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AI in practice
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Soundcloud changed its terms of use in February 2024 to allow uploaded music to be used for AI training. AI copyright activist Ed Newton-Rex spotted the change and said that users were not informed. In a statement, Soundcloud said it does not train AI models with artist content, does not build its own AI tools, and blocks third-party scraping. It said AI is only used internally for things like recommendations, fraud detection, and content sorting. Artists keep control of their work, and all AI use follows existing license deals. However, the statement does not clearly rule out general AI training.

Update: Soundcloud spokesperson Marni Greenberg told The Verge that if content is ever used for generative AI, users will have clear opt-out options and transparency — confirming that such training may happen in the future.

AI and society
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U.S. President Donald Trump has dismissed Shira Perlmutter, head of the U.S. Copyright Office, shortly after her office released a report opposing broad "fair use" exemptions for AI training purposes. The report's stance conflicts with the interests of Trump ally Elon Musk and much of the AI industry. Perlmutter had served since 2020. Rep. Joseph Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Administration, called the dismissal an "unprecedented power grab with no legal basis" and said the timing was "certainly no coincidence."

This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos.

Rep. Joe Morelle

AI in practice
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Reasoning tasks sharply raise AI costs, according to a new analysis by Artificial Analysis. Google's Gemini Flash 2.5 costs 150 times more to run than Flash 2.0, due to using 17 times more tokens and charging $3.50 per million output tokens with reasoning, compared to $0.40 for the earlier model. This makes Flash 2.5 the most expensive model in terms of token use for logic. OpenAI's o4-mini costs more per token but used fewer tokens overall, making it cheaper in the benchmark.

Bar chart titled “Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.” It shows total U.S. dollar costs to complete all tests in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index using different AI models. Bars are split into three colors: Input (blue), Reasoning (purple), Output (green). On the left are the most expensive models: GPT-3 ($1,951), Claude 3 Opus ($1,485), Gemini 2.5 Pro ($844). In the middle: Gemini 2.5 Flash with reasoning ($445), o4-mini (high) ($323). On the right are the cheapest models: Gemini 2.0 Flash ($3), Llama 3 8B ($2). A purple arrow above highlights the cost gap between Gemini 2.0 Flash and Gemini 2.5 Flash with reasoning, labeled “150x.” Source: Artificial Analysis.
Google's Gemini Flash 2.5 costs 150 times more to run with reasoning enabled than Flash 2.0, due to higher token use and pricing. | Image: Artificial Analysis
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AI in practice
Update

US Copyright Office says fair use does not cover AI trained on "vast troves of copyrighted works

AI and society

US think tank warns of "reverse brain drain" in China's AI sector

AI and society

Researchers used AI to manipulate Reddit users, scrapped study after backlash

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