CREATIVES MUST READ: New laws on AI published. Plus we learn when Sora will be released by Open AI

Design Industry AI News

European Union Passes ‘World First’ AI Legislation That Safeguards Copyrighted Material

This is a HUGE development in the ongoing debate about AI and copyright. The EU has passed new laws that will come into effect in late April or May putting new obligations and?restrictions on AI companies. Here's the Key info:

• The legislation requires companies using generative AI or foundation AI models to provide detailed summaries of any copyrighted works that they have used to train their systems.
• The law's transparency provisions apply regardless of where in the world a tech company acquired its data from *if they wish to operate in the EU.
• There is also the requirement that any training data sets used in generative AI music or audio-visual works are watermarked, so there is a traceable path for rights holders to track and block the illegal use of their catalogue.
• Content created by AI must be clearly labelled as such.?
• Tech companies must ensure that their systems cannot be used to generate illegal and infringing content.
• The legislation is seen as an important victory for artists, labels, and publishers, as it clarifies that AI systems must respect existing copyright law.?That means they need to secure prior authorization from rightsholders, as well as the consequent transparency and licensing obligations.
• The legislation will be published in the EU's Official Journal and its regulations will come into force 20 days after that.
• The EU's newly-formed AI Office will be responsible for publishing templates for tech companies to use when compiling summaries of AI training data sets, these have not been defined yet. BUT...!!!
• There are, however, tiered exceptions for tech companies to comply with its terms and some of its provisions are not fully applicable for up to two years after the act’s enactment.
• The rules governing existing generative AI models commence after 12 months, although any new generative AI companies or models entering the EU market after the act comes into force will have to comply with its regulations from the start.
• Large tech companies who break the rules will face fines of up to 35 million euros or up to 7% of global annual turnover.

It seems that what the EU is asking for is impossible, the models don't work without vast amounts of data and it seems impractical?to ask permission from everyone on the internet. Will it have the intended effect or will AI companies play hard ball and simply withdraw from the EU sending a message to the rest of the world. Or is it more likely that they will pay the fine of 7% to the EU? Essentially the EU just brought in a sneaky AI tax. But one where the artist work who built the model will receive no compensation. Time will tell how this plays out but there's a LOT at stake for the creative industry here.

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Creativepool Awards will recognise Artificial intelligence

Creative Pool has added a couple of categories to their 2024 awards one of them being AI:? In recognition of the burgeoning impact of AI in the creative sector (and the fact it’s going to take all out jobs), this category anticipates a future where AI reshapes creativity. They'll also add Art, spacial Design and Self-initiated categories. I wonder if you can enter an AI submission into the Art category;??

"Ai iS nOt ArT!!!"

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OpenAI’s CTO Discusses AI Video Generator Sora?

There's a lot to unpack and while the?media is focusing on Mira Murati's difficulty in answering what data they used (its pretty obvious - the whole internet) I found these points more insightful:

• The reason we don't have access yet is because they're working on the safety of the model, to ensure it can't be used for deep fakes of famous people, pornography, etc.
• They're not working on Sound for THIS model
• It apparently takes minutes to create a video (not hours as some people had speculated)
• They're working on optomising the model so it will have a similar cost to Dalle
• Sora wil be released "DEFINITELY this year but it could be a few months".
• The elections and misinformation are a consideration as when to release, but overall safety is the main consideration

When asked about how this might impact?video creators? jobs?she pretty much dismissed the point and said that this is a tool that will extend creativity and they want film maker to inform how they develop it further. I firmly believe this will fundamentally change the economics of?video creation industry for motion designers, VFX and production companies by universally lowering prices. Please convince me otherwise.

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Learn

Midjourney's new consistent character feature

How it works

• Type --cref URL after your prompt with a URL to an image of a character
• You can use --cw to modify reference 'strength' from 100 to 0
• strength 100 (--cw 100) is default and uses the face, hair, and clothes
• At strength 0 (--cw 0) it'll just focus on face (good for changing outfits / hair etc)

What it's meant for

• This feature works best when using characters made from Midjourney images. It's not designed for real people / photos (and will likely distort them as regular image prompts do)
• Cref works similarly to regular image prompts except it 'focuses' on the character traits
• The precision of this technique is limited, it won't copy exact dimples / freckles / or tshirt logos.
• Cref works for both Niji and normal MJ models and also can be combined with --sref

This opens up a lot of possibilities for creating storyboards, branded AI Influencers or AI films.

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?Google Workspace?silently setting the real AI productivity gains standard

You probably have to use Google Docs, Slides?or Sheets as part of your job - but are you making use of all the new AI features? Save yourself hours every week with this video

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A.I. Tools

Adobe Acrobat

Forget whatever chat-to-pdfs model you've been using, if you've got Creative Cloud you can do it on your desktop with Adobe Acrobat.

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Krea.ai

Generate Images in real time. Not a new one but a cool video showing what you can do with it. Still lacks fine control.

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A.I. Video

Stable Skateboard

Anton created this AI-augmented animation based on a short looping sequence of a skater doing a classic kick-push motion, testing how he could combine existing animation and VFX workflows with new AI tools. He balanced maintaining control over the final output, while leaving room to be surprised by the AI's hallucinations

Link to BTS video

CREDITS: @antonthallner

Forever is Made Now

Wes Walkers film for Under Armour kicked up a storm in a teacup because AI was used to create parts of it while licensed footage used in it created by humans was not credited. AI is steadily?making its way more mainstream, but unfortunately that goes hand in hand with lower budgets and less time. And drama like this:

Read about the drama here

CREDITS: Full credits in description

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