Some of the world’s largest streaming companies are combining forces to launch the industry’s first unified group. It’s called the Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA) and it’s led by some recognizable names.
The group is led by two former members of Congress acting as senior advisers: former Republican Rep Fred Upton and former Democratic FCC chair Mignon Clyburn.
Its board features some of the biggest streaming companies in the world, including Netflix, Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, Comcast’s Peacock, Disney, TelevisaUnivision and Univision’s ViX, plus smaller streamers such as Vault and Afroland.tv.
While a commissioner at the FCC, Clyburn was a vocal proponent the concept of net neutrality – the idea that consumers and businesses should be able to reach the online applications and services of their choosing without interference from their broadband provider. Essentially, supporting the proposition that all data and traffic that travels over the Internet should be treated equally.
It will be interesting to watch how the SIA approaches tackling or supporting proposed regulations being considered for online content providers.
FCC chair lends support to net-neutrality regulatory push
Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said last week that she would push to advance net-neutrality rules on America’s internet-service providers.
As noted above, net-neutrality rules are aimed at preventing internet providers from favoring some internet content over others, for instance through higher speeds. Cable giants successfully pushed for their repeal after the Obama Administration had established such rules, so the initiative to restore the rules is newsworthy.
ChatGPT is letting some users include images as part of a query now, and it allows for spoken rather than just typed instructions to the chatbot, which can also speak its answers.
As is the fact that Rosenworcel announced it after a third Democrat was sworn in to serve on the five-member commission, giving her party a 3-to-2 majority now.
ChatGPT and images
ChatGPT is letting some users include images as part of a query now, and it allows for spoken rather than just typed instructions to the chatbot, which can also speak its answers.
OpenAI has always planned on this “multimodal” approach, but the company wanted to ensure the new methods of input did not make it easier to bypass the company’s safety policies.
The new features will be available to ChatGPT Plus and enterprise customers and users can add an image to any text prompt, either by taking a new picture or uploading from a photo library.
Indemnifying customers for AI image use
Getty Images launched an AI tool last week that will give users access to a new artificial intelligence image-generating tool that can create pictures based on user prompts. It joined forces with Nvidia to do so – with Nvidia providing the processing power and technical expertise needed to train the models.
Getty joins businesses like Adobe (which also offers images and has partnered with Firefly) to indemnify customers using the images. This means it is potentially Getty that bears the brunt of any legal disputes surrounding the images created by the tool and not the customer.
Several legal challenges have been filed over material used to train cutting-edge AI systems, with some visual artists suing Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt for this reason. The courts have as yet to say whether the makers of AI software must compensate copyright-holders for material used to train their models.
Hundreds of state-level AI bills
Global software industry advocate BSA reports that state legislators introduced 191 more AI-related bills this year than in the previous two years combined – a 440% increase in the number of AI-related bills introduced in 2022.
These bills focused on multiple aspects of AI, including regulating specific AI use cases, requiring AI governance frameworks, creating inventories of states’ uses of AI, establishing task forces and committees, and addressing the state governments’ AI use.
Those bills originated in 31 different states, with California being the most active in the space, and Democrat-controlled ones in general offering more of them.
Despite the huge increase in bill introductions, only 29 bills passed at least one legislative chamber, and only 14 became law. Those ones enacted were related to deepfakes, government’s use of AI (including law enforcement) and the creation of task forces to study its use.
The need for AI regulation
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden warned world leaders of the potentially destabilizing impact of AI worldwide.
He urged governments to take immediate action to regulate AI development, warning that the rapid pace of advancement in AI technology could outpace their ability to ensure it is being used safely and safe and responsibly.
“The starting gun has been fired on a globally competitive race in which individual companies as well as countries will strive to push the boundaries as far and fast as possible,” Dowden warned attendees.