<p>YouTube is launching a new feature that will allow creators to use AI technology to generate custom instrumental backing music that can be added to their videos. In an update published to its Creator Insider channel this week, the company shared that it&#8217;s beginning to roll out an update to its Creator Music marketplace that [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an early-access community for some of the first people who signed up after last month&#8217;s announcement that the pair had bought Digg and planned to relaunch it as something new. The early-access program is [&hellip;]</p>

<p>YouTube on Wednesday announced an expansion of its pilot program designed to identify and manage AI-generated content that features the &#8220;likeness,&#8221; including the face, of creators, artists, and other famous or influential figures. The company is also publicly declaring its support for the legislation known as the NO FAKES ACT, which aims to tackle the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amazon has upgraded its AI video model, Nova Reel, with the ability to generate videos up to two minutes in length. Nova Reel, announced in December 2024, was Amazon&#8217;s first foray into the generative video space. It competes with models from OpenAI, Google, and others in what&#8217;s fast becoming a crowded market. The latest Nova [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Los Angeles-based startup Moonvalley, which is developing AI tools for video creation, has raised a fresh $43 million in venture capital, according to an SEC filing. The filing lists 11 unnamed investors and comes roughly a week after Moonvalley launched its first AI video-generating model, Marey. Moonvalley previously raised $70 million in seed funding from backers [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The British Broadcasting Corporation has filed a complaint with a U.K. antitrust regulator complaining that aggregators like Apple News and Google News minimize credit for the stories they feature. Apple Insider reports that the BBC is asking the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority to require Apple and Google to more prominently credit news sources. And [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The big screen adaptation of video game mega-franchise Minecraft brought in $58 million on Friday, putting it on track for a $135 million opening weekend domestically — or potentially even more. That would give “A Minecraft Movie” the biggest opening of the year, beating out “Captain America: Brave New World” (which earned $88.8 million during [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Midjourney, one of the earliest AI image-generating services on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year. Dubbed V7, the model began rolling out in alpha around midnight ET on Thursday, comes a week after OpenAI debuted a new image generator in ChatGPT that quickly went viral for its [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amazon is introducing a new &#8220;Recaps&#8221; feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series. While the company&#8217;s press release for the new feature doesn&#8217;t mention AI, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that recaps are AI-generated. &#8220;We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI&#8217;s new image-generation feature is on track to be one of the company&#8217;s most popular product launches ever. According to Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images since the upgraded image generator launched in ChatGPT on March 25. &#8220;[W]e appreciate [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Spotify announced Gen AI ads, among other changes to its advertising business, at an event in New York City on Thursday. Notably, the company introduced a new programmatic offering, the Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach Spotify&#8217;s logged-in users via real-time auctions. Expanding on the SAX news, Spotify said it inked new [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Runway, a startup developing a range of generative AI models for media production, including video-generating models, has raised $308 million in a Series D funding round. General Atlantic led the round, which had participation from Fidelity Management &amp; Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Nvidia, SoftBank, and others. The fresh capital will be put toward AI research [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Patreon, a subscription platform for online creators, has signed podcasting partnerships with Sony Music Entertainment and Amazon&#8217;s Wondery, the company announced on Wednesday. Patreon says the partnerships are designed to make the site a home to fan engagement and exclusive perks for shows from major podcast networks, as the company looks to expand beyond its [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The Wikimedia Foundation, the umbrella organization of Wikipedia and a dozen or so other crowdsourced knowledge projects, said on Wednesday that bandwidth consumption for multimedia downloads from Wikimedia Commons has surged by 50% since January 2024. The reason, the outfit wrote in a blog post Tuesday, isn&#8217;t due to growing demand from knowledge-thirsty humans, but [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI is still struggling to overcome the capacity issues brought on by the viral image generation feature the company launched last week. On Monday, OpenAI disabled video generation for new users of Sora, the company&#8217;s suite of generative AI media tools. &#8220;We’re currently experiencing heavy traffic and have temporarily disabled Sora video generation for new [&hellip;]</p>

<p>AI startup Runway on Monday released what it claims is one of the highest-fidelity AI-powered video generators yet. Called Gen-4, the model is rolling out to the company&#8217;s individual and enterprise customers. Runway claims that it can generate consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes, maintain &#8220;coherent world environments,&#8221; and regenerate elements from different perspectives [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Media software maker and streaming app Plex on Monday released an updated version of its mobile app. The redesign features a new user experience, reorganized navigation that includes giving its Watchlist a dedicated spot, and other changes that aim to make it easier to access power-user features for Plex customers who use the company&#8217;s personal [&hellip;]</p>

<p>It’s been 25 years since China Miéville stepped into the literary spotlight with his novel “Perdido Street Station.” Combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, the novel introduced readers to the fantastically complex city of New Crobuzon, filled with insect-headed khepri, cactus-shaped cactacae, and terrifying slake moths that feed on their victims’ dreams. It [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amazon announced this week that Jennifer Salke is stepping down as the head of Amazon MGM Studios — a move that could indicate high-level dissatisfaction with the company’s streaming strategy over the past few years. To be clear, Salke’s boss, Mike Hopkins (the head of Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video), praised her work in [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Nintendo announced on Friday that its live-action &#8220;The Legend of Zelda&#8221; movie will premiere on March 26, 2027. It&#8217;s a little weird to announce this the day after a Nintendo Direct livestream, where the gaming company usually unloads all of its recent news. But that was intentional. The company wants fans to download its new [&hellip;]</p>