Hey everyone,
It's been a busy week of setting up better content processes. I've launched a more serious newsletter for geopolitics in tech, Curious Jay, which leaves this space for AI’s continued impact on entertainment.
Speaking of which, I'm excited to introduce the Rogue Codex. If you've visited the RTB site, you'll know updates have been sparse. I ran into major challenges getting my vision to work with Supabase, and the experience just wasn't there. Now, thanks to an amazing tutorial by Mckay, I'm rebuilding it with Obsidian, and I'm much more confident the Codex will be the useful resource I always wanted it to be. Let me know what you think!
This week, we're diving into some heavy hitters:
The brewing storm over whether AI companies should pay for the data that makes them smart.
A look inside Hollywood's AI civil war.
Why one of the top model providers is suddenly telling developers to slow down.
Hope you enjoy it!
Grok | Paying Creators
TL;DR: Former President Trump declared that forcing AI companies to pay for training data would cripple U.S. innovation, a stance that creators warn will destroy the incentive to produce high-quality work and lead to a future filled with AI-generated slop.
Key Takeaways:
* The "Impractical" Argument: Trump argues it's "not doable" for AI to pay for every article or book it learns from, stating China isn't playing by those rules, and the U.S. would fall behind.
* Creators Fire Back: The Human Artistry Campaign, representing Hollywood unions, insists that taking works without consent or payment degrades the value of creation, ultimately harming both American culture and its leadership in AI.
* A Legal Gray Area: The core of the debate is whether training AI on copyrighted material constitutes "fair use." While some federal judges have sided with AI firms, the issue is far from settled and may require a Supreme Court ruling.
The Big Picture
The debate over compensating creators for AI training data is heating up, pitting the tech industry's growth-at-all-costs mentality against the foundational principles of copyright. While AI companies argue that learning from existing data is protected fair use, creative professionals and their advocates see it as theft on a massive scale.
There's a real danger that the current path benefits a handful of powerful tech companies at the expense of the entire creative ecosystem. If creators aren't compensated for the high-quality work that fuels these models, the incentive to create disappears, potentially leaving us in a world dominated by mediocre, endlessly recycled synthetic data. With bipartisan legislation on the table and a letter from over 400 Hollywood leaders demanding action, the battle over the value of human creativity is just beginning.