TechCrunch reports: “As more publishers cut content licensing deals with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, a study put out this week by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism — looking at how the AI chatbot produces citations (i.e. sources) for publishers’ content — makes for interesting, or, well, concerning, reading.”
Games Industry Biz reports: “Tencent has acquired a majority stake in Chinese developer Kuro Games. As reported by Gematsu, Tencent bought a 37% stake in the studio from Hero Entertainment for an undisclosed sum, bringing its total ownership to 51.4%. This makes Tencent the only external shareholder of the developer.”
Yahoo! Tech reports: “Tubi, Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV service (FAST), boasts a content library of more than 250,000 movies and TV episodes and 200 live TV channels, which makes finding something to watch a tricky proposition. Today, however, Tubi’s 81 million active users are getting a new way to help them find something to watch in the form of Scenes, a feature that serves up short clips of your favorite shows and movies on your mobile device.”
TechCrunch reports: “Spotify is enhancing the audiobook experience for premium users through three new experiments: video clips, author pages, and the ability to add visuals that appear while users listen. These initiatives are part of Spotify’s effort to improve its audiobook offering and bring listeners closer to their favorite authors and stories.”
Media Play News reports: “Warner Bros. Discovery is rolling out new AI-powered interactive ad technology that enables streaming Max viewers to purchase, in real-time, select products marketed on select programming heading into the Black Friday (Nov. 29) retail weekend. Dubbed “Shop with Max,” and “Moments,” the technology affords Max subscribers the ability to purchase products placed within TV shows and movies using a QR code captured on a cellphone, without interrupting the content.”
Variety reports: “Greg Weinstein, a former top digital executive for A+E Networks and History Channel, has launched a new AI platform dubbed Aggie through its Audience Genomics data analytics and marketing firm serving Fortune 500 companies. The goal is to help small businesses manage their social media activity.”
Games Industry Biz reports: “Sony is introducing support for cloud streaming on the PS Portal for PlayStation Plus subscribers. The news was shared on PlayStation’s blog a couple of days ago, with the feature still in beta for now and meaning users are able to play on the Portal without needing a PS5. A select number of titles from the PS Plus catalogue (over 120 PS5 games, the announcement said) are available to stream, up to 1080p/60fps.”
The Verge reports: “Just five days after Meta started testing custom feeds in Threads, the company is already rolling them out to everyone. With custom feeds, you can track topics and accounts in one feed, making it easier to keep an eye on specific things that matter to you. To make a custom feed, search for a topic, then click on the three dots menu next to the search bar, and then click on the “Create new feed” option.”
Music Ally reports: “SoundCloud is increasingly positioning itself as a bridge between its community of musicians and the world of AI startups. In January we reported on its deals with three AI startups: Fadr, Soundful and Voice-Swap. Now it has added six more tools to its roster of partnerships. Tuney is for remixing, editing and music generation), while Tuttii is an AI-powered remixing tool for licensed music. AIBeatz generates beats, while TwoShot can be used to create custom samples.”
Music Business Worldwide reports: “Apple-owned music identification app Shazam has announced a milestone, surpassing 100 billion song recognitions since its launch. Shazam notes that the number equates to approximately 12 songs identified for every person on the planet. To put it into perspective, Shazam says reaching this number would require an individual to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 consecutive years.”
