3 Count: Stopping Levitating

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1: Dua Lipa Wins Copyright Case Over Levitating

First off today, Mark Savage at the BBC reports that a judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Dua Lipa over her song Levitating.

Songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer filed the lawsuit in 2022. They accused Dua Lipa of infringing their 1979 disco track Wiggle and Giggle All Night and their 1980 song Don Diablo. However, the judge disagreed and ruled that the songs only had generic similarities and that the elements that were the same were not copyright-protected.

Dua Lipa won a similar case over the song in 2023 when the judge found that she did not have access to the allegedly infringed work. In this case, Brown and Linzer have already announced that they intend to file an appeal.

2: Publishers, Journalists, and Film Producers Attack ‘Fundamentally Flawed’ Plan for Enforcing Europe’s New AI Law

Next up today, David Meyer at Fortune reports that artists of nearly all types have released a statement condemning the third draft of a new European Union (EU) AI law. According to them, the revised draft could do significant harm to human creators as well as impact elections and the economy more broadly.

The EU is considering a new law that would apply to the creators of “general purpose AI” models. That legislation is now on its third draft, with the fourth and final expected in May. However, rightsholders are upset that the draft legislation does not enable them to easily opt out of the use of their work in training AI systems.

They allege that the draft code of practice “sets the bar so low as to provide no meaningful assistance” to creators. They also allege that the proposed legislation is not consistent with itself, setting conflicting standards.

3: ChatGPT’s Viral Studio Ghibli-Style Images Highlight AI Copyright Concerns

Finally today, Matt O’Brien and Sarah Parvini at the Associated Press report that a new AI trend is raising both copyright and ethical concerns when it comes to using AI to manipulate images.

A recent release of OpenAI’s latest image generation model sparked a meme where users would take photographs and convert them to Studio Ghibli-style images. Though the results have been impressive, many have wondered if this is an infringement of Studio Ghibli’s work.

To make matters worse, Studio Ghibli’s founder, Hayao Miyazaki, has been a strong critic of AI, saying in the past that it “disgusts” him. OpenAI has not commented on whether it has a license with Studio Ghibli.

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