Judge Vince Chhabria sided with Meta but appeared to do so regretfully, stating that Meta's use of the writers' work to train its bots isn't necessarily legal but that the plaintiffs "made the wrong arguments."

The Minions pose during the world premiere of the film "Despicable Me 4" in New York City, June 9, 2024. The website of Midjourney, an artificial intelligence (AI) capable of creating AI art, is seen on a smartphone on April 3, 2023, in Berlin, Germany. 'PIRACY IS PIRACY': Two major Hollywood studios are suing Midjourney, a popular AI image generator, over its use and distribution of intellectual property. AI RACE: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building a team of experts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can meet or exceed human capabilities. TECH HUB: New York is poised to play a central role in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), OpenAI executives told key business and civic leaders on Tuesday.

Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, alleging that the San Francisco–based AI image generation startup is a "bottomless pit of plagiarism" that generates "endless unauthorized copies" of the studios' work. The complaint includes dozens of images that purportedly demonstrate how Midjourney can conjure images featuring the studios' intellectual property. One image depicts Yoda from Star Wars holding a light saber, which it says was made by inputting the prompt "Yoda with lightsaber, IMAX." Another shows that typing "The Boss Baby" as a prompt allegedly resulted in an image of an animated child in a tuxedo closely resembling the protagonist of Universal's The Boss Baby franchise. "This is an extremely significant development," says IP lawyer Chad Hummel, who sees the compilation of images in the complaint as compelling evidence that "the output is not sufficiently transformative."

Apparently, Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot may have been a little too helpful in some cases. Last week, Neowin reported that Copilot was showing users how to activate pirated copies of Windows 11 using third-party scripts. Microsoft obviously didn't like its AI assistant supporting piracy, and Neowin recently wrote that the company has updated Copilot to no longer be as helpful when it comes to activating pirated software. If you ask Copilot to help you with digital piracy, Copilot now responds that this is something it can't help you with while also pointing out that it's both illegal and in violation of Microsoft's user agreement.

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against a U.S. maker of software that allows people to play games intended for its hugely popular Switch device on their PC or smartphone. The company behind Super Mario, the Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong is looking to clamp down on the operations of a company called Tropic Haze, registered in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, which owns and runs Yuzu, a popular video game emulator. A video game emulator is a piece of software that you can download onto your PC or smartphone to play video games intended for a specific console, such as the Switch, PlayStation or Xbox.

Artists, illustrators and photographers have often led the way in embracing new technology. The concerns that creators such as Harry Woodgate have about AI programs ('It's the opposite of art': why illustrators are furious about AI, 23 January) that "rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders" must be heeded. The UK's £116bn cultural and creative industries have an opportunity to be world leaders in developing and sustaining talent in emerging technologies, but the government must ensure that artists' rights are protected.

Deep learning is on the frontline in a new age of piracy, outwitting attacks with pre-emptive tech, explains Yarden Gross, CEO and co-founder of Orca AI. Almost a decade has passed since piracy raged off Somalia, and yet the danger posed by maritime hijackings is as present as ever. The global pandemic last year sparked a resurgence of attacks, with piracy incidents doubling across Asia, in a worrying uptick also seen in the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa. The fallout from coronavirus, including the loss of key security personnel, turned quarantined vessels into easy targets. This wave has since receded a little, with the International Maritime Bureau reporting a 44 per cent YoY dip in piracy and armed robbery incidents in 2021.

Drawing on the expertise of rights holders, broadcasters and technology providers from across the sports ecosystem, SportsPro's latest Insider Series event returned to the theme of over-the-top (OTT) and broadcast, providing a wealth of insight into the technology that the industry is tapping into to put live sports on our screens. With much to unpack, SportsPro writers select five key takeaways from across the two days, covering piracy, machine learning and remote production. Cameron Andrews, BeIN Media Group's legal director for anti-piracy, said sports rights holders "were slow" to react to the incursion of BeoutQ, but described the Saudi bootlegging operation as "a very good case study" for piracy "and the impact it can have". "I think some rights owners are certainly aware of that and are very engaged," he said. "But unfortunately I think a lot of other rights owners are still quite some way behind." The emergence of BeoutQ has shone a light on the threat piracy poses to the sports industry, and Andrews called on rights owners, such as leagues and governing bodies, to come together to tackle the issue.

Autonomous ships are a hot topic in the maritime sector; piracy and armed robbery too. Since the beginning of the year, according to the IMB, almost 100 attacks have been committed against ships all around the world. Here is an attempt to describe an autonomous ship hijacking scenario. In 2025, an autonomous ocean-going container ship is chartered on a busy commercial line between China and Europe. The vessel is a level four autonomous ship according to the IMO classification [1] .

One of the most interesting trends we've seen in 2017 is the spread of artificial intelligence into areas like marketing and security. Is this set to continue into next year, and are there new fields where AI is set to make a significant impact? Here are the views of some industry experts. AI isn't yet ready to go mainstream, but more businesses will be laying the ground work to use it in future, says Couchbase SVP of engineering and CTO Ravi Mayuram. "Today AI is more of a trendy buzzword than practical reality, and it's difficult to execute because AI is only as good as its data. While data integrity still varies within the enterprise, true implementation of AI is still a concept that will not come to fruition for a few years. However, we've seen early stages of machine learning applications in verticals such as advertising and retail. In the years ahead, we'll see more industries, including industrial IoT, digital health and digital finance, begin taking advantage of machine learning within applications to provide more meaningful user experiences. Throughout this transformation, the database will play an instrumental role by accommodating rapidly-changing data at scale while keeping big data sets reliable and secure."