Here's a quick recap of two of the biggest news stories in content creation in the past few days, including the latest TikTok rumors and a star-studded open letter aimed at protecting copyrighted work.
The deadline for TikTok to sell or leave the United States is fast approaching. And if that sentence is giving you deja vu, you're not wrong — it was only a few short months ago creators were bidding farewell to the app for the first time.
But the Biden administration revealed it would not enforce the ban in its final days, and the Trump administration granted a limited extension for the selling deadline, which meant creators gleefully returned to one of their favorite apps. But the extension was only for 75 days, and now TikTok is staring at the exact same fate. The new deadline for TikTok to be sold or banned is April 5th.
Recent TikTok rumors (and Trump himself) suggest there are about four serious bidders for the app. Those include "consortiums" of billionaires with ties to platforms like Reddit and Roblox, as well as Perplexity AI. But perhaps the most serious contender is Oracle, the third-largest software company in the world. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is one of Trump's friends and has opened up his properties and other resources to helping Trump fundraise.
However, China has been tight-lipped about whether it would agree to any deal at all. There's also a significant possibility the app gets sold without its underlying technology, which could severely depreciate its actual value. Like last time, there's no guarantee the app won't leave American phones and computers.
And then of course there's the possibility that Trump extends the deadline again and we just redo this whole dance in a few months.
An open letter signed by hundreds of famous creatives directly rebukes a recent attempt from OpenAI and Google to freely train their products on copyrighted materials. The letter includes the names of legendary creators across film, TV, and music, including Guillermo del Toro, Paul McCartney, Rita Ora, Ben Stiller, Janella Monáe, Patton Oswalt, Chris Rock, and hundreds more.
In it, the authors argue, "America didn’t become a global cultural powerhouse by accident. Our success stems directly from our fundamental respect for IP and copyright that rewards creative risk-taking by talented and hardworking Americans from every state and territory."
What exactly is the issue? Well, OpenAI and Google not-so-subtly requested government exemptions from copyright laws in order to create generative AI products. The companies are both facing lawsuits for this practice already, but now they're trying to fast-track product development under a dubious interpretation of "fair use" doctrine. This comes as part of their input into an open call for help developing an "American AI Action Plan."
The letter authors note that companies like Google are already valued at $2 trillion but are seeking to get out of having to pay fair compensation under well-established copyright laws. Furthermore, the creative industries employ 2.3 million workers and generate nearly $230 billion in wages annually. "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music, and voices used to train AI models at the core of multi-billion dollar corporate valuations," the letter notes. The authors go on to warn that this isn't just about protecting media, it's also about protecting everything from scientific studies to engineering code — indeed, anything generated on a computer and protected as intellectual property.
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