that Doctor Who first premiered on the BBC. And the many years since then have wrought their changes, writes the BBC: Events on screen and off have shaped the character's personality, their face changing to reflect Britain itself, and every version building on what has gone before. To truly understand Who, you have to know your history...

[T]he series was originally intended to teach children history as much as thrill them... [T]he Daleks were shouty miniaturised tanks, terrifying to a nation that had lived through World War 2... Scripts by the likes of Douglas Adams (who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) leaned into the show's inherent strangeness... Interestingly, the new specials and series involve Marvel-owner Disney, who will stream it outside the UK and Ireland, in turn helping boost the budget.
The article handily summarizes the last 60 years. ("Perhaps the most shocking revelation of [2010 showrunner Steven Moffat's] tenure was a hitherto unseen, past version of the Doctor, played by John Hurt. Other writers would take this idea and run with it...") The article ends with the words, "Only time will tell."

And elsewhere another BBC article notes that today "the TARDIS is set to return to BBC One and iPlayer." With David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Catherine Tate reprising her role as Donna Noble the popular duo will make their spectacular return to mark the show's 60th anniversary with three special episodes running each Saturday from the 25th November...

Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker [is] set to cause all kinds of mayhem. It's going to be an unmissable cosmic adventure, all before Ncuti Gatwa gets the keys to the TARDIS over the festive season.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,972) for sharing the article.

As 2023 slowly comes to an end I wondered what your picks are for the best movies and TV shows that came out this year. What films or series did you enjoy the most? Share your favorites and why you think they stand out above the rest.

OLED monitors risk burn-in, especially with static images. Newer models combat this using improved materials, algorithms, efficiencies, features, and heat management. However, long-term data is minimal as quality selection is recent. An unexpected quirk applies to ultrawides: playing 16:9 content creates brighter center areas versus darker sides, quickening OLED degradation. In an extreme test by RTINGS, Samsung ultrawides developed heavy differential wear in just 700 hours. ArsTechnica adds: Even OLED monitors that have already been released can see their capabilities change in a way that could impact burn-in risk. For example, the Odyssey G8 monitor got a firmware update in August that removed the ability to use the Peak Brightness setting in SDR mode. While this is just one specific mode that, again, some users might not use, it's worth noting how this could change the amount of wear an OLED monitor could see. RTINGS' review said that after the firmware update, the monitor's max luminance "when displaying a bright highlight in an SDR scene" went from 331 nits to 230 nits. Samsung hasn't confirmed the reasons for this change, but such changes highlight how OLED monitor burn-in risk can change from use to use and from update to update, across different products.

An anonymous reader writes: Christopher Nolan made headlines earlier this month when he took a playful jab at streaming platforms while discussing the upcoming home release of "Oppenheimer." The atomic bomb drama, which grossed a staggering $950 million in theaters worldwide, is hitting Blu-ray and other digital platforms this month. Nolan said at a recent "Oppenheimer" screening that it's important to own the film on Blu-ray so that "no evil streaming service can come steal it from you." He told The Washington Post in a follow-up interview: "It was a joke when I said it. But nothing's a joke when it's transcribed onto the internet. There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go," the director added.

Streamers have become notoriously known in the last year for pulling original titles from their platforms in order to license them out elsewhere and open up potential revenue streams. When such titles are streaming-only offerings, their removal makes it impossible to view the films elsewhere. Such was the case this year with the Disney+ movie "Crater," for instance. The streaming-only family adventure was pulled from Disney+ in June and could not be viewed anywhere until it was reissued as a digital release months later in September. For Nolan, owning physical media is the only way to combat such streaming trends. Guillermo del Toro agrees, having shared Nolan's recent quotes on X (formerly Twitter) and adding his own commentary on the issue. "Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility," del Toro wrote to his followers. "If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love...you are the custodian of those films for generations to come."

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a startup in a garage through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, has resigned, according to an email sent to employees Sunday evening...

The executive shakeup comes a less than a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permits to operate self-driving vehicles on public roads after an October 2 incident that saw a pedestrian — who had been initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi — run over and dragged 20 feet by the AV. A video, which TechCrunch also viewed, showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman. The DMV's order of suspension stated that Cruise withheld about seven seconds of video footage, which showed the robotaxi then attempting to pull over and subsequently dragging the woman 20 feet... [M]ore layoffs are expected at the company that employs about 4,000 full-time employees.
TechCrunch notes that Vogt previously co-founded Justin.tv Socialcam, Twitch, and shares this quote from an email that Vogt sent to all employees Sunday evening. "The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future...

"The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we've proven there is something far better around the corner."

Today saw the end of IFComp.org's 29th annual text adventure competition (now administered by the charitable non-profit IF Technology Foundation). 74 new and original text adventures competed for a share of the $7,523 prize pool, with the winners announced in a special online ceremony on Twitch this afternoon.

After all the votes were tabulated, the winning game was Dr Ludwig and the Devil, a 90-minute epic in which an esteemed mad scientist tries to double-cross Beelzebub himself — along with "the world's least effective torch and pitchfork-wielding mob!" Coming in second was LAKE Adventure. (Its premise? That it's a 13-year-old's 1993 game being revisited by its author 28 years later — complete with some gloriously retro artwork.) And finishing third was The Little Match Girl 4 (described as "a touching epic time travel fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.")

But also this week, the owner of the web site 80sNostalgia.com has created a text adventure using nothing but inter-linked posts on Threads.

"Think you can get under The Bridge?" its first post challenges. "Test your gaming skills with this Threads exclusive text-based game!

"And then try to get your head around got much work it took to make it..."

Amazon will eliminate several hundred roles in its Alexa division as part of a broader shift in priorities and a focus on developing new forms of artificial intelligence, according to an internal memo sent to employees Friday morning. From a report: "As we continue to invent, we're shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers -- which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI," wrote Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, in the memo, obtained by GeekWire. "These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated."

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy revealed a crypto plan today that aims to protect core aspects of the industry, including software developers and unhosted digital wallets. CoinDesk reports: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has a message for most of the employees at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if he's elected to the White House: You're fired. And everybody still left at their desks would need to back off the crypto industry, according to the candidate's new policy strategy for U.S. digital assets. Most cryptocurrencies are commodities that are none of the SEC's business, according to Ramaswamy's crypto plan shared with CoinDesk on Thursday and set for public release at the North American Blockchain Summit in Texas. The pharmaceutical entrepreneur remains among the top four GOP candidates, maintaining 5% support in a dwindling field dominated by former President Donald Trump, according to polling data.

One issue that separates him from other candidates is his enthusiastic support of crypto as a financial innovation. He argues that the sector needs to have several freedoms protected: the right to code as a First Amendment freedom that should shield software developers from criminal or enforcement vulnerability, the right to maintain self-hosted digital wallets outside the reach of regulators and the right to know how each new virtual asset will be treated by the government. "A big part of what we're missing today is clarity from our regulators," Ramaswamy said in an interview with CoinDesk TV. "What we're going to have is rescinding any of those regulations that are allowing the regulatory state to go after perfectly legal behavior, but by claiming that somehow it shouldn't exist because they don't like it. All of that can end on my watch."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: A group of lawmakers from a House of Representatives committee wants Apple, like many Jon Stewart enthusiasts, to explain why its streaming arm abruptly canceled the talk show The Problem With Jon Stewart. The current affairs TV series hosted by Jon Stewart briefly made its debut on Apple TV+ in 2021 but its time on air ended when the show received the ax for a third season, reportedly due to "disagreements" over show topics.

According to Reuters, Lawmakers want to know if the show's coverage and criticism of China has anything to do with the show's cancellation. The government officials have asked Apple to speak on the issue by Dec 15, 2023. In a letter to the tech giant, the House members wrote that while Apple has the right to determine what content it deems appropriate for its platform, "the coercive tactics of a foreign power should not be directly or indirectly influencing these determinations." This effort is bipartisan, with members from both Republican and Democratic parties affiliated with the House of Representatives' Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party.

An anonymous reader writes: A newspaper run by the Communist Party of Vietnam is reporting the "disappearance" of a number of popular channels from pay TV packages. Citing National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild as examples, the paper notes they're owned by Disney. Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is said to be "concerned" that the withdrawal will allow piracy to run rampant in Vietnam. Multiple high-level trade reports in the U.S. note that piracy has been rampant for years.

Jay Peters reports via The Verge: Amazon is cutting "just over" 180 jobs in its games division and making some changes to its games initiatives, according to a memo sent to employees by VP of Amazon Games Christoph Hartmann. The changes include shutting down its Crown channel that streams on Twitch, closing its Game Growth effort that helps game makers market their products, and "refocusing" the work it does with its free games offered through Prime Gaming. "We are proud of the work the teams have been doing, pushing into new areas with weekly content on Crown Channel, and finding more ways to help publishers reach new audiences with Game Growth," Hartmann wrote. "But after further evaluation of our businesses, it became clear that we need focus our resources and efforts to deliver great games to players now and in the future." Reuters reported on the memo earlier on Monday, and you can read the full email, which Amazon shared with The Verge, at the end of this story.

As for Prime Gaming's free games, which you can access if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, "we've listened to our customers and we know delivering free games every month is what they want most, so we are refining our Prime benefit to increase our focus there," Hartmann wrote. Amazon spokesperson Brittney Hefner declined to share more specifics about what's changing.

Netflix's annual virtual event "Geeked Week" pre-announces its biggest upcoming shows. This year Netflix released a trailer for its upcoming adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, and for its new live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. (And there's also going to be some kind of live-action Stranger Things stage show opening in London in December.)

Variety noted the "explosive" new trailer for Zach Snyder's new "action-packed space opera" Rebel Moon. The film — which will also have a one-week theatrical run in December — takes place in the same universe as Snyder's Army of the Dead. But instead of being set in Las Vegas, "The story centers on a young woman living on the outskirts of a galaxy who must find a group of warriors to save the galaxy from an invasion from a tyrant."

The Verge pulled together a good rundown of all the other announcements — one of which involves Neil Gaiman: Following last year's The Sandman, Netflix is bringing even more beloved Neil Gaiman characters to the small screen. This time it's Dead Boy Detectives — which was originally slated to stream on Max — based on a crime-solving duo who made their debut in a Sandman comic in the '90s. The news was paired with the first trailer for the series, which shows off a pretty fun-looking supernatural whodunit...

Netflix says the new eight-episode series is part of its growing "Sandman universe"... with Gaiman serving as one of the executive producers. [Coming sometime in 2024]
They're also launching several animated series.

• Netflix released a short teaser for Terminator: the Anime Series.

• An animated new take on Ultraman.

• An animated He-Man reboot, Masters of the Universe: Revolution (with Mark Hamill providing the voice of Skeletor).

• An adult animated comedy series based on the card game Exploding Kittens. (The Verge writes that its trailer "features god in the body of a cat and a very confounding garage door" — and that there will also be an accompanying mobile game.)

• Netflix also has a new Chicken Run movie coming in December with its own tie-in game called Eggstraction.

This week the Verge's podcast Decoder interviewed former U.S. president Barack Obama for a discussion on "AI, free speech, and the future of the internet."

Obama warns that future copyright questions are just part of a larger issue. "If AI turns out to be as pervasive and as powerful as it's proponents expect — and I have to say the more I look into it, I think it is going to be that disruptive — we are going to have to think about not just intellectual property; we are going to have to think about jobs and the economy differently."

Specific issues may include the length of the work week and the fact that health insurance coverage is currently tied to employment — but it goes far beyond that: The broader question is going to be what happens when 10% of existing jobs now definitively can be done by some large language model or other variant of AI? And are we going to have to reexamine how we educate our kids and what jobs are going to be available...?

The truth of the matter is that during my presidency, there was I think a little bit of naivete, where people would say, you know, "The answer to lifting people out of poverty and making sure they have high enough wages is we're going to retrain them and we're going to educate them, and they should all become coders, because that's the future." Well, if AI's coding better than all but the very best coders? If ChatGPT can generate a research memo better than the third-, fourth-year associate — maybe not the partner, who's got a particular expertise or judgment? — now what are you telling young people coming up?
While Obama believes in the transformative potential of AI, "we have to be maybe a little more intentional about how our democracies interact with what is primarily being generated out of the private sector. What rules of the road are we setting up, and how can we make sure that we maximize the good and maybe minimize some of the bad?"

AI's impact will be a global problem, Obama believes, which may require "cross-border frameworks and standards and norms". (He expressed a hope that governments can educate the public on the idea that AI is "a tool, not a buddy".) During the 44-minute interview Obama predicted AI will ultimately force a "much more robust" public conversation about rules needed for social media — and that at least some of that pressure could come from how consumers interact with companies. (Obama also argues there will still be a market for products that don't just show you what you want to see.)

"One of Obama's worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI," writes the Verge's editor-in-chief in an article about the interview, "and you'll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right." You'll hear me get excited about a case called Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, a 1969 Supreme Court decision that said the government could impose something called the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television broadcasters because the public owns the airwaves and can thus impose requirements on how they're used. There's no similar framework for cable TV or the internet, which don't use public airwaves, and that makes them much harder, if not impossible, to regulate. Obama says he disagrees with the idea that social networks are something called "common carriers" that have to distribute all information equally.
Obama also applauded last month's newly-issued Executive Order from the White House, a hundred-page document which Obama calls important as "the beginning of building out a framework." We don't know all the problems that are going to arise out of this. We don't know all the promising potential of AI, but we're starting to put together the foundations for what we hope will be a smart framework for dealing with it... In talking to the companies themselves, they will acknowledge that their safety protocols and their testing regimens may not be where they need to be yet. I think it's entirely appropriate for us to plant a flag and say, "All right, frontier companies, you need to disclose what your safety protocols are to make sure that we don't have rogue programs going off and hacking into our financial system," for example. Tell us what tests you're using. Make sure that we have some independent verification that right now this stuff is working.

But that framework can't be a fixed framework. These models are developing so quickly that oversight and any regulatory framework is going to have to be flexible, and it's going to have to be nimble.

The longest actor's strike in Hollywood history ended with "groundbreaking" protections against the use of AI, reports CNN: Studios will have to provide informed consent for the creation of any kind of digital replica of a performer or background actor, with a specific description of the intended use, the union officials said. Compensation for the replica will vary. Notably, the contract also protects background performers from any use of their digital replica without their consent, SAG leadership said. [Even after they are deceased.]

Negotiations over using AI to create synthetic performers continued down to the wire. Union leadership said studios will have to gain consent for any actors whose facial features are used for the AI performer, the studios have to inform actors they're using AI, and the union can bargain over compensation for those affected by it.
The separate deal signed in September with the writer's guild "also includes assurances that AI cannot write or rewrite literary material," the article adds, "and will require AI-generated materials to be disclosed to writers." Now the president of the actor's union tells the Hollywood Reporter, "We got everything we wanted with the AI protections, which was key. Plus we're going to be meeting with the AMPTP [the entertainment industry's bargaining unit] twice a year to make sure that our finger remains on the pulse of the progress, and also to align ourselves on the same side with regard to federal regulations and protections against piracy."

And the union president underscored the importance of AI-related protections to Rolling Stone" "If we didn't get that package, then what are we doing? We're not really able to protect our members in the way that they needed to be protected... If we didn't get those barricades, what would it be in three years...?"

In the union's initial announcement of the tentative deal on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA promised it had secured a contract "of extraordinary scope" valued at more than $1 billion and "unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI."

Lowpass: Amazon has been working on a new operating system to replace Android on Fire TVs, smart displays and other connected devices, I have learned from talking to multiple sources with knowledge of these plans, as well as job listings and other materials referencing these efforts. Development of the new operating system, which is internally known as Vega, appears fairly advanced. The system has already been tested on Fire TV streaming adapters, and Amazon has told select partners about its plans to transition to a new application framework in the near future. A source with knowledge of the company's plans suggested that it could start shipping Vega on select Fire TV devices as early as next year.