Comment luckilly this can't ever kill us... (Score 1) 57
... because we will be dead from AI first.
Submission + - Early Mickey Mouse Finally Enters Public Domain (bbc.co.uk)
Hope Thelps writes: A number of films including the earliest ones featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse finally enterd the public domain today.
The BBC reports:
Steamboat Willie, a 1928 short film featuring early non-speaking versions of Mickey and Minnie, is widely seen as the moment that transformed Disney's fortunes and made cinema history.
Their images are now available to the public in the US, after Disney's copyright expired.
It means creatives like cartoonists can now rework and use the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
In fact, anyone can use those versions without permission or cost.
But Disney warned that more modern versions of Mickey are still covered by copyright.
"We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright," the company said.
US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years, which means the characters in Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on Monday, 1 January 2024.
Those works can now legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled.
The early versions of Mickey and Minnie are just two of the works entering the public domain in the US on New Year's Day.
Other famous films, books, music and characters from 1928 are now also available to the American public.
They include Charlie Chaplin's silent romantic comedy The Circus; English author AA Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner, which introduced the character Tigger; Virginia Woolf's Orlando; and DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Submission + - AI-Created 'Virtual Influencers' Are Stealing Business From Humans (ft.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media — despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy. Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI — technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.
“We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, ‘What if we just create our own influencer?’” said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. “The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though.” Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian’s make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. “It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand,” said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
“We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, ‘What if we just create our own influencer?’” said Diana Nunez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. “The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though.” Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian’s make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi. Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. “It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favorability and recall for the brand,” said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
Comment Re: Most people are ignorant about computer securi (Score 1) 166
Yeah, it's all about geolocation, it has NOTHING to do with the fact that if I use BitTorrent without VPN, the damn snoopy ISPs available in my area will send me a threat letter on behalf of the movie studios. Nope that couldn't be a reason for VPN it's ALL geo-restrictions.
Btw my use case for VPN is why i specifically use a no logging VPN provider....
Comment Re:But the close their eyes to Trump's treason (Score 1) 182
what a crock of bullshit...
Comment Re: They're just trying to free your speech! (Score 2) 182
it's way more complicated than anything that simple...
Comment They're just trying to free your speech! (Score 3, Funny) 182
Because America!
Comment Re:It's an Antifa symbol (Score 1) 440
I really doubt trump breaks out GIMP and makes his own ads.
Comment Re:Sure, but who's wearing those T-shirts? (Score 1) 440
doesn't matter... for him to take the fascist symbol from the anti-fascists means the same thing, except he was tricked into it, by himself! hahahahahahaha
Comment Re:It's an Antifa symbol (Score 1) 440
hhahahahah loser got badly trolled then... they use a symbol from the fascists that MEANS anti-fascist (in any way, including defending jews) and Trump uses it, which telegraphs he's the fascist. OMG lol. well done. well done. And you thought pizzagate was genius.
Comment Re:None of government's business (Score 2) 74
that's not how monopoly law works.
Comment Re:This makes sense (Score 1) 247
Yeah, only people that can own their own website would be able to bleat on the internet... that might cost them 60$ a year! What'd printing presses used to cost to operate?
Comment Gen IV Nuclear can solve that problem... (Score 2) 152
... by using the "waste" as fuel since 90% of the energy is still in the "spent" rods.
Comment Re:you doubt self driving cars? (Score 1) 131
that makes sense.
Comment Re:that's what would happen (Score 1) 131
no doubt you are correct... in the case of the phone standard the standards were not as rigidly followed as needed for separate companies to interface b/c AT&T could have engineers "fix" some particular interface problem due to not hitting specs exactly... so they'd just have to share it secretly while starting a project to clean it up and make it a public standard (which would have to be in the divestiture order.
