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In an interesting variation of the usual “stop stealing our stuff” lawsuit already deployed dozens of times against AI companies, today brings a more nuanced form of alleged theft. Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind “Blade Runner 2049,” is suing Tesla, Elon Musk, and Warner Bros Digital for what they claim is a willful circumvention

Midjourney is planning to release an upgraded web tool that’ll let users edit any uploaded images from the web using Midjourney’s generative AI. The upgraded tool, which Midjourney CEO David Holtz said will be released “early next week,” will also allow users to retexture objects in images to “repaint” their colors and details according to

Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publisher, will be adding language to the copyright pages of its books to prohibit the use of those books to train AI. The Bookseller reports that new books and reprints of older titles from the publisher will now include the statement, “No part of this book may be

Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed an injunction in a court in Northern California, asking it to intervene and restore its access to the WordPress.org open source repository. After WP Engine filed a lawsuit against WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and Automattic last month, Mullenweg — who also owns WordPress.org — blocked the company’s access

Days after 159 people accepted Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s offer of a six-month severance package to employees who wanted to leave, the company floated a new offer late on October 16 of a nine-month severance package to anybody who quit immediately. Employees had four hours to decide whether they wanted to take the deal. In

Apple Music introduced a new feature for artists on Thursday to enable them to create playlists tied to their recent concert set lists.  Dubbed “Set List,” the feature acts as a promotional tool for musicians to engage with their fans. It allows artists to turn their set list from a single show, residency, or entire

Matt Mullenweg, the WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO, has been embroiled in a very public and legal fight with WP Engine these last few weeks over the use of WordPress as a trademark, and fees Automattic believes WP Engine owes to the WordPress project – sparring that has resulted in WP Engine issuing legal demands

One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to replicate Bourdain’s voice. Looking back now, Neville told Wired that he saw this as a “fun” way to “keep [Bourdain’s] voice going in the film.” But his approach drew intense criticism — while

Zoom wants to turn you into an AI-animated, photorealistic avatar — but not until sometime next year. The upcoming feature, announced today at Zoom’s annual dev conference, will translate a video clip that users record of themselves into a digital clone — complete with a head, upper arms, and shoulders. Users will be able to

Tyler, the Creator dropped his hit song “911” in 2017 with the line: “Sucks you can’t gas me up, shout out to Elon Musk.” However, while performing this weekend at the Austin City Limits music festival nearby Tesla’s Texas headquarters, the Grammy-winning artist changed the latter half of the lyric to: “man, f**k Elon.” It

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Green Day’s classic pop-punk album “Dookie,” Los Angeles art studio Brain has constructed extremely lo-fi versions of the songs in various formats and is selling one-off versions of them. On the website Dookie Demastered you can also enter a drawing for $49 wireless doorbell that will play the intro

Following its $40 million fundraise at the beginning of this year, streaming media company Plex announced on Wednesday it’s rolling out a new TV show and movie reviews feature, putting its app in more direct competition with other apps, like Letterboxd and TV Time. The feature will also include social networking elements, as the reviews can be

As the engine powering the world’s digital artists, Adobe has a big responsibility to mitigate the rise of AI-driven deepfakes, misinformation, and content theft. In the first quarter of 2025, Adobe is launching its Content Authenticity web app in beta, allowing creators to apply content credentials to their work, certifying it as their own. This

A woman in Ohio is being haunted by ghosts. Or maybe she’s not. There’s a dead body buried underneath her house, rolled up inside a rug. Or there’s actually no body at all, despite signals from cadaver dogs. This week’s biggest drama on TikTok tells the story of a woman from Ohio who was building

A misfire of YouTube’s systems led to the accidental banning of YouTube channels impacting numerous creators who were informed their channels were removed for “Spam & Deceptive Practices.” YouTube has now apologized for the problem and says it’s rectifying the situation, but did not comment on the cause of the bans, leading creators to wonder

One of the co-leads on OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, has left for Google. Tim Brooks, who was heading development on Sora with William Peebles, announced in a post on X that he’ll be joining Google DeepMind, Google’s AI research division, to work on video generation technologies and “world simulators.” “I had an amazing two years

YouTube on Thursday announced a series of updates for its short-form video product, YouTube Shorts. These include the ability for creators to upload videos up to three minutes in length. The company says it’s also updating the Shorts player, introducing templates, and adding a new Shorts trends page on mobile devices. Combined, the series of

Juno, the popular app that brought YouTube videos to Apple’s Vision Pro, is shutting down, its developer announced on Tuesday. As YouTube had not launched its own app for Vision Pro, Juno filled an important hole in the app ecosystem, by allowing users watch videos in the immersive environment and interact with the player using

Sometimes, you have to start from scratch to make something amazing. Sometimes, you already have most of the ingredients, but you have to do some improvising to make the thing sing. Until today, TechCrunch was in the latter camp. Top reporters who know how to get to the bottom of a story? Check. Must-read news

Get ready for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, our signature event for startups of all stages, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. This year, we’re expecting a massive turnout of 10,000+ leaders from the startup, VC, and broader tech community. As part of the program, we’re thrilled to unveil the complete agenda

When Oasis announced its reunion tour last month, fans of the British rock icons rejoiced — by some miracle, brothers and frontmen Noel and Liam Gallagher managed to resolve their fifteen-year-long feud and got the band back together. But for fans, getting tickets to see Oasis seemed even more unlikely than the band’s reunion. Thanks

Podcast listeners crossed half a billion people at the end of last year as listenership maintained steady growth. With countries in the Arab world having some of the most engaged listeners, a podcasting startup out of Dubai is doubling down on the opportunity. Podeo is a UAE-based podcast distribution platform that has made a name

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut

A number of YouTube videos featuring music from artists such as Adele, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and R.E.M. have been unplayable in the United States since Saturday. For example, if you try to play Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” (whether it’s the classic album recording or a live performance), you are instead told: “This

Amazon Prime Video could be getting into the live news business, if only for one night. Variety reports that the company is in talks with longtime NBC and MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams to host a live Election Night special, competing with more traditional TV news broadcasts to offer non-partisan coverage of the U.S. presidential

Wordy is a new iOS app that offers a unique way to learning English. The app automatically translates and defines unknown words while you watch your favorite movies or TV shows. Wordy has over 500,000 titles available, including popular series such as HBO’s “The Penguin” and the new Disney+ show, “Agatha All Along.” Created by

AI video generators need to believe that filmmakers will use their models in the production process. Otherwise why exist? To jump-start the new AI film ecosystem, Runway has set aside $5 million in cash and more in service credits to fund up to 100 original films. If you’re an AI-curious director, now’s your chance to

EVA, the platform that connects event bookers with local performers, has secured $2 million in funding as the popularity of in-person events comes back in full force. The round, which the Nashville-based startup says was more than double the target amount, values EVA at $15 million. The recent round is timely as event organizers are

ByteDance said it is shuttering its music streaming service, TikTok Music, in November. “We are sorry to inform you that TikTok Music will be closing on 28 November 2024,” a notice on TikTok Music’s website reads. The service was available in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and Mexico. Subscribers can continue to use the service until

Like much of the podcasting world, we loved the Rodecaster Pro when it launched toward the end of 2018. It’s taken a half-dozen years, but microphone-maker Rode is finally extending the user-friendly line into the world of video. The Rodecaster Video faces much stiffer competition than the original Pro board did. In this post-pandemic age